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.

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. But do you believe it?"

Before the separation from God and the fall of man, quite simply you were only as God created you, happily co-creating with God in joy and love in Heaven. That is reality. You live there forever.

But then you went into denial and believed in things which were not possible, as if they were. You denied God's will and shut out your freedom. This put your mind into a kind of sleep state. Within this state, you have dreamed of a planet, walking around its surface in a pretend body, wondering who you are and where you came from.

All that needs to happen is for you to wake up to Heaven's reality again. To simply stop sleeping, stop dreaming, come to your senses, return to sanity, and merely recognize what is actually true. God's truth is the only truth.

All you have to do is accept that the dream has not happened at all, and nothing in it means anything nor has any consequences. Who you are, in Heaven, outside of your dream world, has not changed or been affected. You still remain as God created you.

The instant that you wake up to reality, the entire dream and all its contents will be forgotten, as if they never happened. No matter how radical that seems or what it entails, the entire undoing of the universe, it will be like nothing even happened. You'll just carry on co-creating with God.

Jesus encapsulates this simple overview in this eloquent way:

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

So there is a really simple fact. Reality, The Kingdom, is totally real and totally safe and totally permanent. Everyone in it is happy and alive forever. Those who are seemingly sleeping find themselves in a giant dream world that they think is really happening, but is not. Not even slightly.

So what is spiritual awakening? It's merely coming to remember and recognize that only God's reality is real and there is no other reality. There is no dream. There is no sin. There is no death or sickness. There are no illusions. There is only the Kingdom. Everything is fine as it always was. You have just been having hallucinations for a while in a long drawn out dream state, so long you mistook it for permanence.

It's like, there's a giant party happening in Heaven right now A huge creative celebration. You're down here in hell pretending to be suffering and unhappy. None of this stuff even exists. There is no world. There's only the Kingdom.

It's like, there's a street party outside your window, but you're stuck indoors occasionally catching glimpses of what's going on. You long to be able to join them. Someday you fling open the door and realize there never was a wall or a house or a reason not to celebrate. You merely enter the flow of the procession of creation.

It's like, you're in your bedroom and you fall asleep and start having an elaborate dream, featuring a heroic body and all kinds of happenings. You mistake the dream for the only reality. Then you wake up, and the entire dream disappears and you suddenly remember you are in your bedroom where you really live. Nothing carries over from the dream state.

So it's kind of funny because, Heaven is totally okay right now. God is absolutely happy. All the souls and angels are having a great time. They're totally finding this whole dream world hilariously silly, laughing at how everyone down here is taking it all so seriously. Knowing from their perspective that the Heaven they are in is real, and the world we seem to be in is totally fictional. A strange realm of fantasies and imaginings.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

Everything is fine. Everything real is still as God intended. Nothing has ever gone wrong. Nothing real's been hurt. You haven't sinned. No-one ever died. We're just having a bad dream and someday we'll wake up and laugh that we ever thought God's Kingdom could be attacked or changed in any way.

"T-23.II.19. There is no life outside of Heaven. 2 Where God created life, there life must be. 3 In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. 4 At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. 5 Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. 6 Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. 7 Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. 8 Illusions are but forms. 9 Their content is never true."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, yet perfectly capable of waking to reality."

Let's make this simple and clear.

You are permanently within heaven, within God's being, within reality. You cannot leave. There is nowhere to go. You cannot really be outside of it.

However, you who are in heaven always, fall asleep and dream of NOT being in heaven always. You dream of being EXILED from heaven, in ANOTHER WORLD, which is totally opposite to and unlike Heaven in every way. You dream of space and time. You dream of planets. You dream of suffering and death.

Everything about that dream of exile, seems to place you OUTSIDE the Kingdom of God. It's an ILLUSION that it is possible to be NOT AT HOME. To be not in the eternal presence of the "here and now" of reality. The dream of exile is a dream of NOT BEING HERE NOW, and is a dream of being OUTSIDE the Kingdom. This is also backed up in the bible where it talks of you seeming to be "kicked out" of heaven.

You cannot really be outside of Heaven. You are INSIDE heaven, DREAMING of being outside Heaven. But the dream you have IS a dream of being separated from heaven, rejected by God, seeming to exist in an entirely alien world, and having experiences and hallucinations that aren't real or true.

While you seem to be IN the dream world, which is "the world you made", you seem to be in THIS world, and you seem NOT to be in heaven. Everything in this dream world is an ILLUSION. "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it." Everything in spacetime is an illusion. All objects, all bodies, all planets and galaxies. It's all part of the dream of exile and the SECOND WORLD that you made in your dreaming of NOT being inside the FIRST WORLD of heaven.

Now, in terms of perspective, sometimes Jesus talks about how Heaven is BEYOND this world. How reality is not OF this world. How what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is not OF this world. How your brother's reality is BEYOND his body. And how reality is beyond the illusion. The physical world IS the "wall of sin" and the "veil" that "covers the face of christ", because it is the dream of denial/death that blocks out or paints an illusion that "you are not in heaven." And this is also why as you forgive the world you should be OVERLOOKING the world and looking BEYOND IT, PAST IT, to the larger truth that you are actually "in heaven", NOT in a dream.

The thing is, just because you are always in heaven, doesn't mean that you are aware of it. When you are IN the dream, you are NOT being aware of being in heaven. You cannot be both awake and asleep. Either you sleep and dream of exile, or you wake and the dream is gone. Either you see the world of death, or you see the real world. While heaven is "here now" and always present, THIS WORLD, the dream of exile, is NOT REALLY HERE NOW.

This also leads to the fact that in order to be fully aware and awake IN heaven, which is awareness of eternity, you must EXPAND your awareness to the size of the CONTAINER within which this dream is housed. The bubble of spacetime. You must transcend space AND time! You have to get OUTSIDE of the little dream of exile, taking place in heaven, so that you can wake up in the larger "room" of Heaven. Spacetime is much much smaller than heaven's eternal scope. "Everything in the world is little because it is made of littleness."

So in a sense we can say, from being in the dream, that in order to wake up you must LEAVE THIS WORLD. In other words, you must expand beyond the limits of the body, beyond the confinement of a location in space and time, and BE EVERYWHERE AT ONCE FOREVER. That is awakening from the dream. That is the end of the dream of exile. You wake up to being fully present everywhere. And that everywhere DOES include the "location" in which Earth seemed to exist, except it shines away the world and REPLACES it with reality.

To onlookers etc, when you wake up to heaven, you DO LEAVE THIS DREAM WORLD. You must. "A dream of death is not left by death, but by truth" tells us that in both cases you LEAVE! You leave the dream. You vanish from the dream. Your body disappears and ceases to exist. It is undone. You become invisible to the dream world. You are then "more here" than ever, as Jesus says he will never leave you, but you are no longer "inside" the dream isolated from reality. You are pervasive. Which is why Jesus says "you cannot remain in the world, with this knowledge" and "the body cannot stay without illusions".

You do leave this world, because it is the "outside the kingdom" world. Which really is inside the kingdom, but a rejection of the kingdom. ie a denial that the kingdom is everywhere. "Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all". It's a recognition of where you ARE and what what you are, that you are HERE NOW and have always been. But this world... this planet.... this universe, IT IS NOT HERE NOW. It is removed from eternity. It is slightly delayed from immediacy. "At no time does the body exist". It is always past and future but never eternal presence. Even the "now" of time is nothing but a symbol in a dream.

Waking up, you become omnipresent. But this dream world, it's days are numbered. When no-one remains believing in it or needing it to learn to awaken, it WILL vanish. And in its place there will only be heaven. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." The dream bubble of spacetime exile, will disappear. Light will envelop it and infuse it and shine it away. Only heaven will remain.

So yes, heaven in a sense IS elsewhere, it certainly is not this dream world, it is not exile, and it is not outside the kingdom. But in another sense heaven is everywhere and here, moreso here than anything else. You seem to ascend to and be in heaven, but you really just wake up to realize you are where you've always been, and you journeyed without distance from your home that you can never leave. You just thought you were outside the kingdom for a while. And the people who still think they are outside the kingdom will not be aware of your immediate presence.

Jesus is not in the world. But then again, the world doesn't exist. So Jesus is everywhere.

Since there is no life outside of heaven, and everything outside of heaven is an illusion, the dream of death is NOT LIFE. This WORLD, is not life. It is "at best it seems like life, at worst, death". Life is ONLY "inside" the kingdom, which is an exterior kind of way of looking at it. From within the kingdom life is everywhere because there is really no outside. "Life forms" in the dream of exile are NOT LIFE FORMS. They are illusions of life. Only eternal life in the kingdom is real life. "To be without a body (in heaven) is to be in your natural environment."

You disperse, to everywhere. Here, there, everywhere. Not localized. Not in space or time. Eternal. Endless. Ever-present. Transcendent of location or limitation. The all in everything. But the dream of exile, though it is in heaven, is not really anywhere. It is the idea of not existing. It is the idea that you are not here or there or anywhere. It is the idea of death. And there is no death, thus no world. This tiny speck of what seems like a world is absolutely nothing. That is the message of the course. There is no world - central lesson. The dream does not really exist, you are not really exiled, and you are already home.

Dreams disappear when you wake up.

To ego, "having a self" seems to be what it's all about. This suggestion that ego is a "self you made" or some kind of a thing.

But this is actually completely backwards.

The ego is actually the idea of the END OF YOURSELF. It is a DENIAL OF SELF. It is an attempt to DISOWN YOURSELF.

What then "looks like" the formation of a fake self, a lying self, a self built from imaginary images, is in fact the opposite of what that illusion suggests.

It's not that the "ego exists" and you have to undo it, thus throwing out all "individuality" along with it.

The ego IS NOT INDIVIDUALITY. The ego is the END OF INDIVIDUALITY, masquerading as the illusion of "self" being created. This is because the Son of God is dreaming that He created Himself, which requires the SUPPRESSION of HIS SELF using denial.

So the ego is not a self. The ego is the ANTITHESIS of self. The ego is ISOLATION away from Self. The ego is the collapsing of identity, the undoing of what God created, and the attempted DESTRUCTION of Self.

So for anyone to say, well, if you wake up from the ego you will no longer have a self... they have not seen through the ego's lie. Waking up means you REGAIN YOURSELF, you RETURN TO YOUR REAL SELF, you RECLAIM your individuality, you RESTORE AWARENESS that you have always existed. The only thing that "ends" is the fiction that you do NOT exist as God created you.

So don't buy this EGO IDEA that waking up or returning to oneness will make "you" cease to exist. That is the EGO TALKING. *IT* will cease to exist, in the sense that, it always was the idea of not existing, and the idea of NOT EXISTING will end, to be replaced with the awareness that YOU DO EXIST.

So this fictional fuck-off idea of "you have no self", masquerading as spirituality, masquerading as nonduality or acceptance of oneness. It is UTTER BULLSHIT. It is an ego-driven lie.

You are NOT going to end when you wake up. YOU are going to WAKE UP to HAVING A SELF. A self which is driven by love, designed by love, and filled with love. A self which wants to SHARE AND EXTEND ITSELF, in order to exist. A self which is REAL and is PART of GOD.

You, who God created, as permanent, to exist forever, as one of His many sons, as part of his sonship, will ALWAYS EXIST, have always existed, and ALREADY HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.

All this other "you'll stop existing" bullshit is EGO FEAR and a device to turn you away from God and deny His creation. That is not spirituality, it is a lie. Getting rid of yourself is suicide and sacrifice!

God created you. God loves you.

The seeming battle going on is really between what is true and what is false.

What is true is Holy Spirit's reality. It is all based on truth. Truth means, it is actually real. Factual reality. Perfect honesty and clarity. A truth that is so permanent and absolute that nobody can change it, because God put it in place.

Down below this, in the battlefield, aka 'level 1' or the ego world or the physical universe, it's all about not-truth. Another word for that is 'false'.

In falsety, there is no actual reality, no facts, and nothing is really happening. In falsety, there is only lies, deception, illusion, deceit and distraction away from truth. This 'level' of the ego is a withdrawal away from God and away from truth, attempting to be its opposite.

So down here in the ego's world we're commonly dealing with illusions, lies and deceptions. We're lost in separation, duality, unreality. Things seem to happen which aren't really happening. Problems seem to appear out of nowhere which aren't even really problems. Our vision becomes fixated on form/matter - "the form of error", since all of it is error - untruth, falsety.

So now really your entire 'spiritual path' can be summarized quite succinctly by saying, it is the transition from false to true. It is your movement away from what is false, which means everything ego, and toward truth, which is everything Holy Spirit/God.

The truth shall set you free, as in, if you access the truth you are accessing a plane of freedom. Truth is an experiential freedom. A state of being. You do not so much need to learn to accept what is false, but only to accept that it IS false, and therefore accept that "only the truth is true".

And so this takes a lot of 'sorting out' of what is actually true and what is not true. You do not get to decide what is true. This is what the Course means by "you cannot establish the curriculum". The curriculum is the subject of truth which you need to learn. You do not get to define what the truth is, that's God's job. You only get to learn it, or to decide "when you take it".

And as you're sorting out, you're mostly going to be dealing with the ego in terms of its mess and its idea of how to wake up, which is to shift around between different forms of falsety masquerading as 'more true'. It will try to become spiritual. It will try to wake up. It will try to access the truth. But it cannot. Ego cannot be truth. Ego = that which is not true. So the problem is that we are attached to the ego mindset - to the false, and we want to KEEP it by holding onto it, and take it into a state where truth exists. It cannot go there. It does not exist anywhere in truth. There is no falsety in the truth.

So it's not that we need to change - ie the ego cannot truly change from being ego. That which is false is always false. Sorry ego, you are not allowed in Heaven. But that means, YOU, what you really are, which is not the ego, but the 'decision maker', needs to decide whether to stay with the ego in ego-land, or leave the ego and go to the 'Holy Land' (in your mind, sorry Isreal but you're just a lump of dirt).

So when 'we' are trying to access the truth or wake up to the truth, to reality, 'we' think that 'we' are going to be able to take whatever it is that 'we' think 'we' are, to the truth. But this 'we' comprises the real you PLUS the ego you. Two identities, not one, but pretending to be one. And this is the main mistake we all make, trying to drag the ego along for the ride. Its sole purpose as 'the false' is to drag us away from truth, and that is all it can ever do. We need to 'separate from it' and change hands, and go be with Holy Spirit instead.

It's good to attach to and identify with Holy Spirit. Notice though that 'you' don't really get to have a separate existence. Either you're immersed in the ego's thought system or you are immersed in Holy Spirit's thought system. And each thought system has its own thoughts. Holy Spirit's thoughts come from God. So that means, either you are going to be filled with ego thoughts or God's thoughts. There are no thoughts that are 'yours' separately - that's an ego lie.

Anyway, rambling on a bit. Wake up to truth ;-) It's good for you.

If someone you know is identified with the ego, they actually believe that the ego is their 'self'. Whether it's that the ego is being vicious or guilty or angry or fearful or playing a victim or whatever, the person believes THEY are this.

If you then try to speak any truth to the person, or to convince them that they're mistaken, or to offer insights or healing or to fix them, or to feed 'input' of any kind of greater truth to them, they will not be able to accept it.

Even though you are not really targeting the person - the self - but rather, the ego that they are associated with - the person still believes THEY are the ego. So any attempt to 'get rid of' the ego in them or to heal them or help in any way, will be experienced as you attacking them. And they will resist. Even if you have their best interests and highest good at heart and are just trying to help them to see the light, they will take it as an attack.

The ego can be quite vicious especially when it is confronted with truth in any form. And when the person is identified WITH the ego, they will experience it as though this truth is offensive to them. They will not want your 'help'. It's not that it's not helpful, but if the person can't separate out who they really ARE from the possessive, absorbing, blood-sucking parasite that the ego is, they're not going to be able or willing to listen. Then the person's reluctance to accept help, to seek help, to want help, or to get out of their own 'death wish', will be met with you feeling extremely frustrated in your efforts to 'save them'.

So this is what it really boils down to. We're not meant to be working on transforming the ego, or waking the ego up, or making the ego spiritual. We need to wake up FROM the ego. And that's very different. To wake up FROM the ego you HAVE to go through some kind of transition of identity. You have to transition away from believing in and associating with ego as your sense of 'self', leaving the ego's mind behind, and shifting your sense of self over to Holy Spirit's mind. It's a matter of pulling away from/detaching from the ego and realizing IT IS NOT WHO YOU ARE.

Same goes for the other person. They need to gain enough 'awareness' about the truth of who they are in order to not be LOST in believing that they are the ego. And if they are quite lost, it may take some time for them to 'wake up' from its possession of them, or rather, their doing-it-to-themself unconscious absorption into it.

So you have to be careful when you're trying to help others. Those with ears to listen with listen. But when they are too 'close' to the ego, you have to be extremely sensitive and careful about implying or making it seem like 'they' - the self - are the target of your offering of healing. If the self takes it to mean that you're trying to 'get rid of them', they will naturally resist, and that's totally understandable. No-one wants to be undone.

Love heals. But love is gentle and kind and patient.

In truth, the self that is real and the self that we really are, is our soul, which is part of the sonship in/as heaven. That self is perfect already and is incapable of being imperfect. The soul needs no salvation or healing or resurrection.

The thing is, the soul also has a mind, and it is in the mind that we have a problem. We've used our minds against ourselves, against the soul, to deny the soul. This means we've put our minds into a state where we re denying having a self.

This is also reflected in the authority problem which is a rejection of being authored by God, and brings with it a doubts as to whether we have even really been created, or exist at all. Denying God as our father makes us wonder who we even are.

Similarly in denying reality we have put ourselves out of touch with reality, which is an insane state of mind. This state of mind is filled with ego, and ego is literally the denial of self/soul. Ego isn't really a self, it's a lack of real self. It's like a sense of self that has parts missing and is unstable and changeable and lacks reality.

Ego is more like a temporary sense of "self-consciousness", in which you feel like the centre of the universe and under attack by everything. It's a tight contraction of fear, holding on for dear life, small and weak, separated off and exclusive, seeming to peer out upon an insurmountable world which it sees as a threat, divorced from itself and alien to it. But this is all due to a kind of 'lack of wholeness', ie a lack of soul.

When we're doing the course, applying forgiveness, trying to wake up, we might think that we - our self - is waking up. That's because we think that the way that we are, in our ego, in a body, not yet awakened, is our "self". That we're somehow having a self right now. And that we're taking that self and transforming it into an awakened state.

But this isnt' really the case. We're not even really being ourselves right now. And we're not really taking ourselves into reality. Our real self/soul is already in reality and is already perfect, it can learn nothing and needs no correction, it cannot grow and it cannot sleep.

So what are you - who are you - what is this sense of "my self" that you're having? Who or what it is that thinks about waking up?

Really we have a problem in the mind, where the mind is confused and has lost touch with reality and with the self/soul. This has made the mind selfish, rather than wholly self. Selfishness makes everything revolve around being separate and isolated, while the self-wholeness of the soul revolves around sharing everything with everyone.

Mind is that which is varying. Mind is that which is changing its mind about itself. Mind is that which is seeming to sleep, or seeming to wake up. Mind is that which needs correction. Mind is what is learning and unlearning. Mind is the realm of nightmares and happy dreams. It's all something to do with the mind.

But mind is not the self. Mind is a medium that the soul/self uses for creative expression and decision making. The will is part of the mind, which the soul uses TO will things, but the mind isn't the self itself.

So who or what is trying to wake up? Mind is trying to wake up, but mind is not a self. Instead we need to shift a bit in how we think of what is happening.

First we need to recognize self is really the soul/spirit/christ which is in God in/as heaven. It is already perfect and whole and immortal. It doesn't need any learning or fixing.

Then we need to recognize that mind is where something has gone wrong, and it's mind that is confused. Soul has used mind against itself to deny self. So now mind is in a state where it is not serving the soul, it is not recognising that the soul IS the self, and it is thinking that self is something else - such as an ego or a body or a fluctuating transitioning self, or an image of a self.

Mind changing is not about 'you' becoming and growing and learning and transforming into an awakened being. It's more about mind recognising the pre-existing presence of the soul/self and identifying that it IS the self. That you are a soul, not a body or an ego. This mind recognition though isn't a matter of a 'you' that shifts into being a soul, it's more to do with accepting and recognising and seeing the soul and knowing it as self.

That said, as the mind changes and opens up to awareness of the soul, its "sense of self" changes, and that sense of having or being a self or what the self is like seems to change, and that makes 'you' think that 'you' are changing and growing and expanding your self. But really you are tapping onto more and more of a self that is already fully formed in God, and its your degree of awareness of it that changes.

Part of that entails also recognising that 'who or what' you are seeming to be right now, your sense of self, is a mixture of some sense of 'me' and a whole bunch of things which are not the soul. Believing you are a body, or an ego, or a made-up sense of identity, or identification with emotions or relationships or the world. Things which are not the spirit, which you have mistaken for a self.

So really it's not that 'you wake up', it's more that the mind reconnects with and receives input from the soul and aligns with it and comes to recognize that the soul is the self that you forgot you had. And to get there, other senses of self, and other senses of it being 'your self' that is changing, has to go out the window. Really your self doesn't change at all - false senses of self shift and change and seem to grow and transform but they are not really what you are. You wake up FROM senses of self that are mistaken, returning TO the only self you ever really had.

You are a soul, safe in God, dreaming of exile with the mind and within the mind, lost and confused and unsure of who or what you are, temporarily believing that the self is the ego or the body or other things you made up, but gradually coming to recognize that the self is none of these things and was the perfect soul all along, merely hidden by blocks to awareness, and finally revealed as having been you all-along.

"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS." UrT10E1

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement." URT1B27E

"The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return." UrT1B29A

"The soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is ONLY his soul. Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever." UrT1B300

"It should be quite apparent to you by now why the ego regards the Soul as its "enemy." The ego arose from the Separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the Separation. Reducing the Soul impulses to the unconscious, the ego has to offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. All it CAN offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you that this life is YOUR existence because it IS its own." UrT4D9

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing." URT11G1

"The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES." UrT3F10

"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged." UrT4C23

"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve." UrT1B37C

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God." URT1B37F

"Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell."

It's a very common belief that there is only one dreamer of the dream of separation. This is not true.

Nor is it true that "the one son" dreamed the dream. Only individual portions of the sonship chose freely to entertain the idea of separation, not all of them. And some angels also bought into it and others did not.

The dream has MANY AUTHORS. This is possible because we OVERLAP, because we share minds. So there can seem to be one dreamer or it can seem in an awakened experience that you are responsible for "all of the dream", but *ALSO* others are responsible for all of the dream as well! You overlap, you share, you collaborate, you join wills and join forces and this world was made by MANY MINDS.

The misunderstanding of this, due to poor reasoning, has led to many people to be CONFUSED and to adopt beliefs about what ACIM is teaching that are mistaken.

For example, people say "other people are me" or "we're all one person" and therefore, this leads to conclusions like... I am responsible for what other people are doing. Or, I must be responsible for making someone sick. Or, if I change my mind about the dream, it will automatically somehow magically "heal" everyone and all of the sicknesses will magically disappear and I'll be looking at a world where everyone is healthy and happy. NOOOO. That does not happen.

You waking up as "author" of this dream only means that you are a CO-AUTHOR, and you've waked up from the PART you played in its making. This is why Jesus was able to wake up FIRST without others waking up, and it's also why you must accept atonement for YOURSELF. Many individuals have to accept the atonement, otherwise if "one" of them accepted it, it would literally be instantly accepted for all, and we wouldn't be sitting here 2000 years after Jesus atoned still deciding whether or not to wake up.

This has led to some quite distorted conclusions about what needs to happen to your perception in order to produce a forgiven world or a happy dream or a world without sickness or bodies. It makes people OVERLY responsible for the choices of other FREE WILLED INDIVIDUALS. This is actually a fault, because YOU are supposed to be claiming and taking full responsibility for what YOU are choosing or doing to yourself, and you can't DO that if you're telling yourself that you are responsible for the other PARTS and CAUSES that are in the world. If you tell yourself, you're responsible for someone else's choice to die, because it's so-called "your dream", then you're going to be in for a surprise.

This has also led people to conclude that when Jesus was performing miracles, he somehow "did not see" bodies or was not able to discern "sickness" at all, and they've justified and rationalized and explained this away as some strange twist of perception, that he could not SEE what was "wrong" with them and could not tell that they needed help. This is CLEARLY not in accord with what ACTUALLY happens in experience, and even people who have had awakenings through ACIM have said that they still can SEE. Perception merely becomes MORE ACCURATE, it doesn't make you BLIND to what OTHER PEOPLE ARE CHOOSING.

Miracles would not be able to supply a lack to those who temporarily have less from those who temporarily have more, if we did not have free will. There could be no teachers or students or people meeting to learn lessons. There HAS to be a provision for individual choice, in terms of what YOU are responsible for and what OTHERS are responsible for.

This is why Jesus says that when you accept the atonement for YOURSELF, you become part of the atonement and then must go help OTHERS. Many people now believe that when you accept atonement you are accepting it as "the one son" and therefore it ENDS the whole process, the dream disappears and "your dream" exists no more, therefore you're done with your task. This is NOT what happens. You become part of the atonement PLAN, and you must then go HELP OTHERS, help those who HAVE NOT YET ACCEPTED IT. This is only possible because everyone has free will and because we are CO-CREATORS of this dream.

You can wake up from YOUR dreaming or your BELIEF IN the dream being real, but that doesn't mean other people have woken up, it does not force them to wake up, nor does it mean the dream is over. The only reason people have come to believe that there is ONE DREAMER or ONE SON is because of FALSE TEACHINGS that have been perpetuated about the course, from even the most famous of teachers. It makes sense to the ego, but the ego is insane, so it is nonsense. It also is based on denial of souls and individual free will, which is the underlying foundation for WHY what other people choose is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

While you are believing that your ego is your real self, and as you attempt to do something about this to wake up spiritually, you're going to be pulling that ego self along for the ride.

It does not want to come along for the ride and can't. Its way of perceiving, which you have made your own, must see the approach towards truth and God as dangerous. Your attempt to expose your "self" to the truth will be seen as an attack, and is highly offensive.

This is why every time you (ie your ego-aligned self) tries to allow some light in or tries to become more spiritual, you inevitably find this strong voice emerges in you which retaliates. You have this big ego rebound where you feel all hurt and afraid and abused, as though someone just told you that you don't exist and aren't worth anything.

Your alignment with the ego while simultaneously trying to wake up from it, makes you try to wake up WITH it, and thus to wake IT up. But it cannot awaken. It is purely a device for separation and is illusory. It doesn't have a life of its own without your support.

When you try to pull it towards the truth or transform it, which produces the "spiritualized ego", you might well create an illusion or persona of looking and acting "like" someone who would be spiritual. But deep down you will have this part of you that deeply mistrusts and is threatened by what you are trying to do. Like a hurt child, that part of you will attack the part of you that's trying to pull it into the light.

Over time I've seen how personally I attempted to become more spiritual, for example by writing things which seemed as spiritual as possible. And it produced a lot of backlash for the "rest" of me that was still identified with the ego and didn't want to wake up.

When I was writing my first book, I really believed that I was opening up to light and truth and it was powerful and healing, BUT at the same time it was very painful. I felt like I was flogging myself to death, or sacrificing, or attempting to push myself to the brink of tolerance. I had a lot of ego rebounds.

Partly I felt that I was approaching truth more but there was a big chunk of me that was still holding on tightly to the false idea that I was the ego, and was trying to change "it" into something more spiritual. It could not change and did not want to and saw my attempts as deeply hurtful. And so because I was aligned with that, I experienced deep hurt along with it. I kept trying to be more spiritual in my persona.

While you're "seeking" for spiritual truth this is pretty much a given that this is going to be your experience. So long as you believe you are the ego self, that part of you is not going to like or want or believe in or see sense in the truth. It is going to be threatened by it, offended by it, hurt by it, it's going to take it to mean things it doesn't really mean, and because the truth proves that the ego does not exist, your alignment with ego is going to imply you do not exist. And that's just going to scare the shit out of you.

Gradually over time, making all of these mistakes, yearning to be closer to God, willing to push my "self" (idea of self) towards the truth, and going through endless rebounds, I think I've gradually lessened the belief I have in the ego.

Letting the ego GO is really the only way to become "more spiritual". It's not through changing it at all. It's not through making it more spiritual. The only way to be free is to be free of IT, which means your sense of who you are, your identity, your definition of self, MUST shift from ego to your Higher Self, or Holy Spirit (right mind etc).

The ego can't shift there with you. If you try to take your ego self there and pretend that you're doing it, you will just enact the ego's bungie cord. Like an elastic band it will just pull "you" right back to its territory, and the more you are trying to pull it away from its territory the stronger the rebound is going to be.

This is exactly what produces reincarnation - the attempt to get out of the world without really letting it go, elasticly brings you right back into it because you still belive you are made of it. Exposing ego to too much light will burn it, and with you believing it is yourself YOU will experience that suffering, and you will flee from the light right back into the body.

Gradually, we have to let the ego identity go and awaken FROM it to realize that it is not who or what we are. Everything it perceives is not our real perception. Everything it believes about itself cannot be what we believe about ourselves. Everything it trusts in cannot be what we trust. We have placed our faith in it and are attached to it. We have to let go and "surrender" its position to make room for God.

Waking up is painful. If we could see the areas where we believe in the ego and could simply gently relax and let go of them without adding threat to them or making them confused that we're trying to imply things which are not true or real to it, then perhaps we can awaken more gently. But that kind of ability probably only comes from a more awakened self that is able to discern lovingly. In the midst of the ego we rarely have such clarity and compassion and tend to step on our own toes all the time.

Often when I become more aware of truth and want to really "get it quickly", which can also be spurred by the ego because it knows that if you "do a lot of course" you will have such a reaction to it that maybe you'll stop doing it, using it to attack you, I'll just do too much too quickly. I will have deep emotional releases and become overwhelmed. It will also become frightening.

When I started to see that sin was not real and that it could only be my belief that I sinned that is keeping me from God, I went looking for the sin in me to try to undo it all, and that was simply too much at once. I spazzed-out for a few days and it was not at all pleasant. I had to stop and take it slower. Baby steps.

There are also times where I write about the Course a lot and maybe go into overdrive and am writing several times a day, and it all seems so wonderful and truthful and inspiring but then comes the parts of me that are still holding onto lies and they fly up into my awareness like a slap in the face. How DARE you claim that that's true! How COULD you believe that! Stop it!

By all means take a big leap if you are genuinely ready and can do so without the huge ego backlash, but otherwise, take your time and be gentle on yourself. Take a break.

"A sane mind heals the body" - ACIM

The idea that you are CAUSE, the idea that your mind makes your body... it goes even further than this.

The mind does not merely sit on a fence observing that "it is not a body".

The mind, as the cause of the body, is also two other important things:

1) The mind has AUTHORITY over the body. ("the mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this)

and

2) The mind WHEN SANE, HEALS the body, which ACTIVELY reverses all signs of sickness and death, restoring the body to a picture of health.

So you do not merely wake up and keep sickness in the body. You do not merely wake up and then go through body death. A mind in a permanent state of sanity/health MUST FORCE the body to be healthy and therefore makes it impossible for the body to turn to sickness or death.

"A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed", because literally, if the body is broken, the mind CANNOT be sane, because a sane mind HEALS the body. So if the mind has not HEALED the body, it can't have been sane, and has attacked the body in insanity.

Anyone who dies, anyone who is sick, has something wrong with their mind. "Miracles are supposed to be happening all the time. When they are not, something has gone wrong."

So a sane mind, an awakened mind, is not only POWERFUL, it has full AUTHORITY over all forms and the body and the world, it ACTIVELY HEALS and undoes sickness and death.

God is always in a state of "HEALING" because He is always sane and always radiates healing power, which makes it IMPOSSIBLE TO BECOME SICK OR DIE.

This is the true meaning of "I am sustained by God all through the day". ie, I am KEPT ALIVE BY GOD AT ALL TIMES.

If your ultimate, completely long-term goal was to awaken to truth and return to God, and you knew that ultimately nothing could hurt you because you are Immortal Spirit, you would be COMPLETELY okay with WHATEVER is necessary in order to accomplish that goal.

And that does mean literally anything. If you knew that the most important thing in your entire existence is to return to being with God, then you would 'okay' a lifetime in which you suffer terribly, have horrible diseases, are attacked endlessly, treated unfairly, and end up dying. You would sign on the dotted line - yes please, I'll go through this.

And the only reason you'll allow and agree to this, is because you can see ahead of time, what the experience is going to be like but, most importantly, WHAT IT WILL LEAD TO. And because you want what it will lead to - an increase in spiritual growth, an increase in awakening, learning to be more loving, growing your heart or the hearts of others, IF you could be shown that ahead of time, you would be like... yes, that's going to be a painful lesson but the end result is WORTH IT.

This is how we initially set out to become victims in this world. We go through this process before we are born. We evaluate with help, what we want to LEARN, and what is going to be required in order to learn it. And sometimes the requirements or 'stimuli' that will provoke learning may not be necessarily pleasant. And that's a very light way of putting the fact, that we literally choose to suffer in terrible ways, IF it will lead ultimately to awakening.

Then we come into the world and really bad shit happens. Really really bad shit. And it seems terrible. And initially we don't understand because we have this amnesia, on purpose, shutting out awareness of WHY this is happening. But the whole point of that amnesia is so that we can learn and become aware of WHY... so that we can become empowered, so that we can grow stronger, and so that we can ultimately WAKE UP.

In that light, victims are not victims. There are no victims. There are only choices, agreed-to scripts, and purposeful events. Everyone who is to meet will meet. Every thing that is meant to happen will happen. And everyone will ultimately wake up. And everyone will know that it was all worth it, especially given that NONE of this stuff was even real anyway.

Without that, every conclusion you make and every meaning you derive will be a bit 'off', because you don't have something to properly contrast it against.

The trouble with trying to 'wake up' from spiritual unconsciousness, is that you're pretty much in the dark. Even though the truth is completely open and available, even if someone tells you what it is, you still won't be able to fully accept it at first. It's like, it's right in front of your face but you are hallucinating so much that you don't even recognize it.

Gradually you flail around in the dark trying to put pieces of the puzzle together, but it's like assembling a puzzle without the cardboard box cover to see what the finished picture is supposed to look like.

Luckily, because the thought system is consistent, as you start to get some pieces of it clear enough, those pieces allude to the content of other pieces. A piece shaped like 'this' sort of implies a piece shaped like 'that', and isn't compatible with one of those other pieces. So gradually as the picture forms, you get a better sense of what the whole picture looks like. As each new piece comes along, it becomes easier to 'predict' what it's going to say, and it builds upon this overall sense of knowing and certainty.

Also over time you get things deeper. You might've been exposed to the simple truth a long time ago but at the time you only kind of digested it on the surface, it didn't really occur to you how far reaching it was or what it really implied about your life. You gradually realize, holy shit, this is mind blowing.

So if anything, if there are tools to help you wake up, they might be tools which helps you to contrast whatever it is your experiencing against a kind of 'template' or definition of what is true and correct, so you can at least gauge a sense of whether you're on the right track or not.

For example, God is the truth, so you can quite easily say, "God does not create xyz because God is love and love wouldn't xyz, therefore... xyz is not real." Keep comparing it to the ideal of God as unconditional love and you can't go far wrong.

But for me, one really big truth which is hitting me strongly at the moment is that this entire physical world is not real. There is a truth beyond it which is much more true and correct. So this isn't just a matter of intellectually making sense but I'm starting to live it, and to relate to the world in a very different way because of this truth. I'm developing increased strength in God and conviction of His ways, and that means becoming more miraculous as well.

It just blows me away how much I'd fallen for the ego dream and all the different places that I went searching for truth here, finding none at all. Truly if we can depend solely on God for the Answer, we'll be very happy indeed.

The really big problem we have isn't so much to do with the characteristics of the ego. The big problem that we've confused who we are with it. Our sense of 'self' has become caught up in it. Our identity has been redefined by it. We actually believe that IT is who we are.

This is where we run into all manner of problems, and again, not even touching on the ego's death wish or all of its lies and deceptions, just the mere FACT of you having 'attached your self' to the ego presents major issues.

So just to clarify, there is YOU, and then there are two thought systems. There is the entire ego and its thought system, and then there is Holy Spirit and His thought system. YOU are either identified with and absorbed in one or the other. You, as the 'decision maker', float back and forth between them, but spend most of your time in ego land.

So who 'you' are, is really actually a combination of TWO things, your 'self', and either God or the ego. When you are identified with the ego, you THINK that you are 'one identity', but in fact you are two identities. You+ego. It's either that, or you+God. In God you actually can become ONE, but with the ego, you are always still separate and split and confused about who you really are, because you can't be fully one with the ego.

The problem now is, that you will try to become more spiritual. Now this alone leads to hellish problems. You will be holding on tight to the ego, while at the same time, attempting to become spiritual or to move in the direction of spirit. This is a major issue because your sense of identity is still very tied to the ego, so any efforts you make you 'stop being ego', will be experienced by the 'you' that is identified with the ego, as 'you attacking yourself'. The part of you tied to it will resist the truth, will not want to wake up, will retaliate and attempt to protect itself from the truth that the other part of you is exposing yourself to, and you will terrorize yourself!

What this also leads to is another major issue. Attempting to become spiritual WITHOUT dis-identifying from the ego, will cause you to attempt to bring the ego along WITH you in that transformation. You will try to make IT be more spiritual, because you think it is who you are. You'll attempt to transform the ego self, to pull the ego self into a new kind of thought system that it completely rejects and is incompatible with. It will resist strongly and it will not be able to stay there. So while you stay identified with the ego, you will constantly be pulled back into the ego after any endeavor to reach the light of truth. You will open up a little bit to truth, then the ego will act like a bungie cord, pulling you back down to its 'level' of consciousness.

So basically you have a major identity crisis. Who you think you are is so attached to the ego and its thoughts, that whenever you try to wake up, you think that you're being attacked. And really you are. If you are going to hold onto the ego while simultaneously trying to become more truthful/honest, you are going to SUFFER. You will spiritualize the ego. You will experience constant ego 'rebounds', which really is the ego-attached you pulling YOURSELF back to the ego that you trust, as if it is yourself. 'You', who think you are the ego, do NOT want to wake up, because the ego doesn't, and cannot.

This is basically the issue of what you are experiencing on 'level 1', which is the ego's level. Your identification WITH everything happening on level 1 ie ego thought system, attaches you to it. If you want to get OUT of the ego's thought system, and get to level 2 (Holy Spirit), it is going to be IMPOSSIBLE for you to make any lasting progress unless you are willing to LET GO OF THE EGO. Transforming the ego will not work because it cannot be turned into holiness. Leaping high in the air trying to grab the fruits of truth will only gravitate you crashing back to the ground again. The ego can't come with you to heaven.

So to really make progress here, you are going to have to realize, at some point, you have to stop all of your efforts to make your ego-identified self be spiritual. You, who YOU REALLY are, is already capable of 'being spiritual' IF you will attach to the Holy Spirit. You only need to let go of the ego's 'hand' and hold the Holy Spirit's 'hand', and hey-presto, you will SHARE the thought system of spirituality. You will enter into it. You will experience it. And your sharing of it will identify you with it and make it yours - not exclusively yours but still yours.

In essence you 'need do nothing' in order to qualify for entry to the 'spiritual universe'. YOU, who you really are, cannot change, because YOU are immortal spirit. You, as immortal spirit, have gotten lost in thinking you and the ego are the same self. That is all. You only need to be willing to SURRENDER the ego, let go of the ego, dis-identify from the ego, drop the ego, stop believing you are the ego, and remember who you really are (in Holy Spirit's mind), and you're done. All you're doing is getting divorced from the ego and marrying Holy Spirit, and along with that your whole sense of 'self' will change, away from the confusion of 'I am a separate ego' to 'I am shared immortal holy spirit'.

So really, YOU do not change at all. You just leave and surrender a mind that you thought was you, realizing YOU continue on without it and that you are NOT it, and enter into (return to) a mind based on God's mind where you have a whole different identity to associate with. This has little to do with who or what you 'are', and more to do with 'who you are with'. When you are with the ego, you think you're it. When you're with God, you tune into your real identity as His Creation.

You are free to leave the ego at any time. Nothing is keeping you in it but your decision to stay. There is another option and the ego is not your Self.

AWAKE IN THE DREAM vs WAKING UP FROM DREAMING

There are two states.

1. Waking

2. Sleeping.

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep."

When you are inside the sleeping state (2), the state of sleep experiences two polarities, or somewhere along the spectrum between them.

1. True perception (clarity, recognition, christ vision)

2. False perception (confusion, blinded by forms, victims)

Being a "Teacher of God" means being INSIDE the sleeping state (2), at the level of or close to True Perception (1). This means the mind IS STILL ASLEEP. But you at least are very close to awakening and not convinced by the dream.

"Teachers of God choose to look on dreams a while" .... "but they are not deceived by what they see."

Awareness of dreaming - being asleep but aware that you are inside a dream that you are producing and have control over - is often MISTAKEN, for the state of awakening. It is NOT the same thing as moving to state #1. It is only state #1 WITHIN state #2.

Remaining in a DREAM body, inside a dream, inside a state of sleep, which REQUIRES you to be not awake, in order to DREAM OF a body, is not a state of total awakening. But it is a "more wakeful" state than the state of false perception. This can be experienced as though you have woken up IN the dream, but are STILL dreaming. And therefore, still sleeping. This experience is NOT the same as being IN HEAVEN. It is nothing more than a reflection.

In order to wake up from dreaming, you HAVE to wake up from SLEEPING. The dream has to end. The body has to vanish. You have to get OUT OF the dream. Out of the body. Out of this world. To cease SLEEPING at all. You've got to get up out of your heavenly bed and stretch your heavenly arms and realize that nothing that seemed to exist in the dream world exists AT ALL. No bodies, no planet, nothing.

To return to state #1, total wakefulness, you have to no longer sleep, AND no longer dream. Which means you CANNOT HAVE a dream body. Being "in a body awake" is a temporary stage in between sleeping and waking. It's as awake as you can be WHILE ASLEEP. Like a lucid dream.

"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. (this is the state of lucid dreaming where you can choose what the dream contains).

For thus am I led ***past this world*** (beyond sleep) to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven (waking state #1) where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"Indeed you cannot remain in the world, with this knowledge."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

We have appointed our own worst enemies, our controllers, our dominators, our victimizers, our haters, and everyone we do not like, to do all of these things TO us, FOR us, because we have a secret agenda.

We do not want to be responsible for our own lives. We do not want to own up to who we really are. We want to hide. We want to shovel responsibility for our own lives onto someone else. We want to be victims so that the state of our lives is someone else's responsibility and then we can blame them for what has happened in our own life.

We have disowned ourselves. We don't even know who we really are. We have attempted to shut out God. We've gone unconscious. And we've displaced ownership of our own Real Identity, our Truth, into the hands of everyone and everything that we think is 'not us'. We now say the world is responsible for our life being terrible. No it's not. Our irresponsibility is what makes it seem like the world is responsible for our life sucking.

We need to wake up. We need to take our fucking power back. We need to own up to who the fuck we really are. We need to stop hiding our light and our truth and stand up and be visible. We need to return to the truth and stop wallowing in a dark world of victimization and blame.

It is not someone else's fault. It is not them that are doing this to you. It is not the government or the neighbors or the coworkers or strangers on the street. It is not anyone else. Its YOU. YOU are fucking up your life by not being who you really are. YOU are destroying your happiness. YOU are the one who is against yourself. YOU are your worst, and ONLY, enemy.

You are doing this to yourself. On purpose.

Why are you hiding from God? Why are you hiding from yourself? Why are you pretending to be someone you are not? Why are you pretending that someone or something outside of you is responsible for who and what you are and what you're experiencing?

Nobody has any power over you. ZERO. ZEEEEERO!

You are the one who has done all of this shit to yourself, and it's you who can undo it. You can choose again. You can remember who you really are. You can wake the fuck up to reality and stop burying your head in the sand with this victimy sob-story about, oh, so-and-so did this to me, and such-and-such a government body did that to us, and they-and-them did these terrible things to these poor innocent people, etc... its all ego blame. It's all passing the buck, shifting the responsible, and acting righteous about deserving to be outraged about how everyone ELSE is wrong.

LOOK AT YOURSELF. Take an inventory of your OWN fuck up. This is all about you, what you're doing to yourself, on your own, all by yourself, without any help from anyone else. You do not need anyone else's attack or vengeance to make up for the tremendous job you are doing attacking the living shit out of yourself, all on your own. You have enough self-hate to fill a mountain, yet alone needing anyone else to come along and add a tiny amount to it. This is all about you.

Who are you? Who the fuck are you really?

"The secret to salvation is this, that you are but doing this to yourself" - ACIM

STOP IT!

This will fly against everything the ego believes, because the ego says that people are supposed to suffer. That guilt is justified. That punishment is needed. That somehow you are breaking the law if you help someone. Surely it's not possible to actually heal another person? To affect their mind? To undo their level confusion? To reverse their mental illness? To remove their blocks to love? Surely it is completely impossible to WAKE SOMEONE UP FOR THEM?!

Well.... think again.

There is a component of free will, in that if someone truly does not want something, they cannot receive it. These barriers are erected in their minds in the form of denial, shutting out love and making them suffer. If this resistance is strong enough, not even the most advanced healer can help and has to wait patiently until they are ready and willing.

"Love does not enter where it is not welcome."

This leads to the fact that at least SOME willingness is needed in order to work around the issue of free will. The person has to in some regard want to participate in recovery, otherwise they will reject all help. And naturally it would be unkind to force them to heal against their will. This is why "a little willingness" is essential. But it does only need to be little. Some willingness is not total unwillingness.

Once willingness is in play, the person has some degree of "belief" in healing. It now becomes possible to help them. And this is where the ego's laws begin to be violated. This is where it starts to become possible to actually lift someone up FOR them.

This is why Jesus says that you should not attempt to use to FORCE someone to BELIEVE, ie to be willing. Miracles should not be used coercively. Doing that would be to use miracles as "spectacles to induce belief." The recipient of miracles has to ALREADY believe, to some degree, so that the miracle helps and isn't a form of manipulation.

"The use of miracles as a spectacle ***to INDUCE belief*** is wrong. They are really used for and by believers. "

Once someone is willing to receive help, it's a whole new ballgame. This is where it becomes possible to actually heal other people. Jesus says the light in your mind is so powerful it can shine into another mind and heal it, just as His can. The Holy Spirit has also been created to Help and to Heal. If it were not POSSIBLE to help anyone who is at least partly unwilling to love, help would be impossible, and everyone would be left to their own devices, ie stuck in hell.

Similarly it is possible for one child of God to heal another, causing that person to be lifted up, corrected, healed, forgiven. It is possible to undo their level confusion. It is possible to remove blocks to awareness. It is possible to change their beliefs. It is possible to alter their perception. And it is possible to heal their bodies as well.

In effect, the ego sees this as "cheating". It's cheating because it makes it possible to get children of God to return home SOONER than expected. It's cheating because people are supposed to suffer and go through long drawn out periods of hell which they justly deserve. It's cheating because the ego has no forgiveness and wants to keep everyone stuck and unhappy forever

It reasons, surely it's not possible to do ANYTHING to another person? Surely YOU cannot AFFECT someone else? If everyone has free will, how is it possible? It's possible when they USE their free will to be open to help. And by being open to help, from heaven or from you, it becomes possible now to BYPASS the ego's laws of required suffering and SHORTEN the suffering of others.

In fact, if you look at this, it means that we all in fact can help each other to wake up sooner. It is NOT God's will that we suffer, and God would have us come home as soon as possible. As each of us HELPS one another, we actually accelerate the "celestial speedup" and bring atonement closer sooner. Jesus says that your mind can ENLIGHTEN another mind. If that mind were willing to receive it, atonement can be shared and GIVEN by another, in accord with their free will.

What we're doing here, in time, is we're breaking all the ego's laws of required suffering, and its long drawn out dirge of death, and actually HAVING AN INFLUENCE on how long it is until the atonement plan is complete. We actually have the power to help our bothers to wake up, be happy, be healed, be whole, be free and resume their function. Not merely through some hands-off means like writing a book for them to read, although that is one method. But through DIRECT HEALING ACTION upon their mind.

You literally have the power to heal other people. "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive." "Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

You have free will. "All loving creation is freely given." God has given you freedom. You can choose. There was nothing to really choose "between" in reality, until you dreamed of an alternative.

God did not stop you from dreaming. He didn’t frown at you. He didn’t judge you. He didn’t tell you you were wrong, sinful, and shouldn’t be doing it. He allowed you to.

You are free. You can stay in illusions as long as you like. Or you can wake up. "God does not coerce". ACIM speaks of the fallen angels... "they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit." God isn’t even stopping them or judging them for wanting to not be with him.

In fact, God doesn’t even have an ounce of "shoulding" you. You are completely free. If you don’t want something, you don’t have to have it. If you want it, its yours. God isn’t pressuring you to wake up.

Your will is free. You have to WILLINGLY WANT to awaken in order to do so. No one comes to the atonement except willingly. "Heaven is a choice I must make."

God is merely asking, do you want to come home now? If you say no, then so be it. God isn’t mad. He has INFINITE patience because he KNOWS, that at some point, you WILL willingly return. It is inevitable because no one can tolerate hell forever. Everyone at some point seeks for a better way.

God’s door is open. You are welcome, to come and go. God knows its in your best interests, for your happiness and peace, to return to Him. But if you say, I don’t want happiness and peace, I want to suffer, that is allowed.

If you are for example between lives, and you approach God, and take an honest look at what you learned in your life and what you now believe, it may be revealed that you *actually* want to still be in a body. And so be it. If it is actually true that you want to stay with God, then so be it. Nothing is keeping you in a body any more than anything is keeping you from being with God. It’s up to you.

You are where you are because you want to be. You could keep going through 1000 lifetimes still not really wanting to awaken. God asks, are you ready now? You answer, no... and off you go on another adventure trying to find yourself.

There is no guilt involved. God is not judging you. He respects the TOTAL freedom that He has given you. He will not condemn you for not wanting Him. He Loves you. This is why you need to have a little willingness, and eventually total willingness. You need to be sure that Heaven is what you want, above all else.

God, Holy Spirit and Jesus all have infinite patience for your process. Whatever you want to do, you are free to do it. But you must also accept the consequences of your choice. Whatever you want, you receive. Nothing happens against your will. This is the key both to causing your own suffering, and finding salvation. Accepting this freedom and using it to choose Heaven, takes you home.

"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. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHICH VERSION OF THE COURSE YOU USE

THEY ARE ALL THE SAME! THE COURSE IS NOT A BOOK.

A Course in Miracles is a metaphysical course. It is also holographic.

If you were to "get" a single sentence Jesus has spoken in its fullest meaning and accept it, you could wake up. It does not require you to study specific words or versions. It does not require you to do the entire workbook.

I know this may sound controversial. At some point you are supposed to even leave the course behind and go to God with empty hands. The course is a stepping stone, a guide. It is not an experience of the truth.

The course is holographic in that the whole truth can be found in each part. Holograms make no sense to the ego because it has attempted to demonstrate through physical objects, that what is true of one thing is not true of another. It sees only separate problems defined by their FORM, the solution to which fixes on isolated problem and not any others - a learning which cannot be generalized.

Physical objects are the mind's way of projecting an image in which it seems like God does not exist anywhere, by making it appear that there is nothing the same anywhere. God is the same everywhere, he is the All in All. And he is fully present in all parts. The ego does not understand this because it will ask, how can All of God be in one part, and All of God be in another part? But God can, because God is omnipresent.

Similarly with the Course book(s), Jesus has expressed WHOLE TRUTH, using various words, many times over. The reason the Course repeats so much is because the SAME CONTENT is expressed in many different ways. So as you read it, it builds upon itself, because really, what you are learning is a "core truth" which is very, very simple and deep and profound yet which is expressed over and over again.

It is almost like a fishing net, which has been cast outward in many seemingly different "forms", talking on what seem to be many separate topics, in great detail, so that the MANY VARIED EGOS in various states and conditions can start with where they are AT, taking the course to be a specific form, and then WORKING THEIR WAY TO THE SOURCE, by realizing that each part IS NOT SEPARATE from the rest, and that there is a common thread, a very abstract yet wholly simple truth, hiding behind every single word. One Truth. One Answer.

Jesus in fact expressed the entire Course from a single state of mind, from love. In ego terms, that should mean that He only needs one expression, one WORD, which would be sufficient for you to awaken. As Jesus explained, even the term "God is" is sufficient. It contains the WHOLE TRUTH. The Complete truth. There is nothing missing in that.

Similarly for example, "nothing real can be threatened", contains the whole truth. Every aspect of that truth is reflected in it. If you could just GET that one thing, and get it really deeply and fully and really grasp the totality of it, the absoluteness of it, then you would be done waking up. So do you really need thousands of pages of text? Do you really need 365 workbook lessons?

Jesus didn't write a linear book. He didn't take the route that most authors take where they write things in a sequence along a timeline, with separated out content, and where each piece of content is tied to a particular form, and therefore to digest the "full story" you have to read the entire book, every word. Jesus's book is totally different to that.

Even though it seems to speak on many many different ILLUSIONS of topics, such as ego, mind, death, sickness, healing, miracles, heaven, worlds, separation, holy instants, brothers, etc... He is expressing ALL of it from ONE truth, one perspective (sitting in Heaven sipping tea), and that ENTIRE truth is contained in each part. You could get by with a single page of the text and wake up from it.

This is why the course is so DEEP. It has nothing to do with the HORIZONTAL digestion of the Course, how many words there are, how many words you read or practice, how much you memorize, which parts you quote in isolation, or which version seems more or less original. The course does not proceed in the horizontal. It is NOT attempting to get you to make "horizontal progress"!

It does not care how much time it takes or how many lessons you've done or which version's material was left in or out. That is not the DIRECTION in which your mind needs to progress in order for you to wake up! Your mind does not need to take on board 10,000 words. Your mind needs to TRANSCEND THE WORDS. To generalize the learning.

To transform what APPEARS to be thousands of words and to consolidate and reduce them down, boil them down, to a VERY, VERY SIMPLE core truth. You do that by going INTO the course, not moving through the material sideways or in a linear fashion!

The metaphysics of the course is DEEPER than the words, the meaning of the words is DEEPER than the words. There is an ABSTRACT TRUTH being presented here, a truth which *SPANS* the entire book, and is THE SAME EVERYWHERE. Page 1. Page 100. Page 1000. It's all the SAME CONTENT!

You are supposed to be GENERALIZING the learning. What that means is, you see SIMILARITIES in many different seeming parts of the book. Over here in chapter 1 Jesus talks about a miracle in this way, over there in chapter 12 Jesus talks about a miracle in that way. They correlate and are BOTH fragments of the same truth expressing. A piece of the hologram.

BOTH of them point to the same thing. If you are understanding the meaning of what's being said, your mind will develop a CONNECTION between the parts, and will therefore move towards a MORE ABSTRACT TRUTH than either of the parts suggest in their form. Your mind will start to build a "picture" or an overall concept or piece of the metaphysics, based not on a single quote or piece of form in isolation or certain versions, but based on the UNITY between them which transcends the forms of the words.

Just as the Course says you could gain vision from looking at a table in the correct way, so too you can gain vision from looking at a single sentence in the course in the right way. This is why a statement like "there is no sin" gives you a sigh of relief. It is HEALING, not because of what the words say or which words are used. It is healing because it is ABSOLUTE TRUTH expressed in one of many forms, reminding you that something FAR DEEPER than the form is real.

It does not matter which version of the form of the course you use or work with. It does not matter who edited in or out anything it says. It does not matter who influenced it or which forms are more original or less edited or which predate others. It is irrelevant. The course is RESILIANT and RESISTANT TO EDITING, because you cannot EDIT OUT the holographic truth.

A feature of holograms is that THE WHOLE TRUTH is present in every part. If you remove some of the parts, it DOES NOT DIMINISH the whole truth. Every OTHER part that remains, still has the WHOLE TRUTH in it. If you know anything about holograms such as those little 2D ones used on credit cards - when you move your vantage point you see a DIFFERENT SIDE of a 3D OBJECT... because every little particle of the holographic image CONTAINS THE ENTIRE OBJECT, making it possible to see multiple different perspectives at the same time. Try it yourself. To the ego, this should be impossible.

The course is the same way. If you take out AN ENTIRE CHUNK of it, just chop out 90% of the chapters in the text, YOU WILL NOT be removing even 1% of the CONTENT of the course that remains. The WHOLE TRUTH can still be found in the remaining content. You could even pare it down to just 2 words, like God Is, and THAT STILL contains the ENTIRE COURSE. So to think that someone's editing, even aggressive editing, has POWER OVER THE TRUTH, to strip out and steal away and leave out ANYTHING MEANINGFUL, is absolute bullshit ego drama. The truth is INVULNERABLE!

Taking out or changing some words WILL NOT, and SHOULD NOT (for anyone discerning) confuse or distract anyone from the truth. Believing otherwise means you are obsessed WITH FORM and are TOTALLY MISSING the content, which means you're NOT EVEN GETTING THE COURSE from the parts that you DO have access to! The Course contains such a STRENGTH and CLARITY of truth, do you really think that changing a bunch of words can corrupt it beyond all recognition, beyond all usefulness? You cannot remove the ALL from every part without changing EVERY SINGLE WORD. And then you might as well read the phone book. And even the phone book can be used to wake up.

The truth is not a form. It is not a version of some words. The metaphysics is essentially THE SAME in every single version ever released. If you think the differences are important, then you are not transcending the form and are not seeing the metaphysical foundation. WHOLE TRUTH cannot be edited out!

The metaphysics are based on extremely absolute logical progression, which is absolutely black and white with absolutely no wiggle room or room for confusion or misunderstanding.

The metaphysics explains the entire separation and every facet of the ego's working, as a logical progression, because all thought systems are logically consistent throughout. Once you can see the logical CLARITY, which is why Jesus uses extremely black and white terms as much as possible, you will GET the metaphysics and be able to see it and USE it, to clarify the MEANING of the words. The words do not provide meaning! The meaning provides the words! Content over form.

It is not necessary for anyone to read the entire text. It is not necessary for anyone to do the entire workbook. It is not necessary to read the manual for teachers, or absorb every word of every pamphlet, or listen to every single publication by well-known teachers. All you need is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit IS THE ANSWER TO THE SEPARATION.

The Course is only meant to put you in touch with Him and to recognize Him as your teacher and healer and helper, and to learn to allow Him to HELP YOU WAKE UP. Being in touch with Him and relying on and developing TRUST in Him, is MORE IMPORTANT than any words in any version of the Course anywhere. He is the ONE who Jesus appointed to help us. He is the ONE who will awaken us. He is the ONE who heals us. He is the ONE who KNOWS EVERYTHING and who can tell us anything we need to know, and direct us very specifically.

"I don't need to know what to say or what to do knowing He goes there with me. I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" etc...

It is THE EGO that wants to hang onto every word and quotation of the course, to take parts of it in ISOLATION and dwell on the FORM, in order to SEPARATE the course out into multiple separate problems, to confuse and obscure the message and the meaning.

It does not matter WHAT WORDS Jesus wrote. It does not matter what they mean in English language. It does not matter that you try to "let the words" tell you the truth without you interpreting. That STILL won't get you to be awake. You have to go beyond the words. They are just symbols, pointing you to the truth.

For some people, reading the entire text is helpful. Maybe many times. For some people, doing every single workbook lesson is helpful, maybe even many times. But NOT EVERYONE needs that. What is NEEDED, what is required, is to learn your personal curriculum which you will experience in your regular daily life, learn your lessons, apply the course principles and demonstrate the truth. Be a living example of the teaching, not someone who bashes others over the head with a book. There are already enough bible bashers in the world.

Sometimes people "get" the meaning of the course much quicker than others. It totally depends on the person. Sometimes there has been enough gained from the course writing itself that you no longer "need" to go do lessons or read the words. The core truth is generalized and the abstract nature opened up to. You get in touch with the Holy Spirit who is God's APPOINTED TEACHER, and you listen to Him and allow Him to TEACH YOU DIRECTLY. To help you to forgive and heal. To help you to APPLY it, and to RECEIVE HEALING.

What's right for one person may not be right for you. You have no idea. One person may need years and years of pouring over the urtext. Another may need just one reading of a FIP version. Someone else might need constant references to a sparkly or original or whatever edition. It doesn't matter. OUR CURRICULUMS ARE DIFFERENT, so there is NO ONE RIGHT BOOK to recommend for everyone to use, or which everyone should be using. And NONE of the books contain the experience of the truth.

All who are to meet will meet. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. There are no accidents in salvation. We are all on seemingly different paths, all leading to God. And no-one will be left behind. But don't fall into the trap of turning the course into FORM or having IDOL WORSHIP of it, or hero-worship of the people who we've made SPECIAL for having worked on certain versions. Much appreciation to them for their SERVICE, but they are NOT IMPORTANT. All that's important is that YOU become WILLING to accept the atonement yourself.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

In this statement, Jesus has arranged some metaphysics. First he establishes there is such a state or place as Heaven, and that there is not "really" anywhere outside of this place. It's the only real place where life must exist because it's where God lives.

He then goes on to suggest that in any state apart from or outside of Heaven, life is illusion. In the first part of his statement he's saying that there really is nothing outside of Heaven and life is only inside, and then is adding that IF you believe there IS an outside, it MUST be illusory because it can't really exist. Heaven doesn't have a real outside, so any idea of BEING outside MUST not be reality. And he describes that "outside heaven existence" as an illusion of life.

That outside of heaven place, which includes Earth, is described as being AT BEST an ILLUSION OF LIFE, and at worst of death. But it is also a fact that this illusory realm is NOT life, OR deal. It's not real either way. It's illusion. So believing it IS life is a false judgement, and believing it IS real death is a false judgement. It is nothing, really. It's a meaningless world that you made in your dreaming.

He then tells us that any kind of life that isn't INSIDE heaven, is not really possible. In fact it is impossible, because Heaven is eternal life and is everywhere, having nowhere that it is not, and no outside. This does not mean that the "outside place" where "life is illusion" is also PART OF heaven or inside of it. It does not mean an illusory world is life. That would run completely contrary to what he just established - that any life outside heaven is not life. And as he says, what is not INSIDE heaven is not really anywhere.

Now he makes remarks about what life "outside of heaven" must be like, if you happen to believe in such a "place" or a possibility of existing in such a place, which must be an impossibility and so is an illusion. Outside of heaven, ONLY illusions stand, and they are in a state of permanent conflict. These illusions are senseless, impossible, and beyond reason. So this so-called "outside the Kingdom" state, which is an ILLUSION of a WORLD, an impossible world, where there is only conflict and an ILLUSION OF LIFE, is not really there, not real, not possible, and not part of REAL life. The only REAL life is ETERNAL LIFE, in the Kingdom.

This "outside the Kingdom" place is perceived as a BARRIER to Heaven. It's a veil over the face of Christ. It's what physical matter comprises, the forms of error, the block of sin, the surface of nothingness, the illusory world that we made when attempting to oppose Heaven. Illusions are forms, and the world of forms (bodies, objects) is an illusory world. The content of such a world, that which it contains in any way, is NEVER TRUE.

The body, which is an illusion, and is part of this illusory world of forms, was made to look upon this BARRIER and not see past it. Its eyes were made NOT to see past it. And "only the body makes the (illusory) world seem real". This is why christ vision/spiritual eye has to be developed (opened up to, accepted), so that you CAN see past the barrier TO reality. So that you can no longer be deceived by a world in which "life" is an illusion of life at best, and NOT ACTUAL LIFE AT ALL.

So this is some pretty simple and clear metaphysics. And it's also based on this statement:

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

So in effect, you are IN heaven where there is ALL life, and the only place that there is any life. You are in a state of denial which has induced a kind of sleep where you are now dreaming of EXILE. You are dreaming of being NOT WHERE YOU ARE, or exiled from Heaven. It's a dream of literally being OUTSIDE THE KINGDOM. Outside of the only place where eternal life is, seemingly in some kind of state - let's call it a WORLD - comprised entirely of illusions, where there is ONLY an ILLUSION of life, where everything is in conflict and where everything is impossible.

Such a "place", while not real, is the dream of death, which is this world we made. It includes ALL forms, because illusions are but forms. It is based on the idea of exile (separation, denial). It is based on a thought of not being where you really are, not being alive, and not being yourself. It's made of ILLUSIONS OF LIFE which seem like life but which are nothing like the real life in the Kingdom. These forms include bodies which are not alive.

"The body neither lives nor dies."

"At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

"The world you see (with any kind of perception) is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as himself."

So in our state of EXILE, in which we are dreaming of being OUTSIDE the Kingdom, which has produced an ILLUSORY WORLD - an entire "realm" or space in which we seem to exist, which seems to be "outside" Heaven, but which is just a dream we are having inside heaven, we're thinking this world is reality when in fact it is entirely the OPPOSITE of the Kingdom.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

What does this mean about awakening to reality? It means if you want to be fully awake, fully natural, fully as God created you, in your original state, you need to wake up to heaven, which means the END OF THE EXILE. It must mean the end of the illusion of being outside the Kingdom. It must mean that the "outside the kingdom" "illusion of life" "place" must disappear. Because as Jesus says it is IMPOSSIBLE. And believing in it is ego. Finding yourself "in it" testifies to the fact you are still believing in exile.

The only way to truly wake up to Heaven's reality and to be IN heaven, is to completely transcend this world, overcome all illusions, go beyond the illusion-of-life body, wake up from the DREAM of exile, and no longer be INSIDE the dream of exile. "You cannot REAMIN in this world with this knowledge!"

Only the Kingdom of God is real. Only the Holy Trinity is real. Only the creations of light are real. Only the living world of light is real. "Exile planet" is not your home.

Lately I've been separating out what is MY proper function from what is God's proper function (or via the Holy Spirit or Christ).

This is because I think we all have it radically backwards as to what we are supposed to be DOING to awaken.

First I recognize what God has done, and recognize that he has already accomplished his will. And whatever God has done, I do not need to do.

God has done:

Created me and everyone perfectly.

Created everyone holy innocent and pure.

Given everyone perfect love and eternal life.

Guaranteed sunlessness and perfect forever.

Guaranteed safety and wholeness and peace.

Given his answer to the separation.

Put in place a perfect plan for all our awakening which cannot fail.

Shared true perception with us through christ vision.

Forgiven everyone already by giving the atonement.

Ensured nothing real has ever been hurt or lost or sick or dead.

Like, literally all the hard work has been done FOR us already. We've been handed total perfection and perfect functioning and an absolutely idyllic permanent and safe home in God forever. Plus God has handed us the answer to all our prayers and has met all our needs. He has given us the Holy Spirit to answer the separation and to guarantee its end.

That is hardly anything that WE need to be doing. Other than, as the course says, having a LITTLE WILLINGNESS to receive, acknowledge, and accept, what GOD HAS GIVEN.

All we're doing is being in denial of something that is already there. The opposite of denial is acceptance. All we're being asked to do is to LET GOD be God, and let his will be done.

As we allow God to be God and realize that God can and has DONE all the hard work, it should come as a massive relief, in which you can start to let go of YOUR attempted role of playing at being God. Of being the one who has to be responsible for getting yourself out of hell all on your own.

By handing over ownership of the solution to God, you can let go of trying to solve and fix your life, mind, self, suffering, whatever, and LET HIM DO IT FOR YOU.

The separation from God was nothing to do with an actual loss of perfection, it was only to do with a kind of breakdown in communication in which we just sort of "shut out" absolute perfection and pretended to be imperfect. Shutting out immortality to try to be mortal.

We also shut out God's authority and stopped wanting him to GIVE US EVERYTHING, so we closed ourselves off to him and tried to go it alone. It's that heavy burden of going it alone that you need to relinquish. To let go of "I will get myself out of this".

This is why the course asks us to resign as our own teacher, but here we all, all hitting our heads against the wall trying to TEACH OURSELVES how to wake up. We have taken over the Holy Spirit's function and God's function and Christ's function. We have to hand back to them the true functioning that THEY HAVE, and let them be that, so that they can GIVE TO US what we're supposed to be receiving and extending.

We can't wake up by hacking away at the ego self, the false sense of identity, the limitations, the suffering self, the thinking mind, bla bla bla. We wake up FROM it by shifting our entire identity so that it is centred in the christ self that God HAS ALREADY created us to be. The self you have and are which is hiding underneath all the ego lies.

Your function is not to do what God has already done - which is to create you to function perfectly and to have no flaws and to be worthy of love. You are simply melting your RESISTANCE AND FEAR of it, so that you can LET IT IN again. To reclaim your inheritance which you have denied.

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me. My own real thoughts will teach me what it is."

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."

"Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into Life Eternal, but YOU must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see it, though it is all around you."

"Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance."

"Who assumes a power that he does not have is deceiving himself. Yet to accept the power given him by God is but to acknowledge his Creator and accept His gifts. And His gifts have no limit. To ask the Holy Spirit to decide for you is merely to accept your true inheritance."

"What God has given is so far beyond our curriculum that learning but disappears in its presence. Yet while its presence is obscured, the focus properly belongs on the curriculum."

When you are in this world, it seems that who and what you are, is of this world. That you are a body.

When you are in heaven, who and what you are, is of heaven. You are spirit/mind without a body. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

The two worlds are completely opposite. You cannot be one while being the other. You cannot live in one while living in the other. You cannot be aware of one while being aware of the other. Which you side with is your choice.

"Every decision you make is made for Heaven or for hell, and will bring you AWARENESS of what you decided FOR."

Either you are located within and made from, heaven. Or you are located within and made from hell. You are either spirit or matter. This is all there is to choose between.

Generally speaking, if you are not in any way spiritual, you will completely identify with being in this world, being a body, being mortal matter. You will confine yourself to your body and believe it is your self. And everything you do will revolve around trying to protect your fragile life and ward off inevitable death.

The idea is that, to be spiritual, you must identify as spirit. And that simply means, that while you are here having your body, you learn that you are IN and OF and FROM another world.

Everything which is true of heaven, must become your truth. All the laws of God must become the only laws you abide by. Your immortal eternal nature must be your only reality. Your invulnerability and power and fearless love must be your entire experience.

And this also means, on the flipside, that anything NOT of heaven MUST be denied. It is opposite to your heavenly nature. Bodies, planets, galaxies, space, time, limitations, all forms of suffering, even death, have to be completely denied. You must not accept them as true of yourself, or what you are made of.

This entails recognizing that this entire world is not reality. It is a dream. And everything in it is merely a dream. And none of it means anything. And none of it is valuable in any way. This world must be regarded as literally nothing, if you are to gain everything of the Kingdom.

"This world holds nothing that I want." "Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." "It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that this world has nothing to give."

You cannot have it both ways. Ultimately to completely return to communion with God you MUST fully and completely and willingly embrace your entire true reality in heaven. You must wake up to what is actually real. And you must wake up FROM this dream world, leaving it behind to vanish.

While you are working your way TOWARD the goal of BEING ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, of knowing yourself, you will find your experience of THIS world changing. Your perception of it will change. The light of heaven will begin shining through you to illuminate your day. And you will become more loving. But this does not change any facts about what this world is or what is real

.Reaching what we call "the real world" or the "forgiven world" is just a stepping stone along the way home. It really ultimately is not important. You will pass THROUGH it, just before you enter heaven's gates. But not for a second will you look back longingly upon it or want for it to remain, when you wake up to the glory of the Kingdom.

It really is very simple in the big picture. Vigilance for the Kingdom must become your total attention. You must accept only what God has established as true, and reject everything out of accord with it. You must not believe anything the world says or suggests or demonstrates as true. You must assert the power and life of the Kingdom so that you can demonstrate resurrection and overcome death itself.

Either you are mortal or immortal. Either you accept your immortality or you deny it and pretend to die. Your choice. Nothing in the world can stop you or do ANYTHING to you. You are absolutely invulnerable permanent perfection forever. This world has nothing on you and adds nothing to you. And you cannot keep it if you are to know God. And why would you want to keep nothingness?

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT.

And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"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.

I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. But God did not will the destruction of His Creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you for yourselves. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom it has no power."

Your main problem is one of identity. You've attempted to change your identity from Christ, to take on a new identity as an ego.

Your sense of your "Self" has become associated with, attached to, and confused with, an alternative model of identity.

The ego is nothing but a device, a contraption you invented like a vehicle. It's something for you to cling to and to try to model yourself on. It does absolutely nothing on its own. It is lifeless.

It's not until you attempt to become joined with the ego, as though becoming one with it, that it becomes a problem.

If you think of it as a costume (like the body), it's not until you actually wear it that it seems to change how you express yourself.

Or, like a pair of goggles, it's not until you put the goggles over your eyes that your perception is changed. You can put them down again at any time and immediately resume normal vision.

You, as a Child of God, bring your sense of Self with you wherever you go. Your Self is your identity. The ego has no real self at all. However, if you bring your sense of Self to the ego and merge with it, you combine your sense of Self with its way of filtering reality. You then see "through" it, and see in the way that it would see if it had its own ability to see.

It is only your own ability to see - awareness - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego perception. It is only your own ability to experience - being - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego the ability to experience. It is only your own power which you share with the ego, which seems to give the ego power. It only shares any of this with you while you are joined with it, and as soon as you take it off, it would just drop to the floor lifelessly. Just like the body.

The problem is, when you've put your ability to experience and your sense of Self into the ego, trying to cling to it tightly as though making you become like it, you will now experience life through its eyes. Whatever it sees or how it looks at things or what it wants or how it values or what it believes, now becomes your experience. And you will see reality as very frightening when you look with the ego!

That's a problem because the ego's way of looking at reality is completely backwards. Seeing life through its eyes you will instantly reject God. God will suddenly seem to be an attacker, an enemy and a threat. The truth will suddenly seem like it is against you. The truth will come across as being the complete opposite of what you are, because it does not contain any separation, and the ego identifies with being made of separation. So the truth will then seem to be an affront, highly offensive, dangerous, hideous, and like some monster come to destroy the ego.

You, as immortal spirit, using and attached to the ego, ... if you attempt to become more spiritual while still wearing the ego identity, ie still joined with the ego mind and still looking through the ego goggles, will have a pretty interesting experience. You will not want to wake up. You will see any efforts to wake up as harmful and hurtful. You will interpret efforts to wake up as suicidal and sacrificial. And you will become afraid that the truth is coming along to destroy you. This can potentially provoke you to put up defenses against the truth, producing sickness and ultimately death.

This is precisely what you will experience each time you try to open up to more truth. Each time you let in some light. Each time you want to become closer to God. You, attached to the ego, inadvertently try to bring the ego into that light with you. It cannot go there and it won't go there. It will see it as you trying to destroy it. And it will put up a fight. Part of you which seems not to be in the ego gets closer to the light, and the part of you which does not want to let go of the ego - believing it is your Self - kicks and screams and resists and hates you for it.

This produces the ego rebound. Essentially, the ego rebound comes from trying to make the ego more spiritual, by attempting to bring it closer to its opponent. While you are identified with it, your attempt to go visit God without leaving the ego behind will create an elastic effect which will snap you back into the body and you will subsequently rage because of how you did such a horrible thing to your "self".

Waking up must entail the letting GO of the ego, recognizing that it is not your identity. Otherwise, each time you pull your "Self" into the light, and thus the ego with you, it's going to hurt. The ego cannot see the truth in any other way. It only sees the opposite of the truth as being true. It will never change. The ONLY way to be free of it is to let it go, to stop being it, stop wearing it, stop looking through it, and stop using it. We have to learn that the ego is NOT our "Self".

So this is purely a matter of identity. Are you made of ego? Is your Self really separate from God? Who are you? Are you Christ? Are you a body? Are you part of the ego thought system? Are you made of sin and guilt and fear? Do you believe in what the ego believes in? It's only because you have become CONFUSED about what really is YOU, and what is the ego, that you are having to go through this struggle of "awakening'. You literally believe, through the ego, that you are trying to destroy yourself by waking up.

Sometimes when you are exposing yourself to "too much truth" or "too much Course", you'll have these ego rebounds. You kind of can't help it. You are still holding on tightly to the very thing which is clouding your judgement, while simultaneously trying to be free of it. This makes you torn. Trying to be in two thought systems at once, or two canoes. There is part of you that sincerely believes you are the ego and you are the body. The suggestion that these things don't exist frightens you.

Letting go, letting go, letting go. Stopping being ego. Surrendering the false identity. Remembering who you really are. Accepting the truth that you are Christ. Relinquishing your belief in, trust in, faith in, confusion with, and reliance on a false self that isn't really a part of your identity. You literally believe the ego is who you are. It's not. Just some clarification needed. Some discernment. Is this really true about who I really am, or is this just a misperception caused by me using the ego goggles? Is this really who I am, or is this just a body I'm wearing temporarily?

Sorting out "who you are" is what this entire process is about. Each effort to "find out" will likely be partly fruitful and partly self destructive. Each time it will potentially offend you. Gradually you will inch towards awakening. Jesus says, "most of you will come in tears".

Each time you have a rebound, try to focus on LETTING GO. Just stop to recognize that you - part of your Self that's still identified with the ego or body, has become deeply hurt and offended by what the truth said about it. IT believes that the truth is vicious and mean and disrespectful. It is scared and freaking out because it doesn't understand what the truth really means or implies.

It, seeing through the ego, sees your efforts as blasphemous and an attack, and so it feels attacked and guilty. And that's what you'll feel like when you get a rebound - attacked and hurt and guilty. Recognize that in you and have compassion for that part of you. Try to get that part of you to let go of being ego.

Try to reassure your "self" that the truth doesn't mean YOU don't exist because YOU are not the ego. Be gentle with that part of you which is just like a confused wounded animal in the corner. Be kind to it. Don't push it too far too fast, that will just hurt more.

Likely you will have to feel the feelings of the hurt that was created by "its" mis-perception of what you did. Your attempt to wake up was like an abandonment of the ego self, like a self sacrifice. It doesn't have the ability to see any other way. So take your time and rest and recover and stop pushing yourself so hard.

Gradually and gently you need to learn to just LET GO of the ego because it is not who you really are. What you'll learn about your real identity is going to be quite a surprise!

What if everything that's happening in the world is exactly what is supposed to be happening, per everyone's agreement and decision? And there are no accidents or mistakes and nothing is going wrong? And I don't mean, that "bad things" aren't happening, just that they're not happening accidentally or without consent.

On the surface, the world looks like hell. And it's hard to consider that everything is happening according to agreement. But there's more to life than meets the eye.

What if everything that happens can only happen because you agree to it? What if you have to put some kind of contract in place which has to be agreed to by everyone involved, in order for anything to happen? What if everything that happens is completely deliberate, and every single event in the world is deliberately orchestrated and chosen by everyone, on purpose?

What could this purpose be, but to assist you in spiritual awakening?

Before you incarnate, you make agreements with people that they will help you with your spiritual growth by playing certain roles for you. You ask them to do this and they agree freely. A contract is made. The terms of the contract state exactly what the person is to do and that they are to do nothing else. They do not add to the workload or take away from it. They are to play their part faithfully.

This includes contracts that you make with your own ego. You chose, on purpose, to make your ego, so that it would function according to your design and your rules. You wanted it to do certain things for you, to adjust your perception in certain ways, to change your values and beliefs in certain ways, and to fulfill a purpose that you wanted. You wanted the ego to function as a loyal and trustworthy device that would enable you to go through various struggles so that you could awaken spiritually. This is its only purpose.

A lot is said about how the ego is devious and vicious and all of this, pointing the finger at it and making it out to be a horrible enemy. But what role are you playing in that scenario? You are the victim. And this is the lesson. Lessons are there for your benefit to help you to wake up. The ego can be seen as a device for facilitating what's needed in order to awaken, if you perceive it correctly and use it correctly.

A spiritual lesson occurs when there is some part of you which is asleep, or at least that believes it is. This part of you, you put to sleep in the first place. And now it seems to be unaware of some aspect of truth. In its unconsciousness, in certain situations and scenarios with certain people you will suffer and struggle because you do not see the truth. This part of you will act exactly according to how you designed it. The purpose of the lesson is awakening and the solution to the lesson is always to wake up to the truth.

All lessons point to the truth and the outcome of learning a lesson must always be that you come to see the metaphysics or structure or mechanism of the lesson clearly. To step out of the lesson, out of your unawareness into awareness, and out of lies into the truth.

The ego, just like your bodily ailments, just like your relationship woes, just like your enemies, just like your financial struggles, and everything else, is only a device acting under contract to fulfill what you told it to do. It can hardly be to blame for anything when you are the one that made it. And you made it with great intricacy and intelligence, and you could say that it is a beautiful creation. It does for you according to what you wanted it to do for you.

Jesus tells us in the Course not to play down the magnificence of your mind's creative power, or to tell yourself that you are stupid for having created a monster. You must acknowledge and access that your mind is a very powerful creator and that it has been used to create your ego. Regardless of whether the ego is real or not, it is still very impressive - this whole universe is very impressive. You made it.

Also recognize that every person that you encounter, no matter what they do, they are doing because it's part of a lesson in which you asked them, under contract, to come along and treat you this way. Even if they seem to be an enemy, someone that hates you or abuses you or attacks you or even tries to end your life, they are still under contract. There is a spiritual purpose. They are trying to help you. That sounds absurd doesn't it, at least to the unawakened mind. But everyone is in your life because they are playing the roles that you hired them to play. You asked for it. You wanted it.

You wanted it because you wanted to awaken back to God and you need their assistance. You need them to trigger you, to get you to engage with your own ego, to get you to look at your own beliefs, to get you to heal, to get you to learn to forgive, etc. These are valuable lessons. Even the person you hate the most is completely acting under contract with you in agreement with you and according to your will.

Even if you are engaging with them in such a way that it makes it seem you totally do not want them to do what they are doing. Your unwillingness to accept their help is actually the lesson you need to learn. You need to find a way to see them as helpful, as innocent, as serving your highest good, as servicing your spiritual growth, and as being loyal and faithful servants according to everything you wanted.

Initially, asleep, you will react to these contractors with resistance and rebellion, because in your ego state you won't see how they are helping you. And this is what you need to learn... So you need to then transition from your initial reaction, which is blindness and forgetfulness, to becoming aware of a bigger truth, a bigger picture, in which you can see clearly. In that clarity you come to realize how they are doing what you asked, how you are not a victim, how you wanted this, how you contracted it yourself, and how you have been dutifully served.

At some point, when your lesson has been learned, and you have come to recognize the truth, you will see all of the ways that a person who once was seen as your enemy was in fact your best friend trying to help you wake up. You will see clearly, without having to add anything to the situation, that it's actually true that you asked them to do what they did. You will also see clearly that everything they did helped you, that you grew from it, that you gained awakening from it. You will see how it benefited you in the bigger picture of your life.

At this point, with clarity and truth and recognition and having therefore transcended the lesson, you will be perfectly poised to enter into genuine gratitude. This does not mean artificially forced gratitude or people-pleasing gratitude or trying to be positive gratitude. It is a gratitude that involves an appreciation - an understanding - a recognition - of what has really happened. It's the ability to see. It's the ability to recognize that this person has served you selflessly and faithfully according to what you wanted and the only possible genuine response to that is genuine gratitude.

And so you will look at this person recognizing their innocence, because they obviously can't be to blame for doing to you what you asked them to do to you. And you will see their help as welcome. And you will recognize the great benefit it has given you. And you wI'll appreciate their help. And in this moment there is a kind of reverence and sacredness or recognition. It's like the two of you will bow before each other, the fight is over, and you are both in full acknowledgement of a job well done. Services rendered. Contract completed to perfection. No loose ends, no resentments, no ties, no desire to get rid of the person or end their involvement prematurely, no grief or sense of loss of harm, just total appreciation.

And then it's as if you both bow in divine brotherhood and see each other as being absolutely the best of friends and for each other, and set each other free. And it is in this moment of freedom and love that you are finally set free of the contract. This is the only way that you can complete a lesson and be free of a contract. This is what al lessons are leading to - a recognition of your freedom and innocence and truth and equality with all your brothers. No victims. No enemies.

So with any problem you have, be it a person or a body sickness or a financial struggle or a noisy neighbor or whatever it is, while you see the problem as unnecessary, unwanted, uncalled for, inappropriate, unjustified, un-asked-for, or in any way happening outside of your will, you will be lost in the ego. And you will therefore be in the midst of a lesson and will need to learn a thing or two about the truth. You can fight with your helpers all you want, that won't help. You can struggle with your contractors, that won't help. You can try to get rid of the problem, that won't help either. You got what you asked for and nothing else. You put this thing into place, on your own, and nobody put it there for you. So at least admit to that and stop attacking what you made.

So how to do you find freedom when you're in a lesson? Forgiveness. Undoing the ego perspectives. Shifting your perception away from attack and toward welcome. Shifting your way of looking at things as happening for you, not to you. Using it as an opportunity to be triggered so that you can look at and heal what you do not want to look at. Allowing the problem to attack you so that you can see how you believe you are attackable, so that you can learn not to attack. Ultimately the purpose is for you to sort out what is really true from what is apparently false and to receive love in everything that happens.

So if you can shift your viewpoint this way and learn your lesson, you will find that you are in a moment of mutual recognition with the thing you made - the contract you created - the person you hired - the sickness you put in place - the lack you chose etc... where you can acknowledge full responsibility for what has occurred, claim the full benefits of the lesson, recognize the innocence and compliance of everyone involved, and set both you and that problem free in a moment of gratitude and welcome.

What you made cannot leave your presence until you can set it free in gratitude and recognition. Any measure of seeing it as your enemy or unwanted attaches you to it and keeps it hounding you, because then you have not learned your lesson. If you want to be free of something, you have to see how you made it yourself and why you wanted it and what you gained from it. What are the benefits? How did it serve you? Where is the silver lining? What function did you give to it? It's simply a matter of whether you truly want to continue with the need for the functionality of this self-made device or not.

And if your ultimate, very long-term goal is to awaken to God's love, then you'll be perfectly happy to keep your devices and not get rid of them, simply because you know that you still need them until you can learn your lesson. Your priority above all else is to learn to awakening to the truth, to return to God, which is more valuable to you and important to you than anything else. So given that, why would you want to keep getting rid of the very lessons that are helping you to wake up? Not that you must suffer... only if it helps you awakening and only for so long as is needed to learn the lesson. You need not suffer at all.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (W-135.13)" - ACIM

It's all for the best.

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

The world in which we think we live, is nothing but a dream. But we're so used to being in it, that we refer to it as real. We think it has real buildings, real people, real cars and real trees. We think we are eating real food, having real sickness, working at real jobs, and that bodies really die.

To align ourselves with the truth, however, we need to properly identify what this world is. This world is UNREAL. It's a hallucinated dream happening in the mind of someone who doesn't want to accept reality. Reality is the Kingdom of God, beyond space and time. The contents of this world are false.

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

"And what you seem to WAKE to, is but another FORM of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

Jesus is pretty blatant here, saying that even when you wake up from sleeping at night, you are STILL dreaming. This world which you think is real and is your real life, is STILL a dream. It has the same content because it's made of the same illusions, it just differs in its forms. It's so elaborate, so detailed, so seemingly separate, and so seemingly huge, that you don't suspect it's not even real.

We should properly identify then that this world IS a dream, it is UNREAL, and it is FALSE. It has no truth, because its contents are invalid. It is a false world because it opposes heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." It is not created by God, so it can't really exist. It's more like a strange realm of illusions and dreams, images and fantasies, whisps of deceptive smoke and mirrors, in which figures come and go as if by magic.

"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

Mind went into a sleep state, it dreamed of time (and space), it made up events which don't really exist anywhere, with consequences that have no real effect, with changes that are completely substanceless, and which will merely disappear into nothingness when we wake up to reality.

This means that, everything in this world is NOT a "real" anything. So all the things we think are real, need to be re-labelled as not real. For example, sickness is not REAL sickness. I don't mean that a person is pretending to be sick, in the context that there IS a real sickness that they're mimicking. But that ALL "actual" sickness is NOT real.

Cancer is not real cancer, it's fake cancer. Brain damage is not real brain damage, because "the body is a dream." Broken limbs are not real breaks, because the limbs are fictional. The graveyards are all fake and all the funerals are meaningless. Nothing is ever really dying because it can't, it just changes from one illusion to another, and it's just a neutral nothingness. Every kind of sickness or suffering is an illusion and NOT A REAL ONE. And there is no counterpart as a REAL sickness or suffering of any kind.

None of these things can exist in reality. In heaven there is no sickness or suffering, no attack or death, nothing goes wrong, there are no problems, there's no job to work at or house to maintain, there's no stores to buy crap at or streets for cars that break down. There isn't even a real sun.

"The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss."

So in this world, when you look at anything, you should really be recognizing that it is a DREAM OF something. A sick broken body is not a REAL sick broken body, it's a fake body pretending to be sick. A dead body is not a REALLY dead body, it's a DREAM IMAGE of a dead body pretending to look like it's dead. It's no different than a living one because they're both totally fake. Their forms different but they don't really mean anything different.

This also why there is really no death, because all of these things which we think "die" are just dreams. Reality cannot die because it cannot be threatened. They're figments of the mind. They're just images and holograms floating around in a fictional environment. This is why ACIM also teaches that the body cannot really die, OR live, because it is nothing. It is meaningless.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness."

What we need to learn as teachers of God, is to recognize and be aware that we're literally hanging out inside a giant DREAM right now. This world ISN'T real. Spacetime isn't real. Physical matter isn't real. Objects and bodies aren't real. Your body isn't a REAL body. There are no such things as real bodies. Your sickness isn't a REAL sickness. There is no such thing as a real sickness. Your sins aren't real either, because there is no such thing as REAL sin.

It's a complete reframing of this whole "reality", this whole experiential realm of mind or system of thought. To realize that since it is opposite to reality, it is UNreality, and is just a dream. We try to GIVE it reality to MAKE it real, but we only do this BECAUSE it's not real. We want to believe in it and value it, only because it HAS no value of its own. It's a meaningless world, made of nothing, an illusion of nothing appearing to be something. A tiny mad idea.

To recognize the world for what it IS, you have to categorize its ENTIRE CONTENTS as unreal. Everything the body can see with its physical sight has to be recognized as NOT REAL, and NOT TRUE, and NOT ACTUAL.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. ****But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal.**** This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

So we should get our mind into the habit of regard the things of this world as DREAMS. As fiction. Properly labelling them as artificial fake things. If your partner has a physical sickness in their body, they DO NOT have a REAL sickness in a REAL body. It's an illusion of sickness in an illusory body.

You wake up in the morning and brush your dream teeth and eat your dream breakfast and drive to your dream job, you do your dream work and drive your dream car home and eat your dream supper. Then you go to dream sleep in your dream bed and pretend to dream within a dream.

It's precisely BY recognizing that a sick body does not have a REAL sickness, that all power is stripped from the sickness and it is recognized as nothing. This is part of the healing approach of a miracle worker. When sickness is realized to be FICTION, it holds no weight and has no power and is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear" and what is recognized as nothing must vanish. You weaken and withdraw power from the sickness by regarding it as NOT REAL SICKNESS. Real sickness does not exist anywhere, just the illusion of sickness pretending to be sickness. It is empty.

"Here is the CAUSE of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone. YOU are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No OTHER cause it has, nor ever will."

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life."

Both sides of every war are run by the ego. The war is symptomatic of the ego attacking itself. War is self attack.

When you believe that one side of the war is the good guys and one side is the bad guys, YOU have fallen for the ILLUSION.

BOTH sides of every war are played ultimately by the SAME side. There is only ONE side which has divided against ITSELF, and is attacking itself in both directions. This is the ego mind, the split mind, pretending to be TWO, when in fact it is one. The human race is attacking itself.

When we are deceived by all of these ILLUSIONS that someone did not ask for something, someone is a victim, someone is unfairly treated, someone is sick against their will, someone is suffering unfairly, etc... if we believe these things, that the person did not in any way choose or want this, WE TOO have fallen for the same illusion they fell for. And now we are supporting and adding to their illusion, and have kept them imprisoned.

We need to learn that the world is FULL of illusions of Party A appearing to be separate form Party B. In every way that this expresses, it ALWAYS looks as though one group of people is separate from another group of people. Ie that there are two distinct identities, or parties, or teams, or groups, or agendas, or whatever. Always two separate camps. And the appearance of two separate camps is the EGO. That's what the ego split mind looks like - a mind with multiple personalities, where those personalities are at war with each other.

We need to learn not to fall for these illusions. They are NOT the truth. It is NOT true that victims are victims. It is NOT the truth that things happen to people against their will. It is NOT true that death isn't chosen. It is NOT true that people do not want to be sick. It is NOT true that those who are afraid are being caused to be scared by someone or something outside of them. It is NOT true that people suffer against their will. These are ILLUSIONS, lies, disguises, covering up what the person is secretly really doing to themselves.

When we then believe and fall for these illusions, we are not seeing correctly, and we ourselves have become insane. And now we are entering into FALSE EMPATHY with others by joining with them in this delusional thought system, supporting their CLAIM that they do not want this, or that it happened without their choosing it. By entering into this with them we support and empower them to STAY the way they are, thus keeping them imprisoned. We cannot set them free until we are willing to FORGIVE, which means to overlook the ILLUSION that what they're presenting to us is the truth.

People who are victims will fervently express the belief and conviction that they did not want this to happen. People who are sick will passionately proclaim how this suffering is unfair and unwanted and they did not ask for it, and that they want to do everything to get rid of it (while doing nothing to really cure it). People who are in fear, are actually attackers who believe in disempowerment and weakness and attack others by seeing them as guilty and sinful. Do not believe appearances!

You have to learn, if you're to be a miracle worker, to OVERLOOK all of these illusions because they are all LIES. They are untruth, and dishonesty, and irresponsibility. Do not get into pity and sympathy and false empathy about how people are suffering against their will. They are attempting to bring you into a delusional thought system. They are attacking you with their DEMONSTRATION that they believe in attack and defense and war and conflict and fear and suffering.

Do not believe in sickness. Sickness is not REAL. Do not believe in death. Death is not REAL. Wake up! Be the light of the world and demonstrate a different truth. Demonstrate that the secret to salvation is that we're doing all of this to ourselves, and that owning that is being responsible and honest. Demonstrate miracles, that no matter what has happened, it can be undone, because there IS no real sin, and all of the effects of an ILLUSION of sin must be reversible.

The world is full of lies and liars. Be careful of listening to other people's "obstacles to peace". Beware of the way that other people make sin real and attack you by reinforcing their own belief that you should be afraid of "real bad things happening". These would not come from a sane mind or a mind that is aware of God, and aware of Reality. Discern the difference between illusions and reality. In truth nothing has gone wrong, no-one has suffered against their will, there is no death and there is no world.

Time to wake up!

MY SICKNESS IS MY RESPONSIBILITY

OTHER PEOPLE'S SICKNESS IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

YOU CAN’T WAKE PEOPLE UP FOR THEM

Jesus has the power to undo all sickness in a brother right now, BUT WILL NOT if they do not want it. Love cannot enter where it is not welcome!

I am responsible for everything I experience. Other people are responsible for everything they experience. This is directly supportive of the secret to salvation, that "we are doing this to ourselves".

All sickness we are experiencing is something we are doing TO OURSELF.

Right now, God is 100% awake, and because of this, it IS IMPOSSIBLE that there be sickness in any mind anywhere. In reality anyway. However, Sons of God have the illusory "ability" to DENY GOD. When they do so, they put denial in place, which is a block to life, which implements sickness. This is a FREE WILL CHOICE.

Love does not force anyone to be healed of this against their will. Jesus will simply WAIT for us until we are ready to accept the truth.

This is also why we must have A LITTLE WILLINGNESS, because only when we are WILLING to receive the truth, can the Holy Spirit take the opportunity to heal us. And he WILL take any opportunity we give him, no matter how small. But if we do not give that willingness, we will stay in our illusions of sickness for as long as we choose to against His will.

If we are not willing with God, doing God's will, we are willing against God. That's the entire point of the separation, the idea of sin being that we willed against God (yes, its fiction). If we BELIEVE it, individually, we will enter into a dream of suffering and death. And sickness will feature heavily in that dream because it is what we choose. It won't be real sickness at all, but we'll believe it is, using it as a device for keeping God's love at bay. Sickness is a DEFENSE against the truth. A block to awareness.

To understand this correctly REQUIRES that you believe that there are multiple sons of God, each with their own individual free will. Because if you don't, it will not make sense. To be able to have "your own choice" as to whether you are WILLING to receive healing, your own choice as to whether to ALLOW LOVE IN, is necessary in order to have a "separate will" which acts against God's will. There are many separate wills.

This is also required in order to understand how Jesus could wake up completely and yet that the rest of us are dragging our feet in snoozeville. We do not have the free will to set the curriculum ("learning to love"), but we DO have the free will to DELAY it or to choose WHEN to take it. That means we can choose NOT to accept God's will or God's healing. We can deliberately KEEP sickness if we want to, against God's will, and against Jesus's will. And it is true that there is NOTHING they will or can do about this, except gently lead us to see the error of our ways over time.

Jesus tells us that our will is AS POWERFUL as His, and that this is why he cannot forcibly take away our fears or sicknesses against our will. If we want them or hold onto them, he cannot take them. We have to be WILLING TO LET GO. Just because we are using our powerful will to make an illusion of being weak and little and powerless, doesn't mean our will is diminished at all. Mind retains its creative power at all times. Jesus CANNOT and WILL NOT go against this.

This means that even though AWARENESS OF LOVE can be complete in one brother (e.g. Jesus), it can be highly absent in another, at the same time. "Miracles are gifts given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." This is because IT IS POSSIBLE in illusions for some individuals to be MORE AWAKE THAN OTHERS. That means, it is NOT TRUE, that one person's healed perception automatically heals everyone. It does not. It OFFERS healing to everyone, but other people CAN REFUSE IT. And they CAN retain forms of sickness as long as they want "against your will."

Awakening to the awareness of love's presence cannot extend to the entire sonship UNTIL the sonship is FREELY WILLING to receive it, every single "individual son" has to choose it and be willing to accept it. IF they do not, the sonship remains incomplete, and there's nothing it can do about it other than to keep OFFERING love and waiting patiently for the rest of the sonship to wake up. Love is not forceful. It has INFINITE PATIENCE, which would not be NEEDED unless people weren’t so resistant.

It is true AT SOME LEVEL that your mind is ONE with the mind of others. That you share a mind. You share a mind with Jesus. However, awareness of that sharing can only be fully experienced when both of you are completely purified and healed. And then you will SHARE that state of love.

But until then, it is perfectly possible within illusions for you to REJECT that union, to deny reality, and to choose against God's will. Thus you will retain your own freely chosen sickness and problems, regardless of whether you are surrounded by infinite love and healing or not. God surrounds us RIGHT NOW with unlimited healing, and yet we STILL keep projecting images of sickness in order to REFUSE IT.

This is also why it was possible for Jesus to go around giving a GIFT OF HEALING to those who were suffering, sick, missing limbs, blind, even dead, unable to help themselves due to their own unawareness that they were doing this to themselves, and yet who had enough FAITH in HIS ability, enough trust, enough willingness, to ALLOW Him to heal them for them. You do NOT need to be fully awake in order to receive a miracle! And you CAN only receive it if you TRULY WANT IT.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it.."

Having enough FAITH i.e. trust and WILLINGNESS to receive HELP, from outside of yourself, from a brother who has more love than you do right now, who is more ABLE to help right now, is enough to RECEIVE help from beyond your own current abilities. All you need is ENOUGH trust to allow the Holy Spirit HIMSELF to perform the miracle FOR YOU, from beyond your awareness, showing up as demonstrations of TANGIBLE CHANGES (witnesses), which helps you to learn that HE REALLY IS THERE, and HE REALLY CAN HEAL. This develops trust.

Jesus went around performing miracles for those who temporarily had less, who temporarily were blind, who temporarily were sinful, who temporarily were UNAWARE of the whole truth. He did NOT do this by having a mind which was "pure yet contained sick people". His mind could NOT have been WHOLE, if it was "one with sick people", or had "sick parts" in it. The presence of sick parts in his mind would've rendered him UNCONSCIOUS, just as the presence of ego persona/shadow in our own mind right now renders us UNABLE to be aware of the WHOLE of our identity. Mis-identifying with ego BLINDS YOU. Jesus was WHOLE MINDED, and yet could still perceive the "unwholeness" others were experiencing, without their unwholeness affecting HIS.

Jesus had true perception. Jesus could SEE. He was aware of the truth. He was able to RECOGNIZE that sickness is a complete illusion, not real, and posing no problem whatsoever. This gave HIM this ability to extend the HOLY SPIRIT who is the mechanism of miracles, to perform a healing WHERE it was welcome. And where it was not welcome, HE COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIRACLES. He had to leave entire villages in suffering because their minds were too resistant to receive healing. His state of awakening did not FORCE anyone else to wake up!

Even if He saw those other people as one with Him, even if He knew them to be "himself" or "ourself", even if He was connected to the entire Power of God, there was NOTHING he could do to help those, at that time, who DID NOT WANT IT. This is because, YOU are responsible for YOUR sickness, and for your willingness. If you are unwilling, healing will not "happen to you". Sick people, with broken limbs and defective organs, will not be healed by your true perception, UNLESS they want it. And thinking that you are "healing yourself" by healing what is showing up "as their sickness" is NOT going to work if they do not want it, because IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. THEY MADE IT, NOT YOU.

You are responsible for choosing the atonement for yourself. You are responsible for being WILLING to REJOIN the sonship's oneness for yourself. You are responsible for every sickness you experience within yourself, NOT outside of you in others. You are responsible for your own belief in sin. You never attack anyone else, you never affect anyone else, you never do anything to anyone else. And the reverse is true. No-one ever affects you, no-one ever does anything against your will. You are not at the effect of the world. And no-one is at the effect of you. Your attack does not affect others whatsoever, and nor does your love, unless THEY CHOOSE WHAT THEY WILL EXPEIRNCE.

Love can be shared, WHEN it is welcome, and when it is welcome, the person is effectively giving it to themselves. It can be given to those who have a "lack" of it, BY those who have an abundance of it, BECAUSE people are in different states of perception simultaneously. This IS possible because people have an individual will and mind, even if at the highest level they are the One Son. Jesus’s resurrection DID NOT CURE EVERYONE because they did not want to be cured. YOU MUST CHOOSE IT.

Trying to bring about healing by assuming that other people are "you" and therefore their sickness is "your sickness" and that if you undo "that sickness" it will heal the other person, is a twisting of what happens. First of all, it's true that you and your brother are one, yet you are BROTHERS, with your own free will. Secondly, "their sickness" is THEIR CHOICE, not yours, and it is NOT PART OF YOUR MIND, and it is NOT YOUR SICKNESS OR SIN.

When you project YOUR sin, it DOES NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. Ideas leave not their source. IT stays inside of you. You become split minded and perceive this sin as a separate attacker, attacking some other split off part of yourself. You interact with it as though it is outside of this part of you, as though not yours, but it is ALWAYS IN YOU. It never ever even leaves you and goes over to someone else.

It does NOT put sickness into other people against their will! To suggest you can heal someone else’s sickness "because its really your own" is actually to suggest YOU CAN MAKE SOMEONE SICK AGAINST THEIR WILL AND TAKE IT AWAY AGAIN. This is FALSE! If someone else were choosing never to be sick, your attempted projection of sin could not put sickness into them. And if someone else was choosing never to be sick, YOU COULD STILL be believing that you are a sinner and STILL be trying to project your sin and STILL seeing it in the other person. Your projection has NOTHING to do with other people’s state of mind. Withdrawing your projected sin WILL NOT HEAL THEM, if they have chosen to be sick on their own and want to keep it. Go ahead and try to heal someone who does not want to be healed. It will fail!

Otherwise, if someone could be causing someone else to be sick against their will, which is an EGO BELIEF, someone's sickness would INFECT JESUS by the power of their will. This is an extension of the idea that we CAN sin and hurt God, which is impossible. Our sickness is OUR CHOICE against ourselves. Thirdly, just because you RECOGNIZE that their sickness is entirely an illusion, that does not disappear it FOR THEM if they continue to WILL TO KEEP IT. You cannot override their will. You getting healed WILL NOT wake everyone up. You will wake up FROM them, FROM the illusion, FROM the ego, INTO a state of awareness, but if other people choose to stay in the ego, THEY WILL.

The ACT of attempting to undo that sickness, by cancelling it or not believing in it or asserting it is not there or pushing it away or shining love onto it or whatever, that ACT of trying to FORCE IT TO GO is actually the EGO attempting to have power OVER something it made real. This is the attempt to "heal to destroy", to first make real then try to undo what you made real. That’s you fighting with your own sin. It won’t heal the person’s sickness or yours.

The Holy Spirit MUST BE INVOLVED in all miracles, because He is the mechanism of miracles. HE is the one who heals. HE is the one who is capable of raising the dead. He must be the one who performs the healing of the mind because healing must come from outside of separation. While He does not perceive sickness as REAL, He still nevertheless KNOWS that people are experiencing nightmares and that they NEED HEALING, in spite of the fact that HE is already in a state of TOTAL AWARENESS AND LOVE. He will not FORCE himself onto anyone, and just because HE is healed/healing it does not mean PEOPLE WANT TO RECEIVE HIM. This is why we have to CHOOSE to be willing to listen to his voice rather than the ego. It’s up to us.

It is difficult to accept that some people DO NOT WANT TO BE HAPPY. It is difficult to accept that some people WILL AGAINST GOD AND REFUSE TO ACCEPT LOVE. It is difficult to accept that PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE SICK and that they want to keep being sick to protect themselves. It is difficult to accept PEOPLE DON'T WANT A MIRACLE, and they DON’T WANT YOUR HEALING. And that's their right. And their freedom. And we are to respect that and be patient in waiting for them to BECOME willing. Love isn't forceful. Miracles don't happen to people against their will.

Believe me I've tried... I've tried many times to heal someone who is very sick, and who was not ready to heal, and it did not work. It was very upsetting to me that I could not heal it. It was a difficult lesson personally, but a necessary one, because until we can see how healing might FAIL (be blocked by the recipient), we may not come to LET GO of the belief in sickness for ourselves.

I eventually asked Jesus why this wasn't working. Despite many prayers and attempts at miracles. Even one time I did a miracle-working act where angels came to help and I felt it was very powerful, and Jesus said that "it was fully given". But.... just because it was fully given, DOES NOT mean it was fully received. I asked Him, why didn't it seem to work.

Why was the person still sick?! And I don’t mean... why was I still believing in sickness... the question was, why did that person still maintain an illusion of symptoms of sickness.

His answer simply... "they are not ready to receive it."

This was discouraging, because I used to believe, like many, that it SHOULD BE POSSIBLE to HEAL EVERONE if I just learn HOW. But it does not work that way. It was, however, encouraging to me to also be told that at some point THEY WILL become ready to receive it, which is heartwarming, but we still have to learn, just because WE are waking up to love and are willing to be miraculous, it does NOT mean other people will suddenly stop being sick or unloving. It is their lesson. It is their choice. We have to allow other people to be sick IF they want to. It's not God's will, but it's that person's will. God does not condone sickness, he offers to HEAL IT RIGHT NOW, but people refuse.

Trying to heal everyone, or to "perform miracles indiscriminately", is what Jesus tells us NOT to do. He knows WHO is willing and ready to receive them, and He will send the appropriate WILLING people to us. This won't be EVERYONE. It will only be those who are ready to receive. Some people are, some people aren't. We won’t get to be hero saviors or "ego healers" because other people are NOT playing along with our fantasy.

And just because Jesus COULD POTENTIALLY heal everyone in an instant, THEY DO NOT WANT IT. I asked Jesus time and again to heal someone and do you know what he said, "I cannot". And I asked why - why would someone so powerful and capable and miraculous NOT be able to heal it. "They don’t want it."

Sorry to say... this is why TIME is still ticking over with events happening and lessons being learned RATHER THAN God simply snapping his fingers and waking everyone up RIGHT NOW "against their will". God ALLOWED US to have our free will dream illusion of separation, knowing that at some point we would return to him unscathed. It is not happening because God wills it. If God had his way we never would’ve even DREAMED of separation. But WE had the free will to choose to pretend it’s possible, and it’s still our free will to keep doing that, EACH OF US, if we want to. Individually.

So please let's get off this perspective that if you heal YOUR perception, everyone else will suddenly be free of sickness. That if YOU don't perceive "sickness", you will not SEE anyone suffering with sickness. That if you gain true perception for yourself, you will be incapable of seeing anyone suffering. Or that their sickness is part of your own mind and therefore you need healing. You are only responsible for what YOU DO TO YOURSELF. And even though at a HIGHER LEVEL they are one with you, THEIR CHOICE is their own.

You will still see the form of people’s bodies being projected with sick characteristics, because that's the will of you brother! But you won't see it AS real sickness, you'll see THROUGH it, and recognize it is JUST AN ILLUSION. Just because you don’t believe sickness is REAL, doesn’t mean you will be incapable of seeing that OTHER PEOPLE still think it is real, or that they are still projecting bodies that are sick. Jesus was perfectly CAPABLE of SEEING people who were in need, people who were suffering, and people who were dying or dead, EVEN THOUGH His perception did not INTERPRET those things as reality. Your recognition of it being an illusion WILL NOT BE SHARED by them until they are WILLING AND READY.

Believe me I've tried many many times to heal indiscriminately and to alleviate suffering and it's not necessarily because I can't, but because the people involved were not willing to be healed. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO REFUSE LOVE. They already HAVE refused love. They already DID reject God's eternal life and totally healed condition. They already HAVE attempted to block miracles and to reject life. (Yes, its an illusion) Even GOD did not overthrow their free will to do this. (yes I know its an illusion, didn't happen)... but God RESPECTS free will and will ALLOW people to keep being sick IF THEY WANT TO. And so did Jesus.

This unfortunately is a hard lesson to learn, that some people simply do not want to be well, want to be sick, want to keep being sick, and there IS nothing you can do about that right now. All you can do is keep praying and offering and extending love that MAYBE they will accept and receive it BY their will, and therefore CHOOSE to be well BY THEIR OWN WILL, and therefore CONCUR with the will of God, and thus RECEIVE the love that heals them. Receiving is a choice. You can still attempt to perform miracles, but even if you give a bucketload of love, it STILL won’t produce effects if it is not welcome or goes against the person’s will.

Until you can receive the atonement or even a small piece of atonement on one particular issue you will not be willing to RECEIVE LOVE AT ALL. The first time that I did a really thorough forgiveness and took it all the way to the atonement principle, becoming WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE that I was innocent on a particular topic, I became willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD finally on that topic, and Jesus said to me "Now you will be able to perform miracles". Because I had be WILLING TO RECEIVE for myself. "You can only give the miracles you have received".!

We can offer healing. We cannot force it. We will not undo everyone’s suffering just by undoing our own. Even if we go to Heaven as Jesus did, knowing sickness is impossible, brothers will STILL be dreaming of sickness for as long as they want to. We can but OFFER love to them and pray for them and send miracles to them, but it’s up to them to let go of their resistance, to CLAIM the healing that has already been given.

God has ALREADY GIVEN ALL HEALING, He has already given eternal life, and yet we refuse it. It’s our choice

While you have an ego, you will actually defend it and protect it. You will be afraid of the truth because the truth shows that the ego is not real, and if you believe you are the ego, that means you are not real. That would of course be frightening.

It's not so much that our ego resists waking up. It can't wake up. It's just a machine, a structure made of illusions. But WE resist waking up because we're identified with the ego. We interpret the truth through it, ask it what its interpretation of the truth is, and take the truth's "attack" on it personally.

If for example you are identified with the ego and the truth tells you that the world is an illusion, or that your body is an illusion, you - identified with ego - will take that personally. You'll think that it means you are an illusion. Obviously that's confused but you also think it's real, so you'll see the truth as an attack on your very existence.

This is why it can be so difficult to accept the truth and wake up. Our ties to the ego make us believe the illusion is real and that we are the illusion. IF that were true, it's totally understandable that you wouldn't want to let go of your self.

This can be why, when you open up to some truth, letting the light in, you will on the one hand welcome courageously but on the other hand react to it like it's come to destroy you. You will have an ego rebound and feel upset and angry and scared, as though you're being threatened.

Often when I am in a flow or a upswing of inspiration, teaching, writing etc... I am opening up to new truths and expanding my awareness, but at the same time, it is easy to become overwhelmed. I start to have a lot of emotions come up for release. And if I push too hard, I will actually start to feel afraid and guilty. This is the parts of me still attached to the ego which do not understand or accept the truth, and perceive it as meaning all kinds of wrong conclusions. I've found particularly that when I talk about unconscious guilt it can produce a lot of fear because my ego interprets it to mean the guilt is real and therefore I should be afraid.

Exposing yourself to the truth can therefore produce all kinds of reactions, including sickness. Sickness defends against the truth, because you think the truth has come to attack the ego. So basically if you're closely attached to and identified with the ego, the truth will seem very threatening and you will likely produce a lot of sickness in an attempt to protect your sense of "self". It's just self-preservation. The only distortion is that your sense of identity is misplaced so you're taking things personally that do not really apply to who you really are. They apply to the ego, but not you.

Sometimes then I have to take a break from "too much input" and from pushing myself into so much truth at once. But I think over time my rebounds have in general become less intense now. I can talk about the truth for longer before my sense of reality feels the pressure and starts to retaliate. I guess that's good, it means that I am not as ego-identified as I used to be, or that I've woken up some.

Jesus also talks about how when we are at first taking responsibility for everything, we may take it to be a major attack, because to the ego-identified self it implies we must be very guilty. But over time, as we dis-identify with the false self, we don't take it as personally, or to mean that we are guilty as much. Over time it becomes easier to take responsibility knowing that it does not imply you are guilty, as you start to "separate" yourself from the ego's interpretation of it.

Starting to grasp how I have chosen everything I am experiencing, has been blowing my mind and expanding my awareness, but also scaring my ego identification some. Time to relax a bit.

When shitty stuff happens, you want it to stop.

But it's a lesson. It's trying to teach you something. Its motive of teaching is very much for you and supportive of you and helping you. It is not a motive of attack. At least, if you decide to use it this way.

What if this thing is trying to educate you, to give you training, so that you will learn something you didn't know, so that you can become able to help other people who you later encounter who are going through the same thing?

Perhaps then you will have transitioned from being a student to being able to teach what you have mastered.

Life will throw you first-hand challenges. Like, right in your face, when you don't want it. And your ego will claim it wants it to go away. Why does it want it to go away? Perhaps it doesn't want you to use it for forgiveness? Perhaps it doesn't want you to listen and learn and grow and wake up?

Would you welcome the lesson if you knew it was designed specifically, and solely, to help you, and through your willingness, end up helping others as well? What if it is for everyone's highest good? What if Holy Spirit wants you to be learning this and it isn't some kind of evil curriculum given you by the devil?

When your mind is whole, you are in your right mind, and not in two minds. Being in two minds is what happens when your mind is split in half. What happens in the state of split mindedness is quite interesting.

It's not merely that you split off a part of your mind. As you introduce a split, ie a belief in separation, you lose sight of wholeness completely. What then happens is you actually form TWO artificial identities, and neither one of them is the whole of you. It's almost like having two egos or personalities, and both are fake.

One of these identities, let's call it the persona, is retained in awareness as more of a conscious self. This self is the part of your mind that is steering away from darkness and sin and tries to be "good". It uses denial of "the rest of you" in order to hide its sense of sin and guilt in the darkness. It blocks it out of awareness through this denial, which is attack, which buries it and projects it.

The part of your mind which has also split - the other 50% of you - becomes a dumping ground for sin and guilt, hidden behind denial and repressed. You project this dark shit outward through disassociation, to try to disown it. It's part of further trying to disown part of your mind that your persona-self thinks is evil. Recognize the persona appears good but ultimately is judgmental and wants to destroy the sinful self.

So the "goody two shoes" part of your mind which is always trying to focus on a fake sense of idealism, positivity, looking good, saving face, being popular, seeming to be perfect etc, actually has a murderous attitude towards the other part of your mind. It basically sections off this other part of your mind, hates it, judges it, and shoves everything it does not "approve of" onto it. That includes sin and guilt, so now this "shadow self" is formed and relegated to death.

So in your mind, if your mind is split, you have this conscious persona self and this much less conscious shadow self. The shadow self is kept in the dark because, as Jesus says in the course, if you were to bring these two selves in close contact with each other they could not long remain separate.

The persona self fears the shadow self and tries to constantly judge and attack in on order to keep its distance, to maintain its own sense of autonomy. The persona sees itself as what the course calls "the face of innocence", aka the victim. And it views ithe shadow portion as a victimizer, or an enemy, which it wants nothing to do with and pushes away. This pushing away produces separation, disowning and projection onto others and the world, to try to "attach" the sin to something other than your own mind or sense of self. As the course says, separation means disassociation, or coming "between".

But we have to realize here that being split minded does not mean you are being the whole of your real self while you're in your persona self, or that your real self is under attack by the shadow self or its projections. Instead, recognize that the persona self is only a partial ego self, and it not whole, and it is not real, and it is not you. It's an artificial sense of identity formed from illusions of preference and avoidance, illusions of innocence and pretending to be perfect.

So as you consider how to forgive and take back projections and so on, you have to also realize that the "you" that is trying not to judge or project, is actually part of the judgement. It's part of the split mindedness. That persona self, wants as best it can to be completely free from the repressed shadow crap. So beware that as IT tries to take back projections, it is really not that interested in UNDOING the sense of sin, to begin with, because it needs it in order to maintain the split. And note that this persona self is "trying to wake up and be more spiritual" - the spiritual ego, and it can't - you have to wake up FROM it.

Without the split in the mind, without maintaining a sense of separation, both the shadow self and the persona self cannot exist. They rely on keeping the war going. The inner conflict has to be perpetuated, denial and blocks to awareness have to be maintained, otherwise it blows up the whole dynamic of you having a split minded relationship with another part of yourself.

For example in terms of victims and victimizers, usually the shadow crap is projected and seen as an external victimizer, while the innocent victim role is assigned to your persona self ie conscious self. But in order to "heal" this situation, it's not enough to just "take back the victimizing". It's not enough to simply own that you are the one attacking yourself from the outside in, or that you are vicariously using others to do this. The victimizer is only one HALF of the problem.

The victim role is also part of the split, and being a victim has to go as well. You can't maintain this ideal of "getting rid of attackers" while keeping the "innocent victim" intact. So what that's going to have to mean is, if you want to wake up, is that you're going to have to not only dis-identify from the victimizer, but also from being a victim. You have to recognize that your mind - the larger container of this drama - is actually playing both sides. Your mind is being both a victim and a victimizer of itself. And NEITHER of those roles is your real identity.

When you can bring both of these parts of your mind into awareness and see them together, AND then recognize that you are the ONE MIND who is pulling all the strings and making the victimizer victimize "you", plus making the victim "be a victim", you can no longer maintain the ILUSION that they are separate identities. When you own that you are both of them, you will own that you cannot be EITHER of them. It's been a lie, all along, that either of these two identities were you.

You were pretending they were DIFFERENT to each other, by means of splitting off some attributes to assign to one and some to another, to maek them seem to be opposites. But the opposition is entirely a deception and in truth, the two identities are not really opposite at all. They are both being run by one "larger" mind - your real self - who temporarily is the actor behind the scenes who has lost sight of itself while pretending to be having a multiple-personality disorder.

Because we so heavily identify with the conscious persona and not with unconscious hidden projected stuff, largely because we are not aware of it, you "as the conscious self" might think that you merely need to deal with the harmful attackers outside of you who are making your life miserable. But it's not just them. It's also you, in denial, with rose-tinted glasses, pretending to be special and perfect, who are also part of the murderous dynamic of sectioning off parts of yourself and relegating them to hell. So that sense of identity also has to be brought into question.

You are not a victim, or a victimizer. You are not the persona or the shadow. You being the persona is not you being the whole of yourself, even though this split off part of a sunbeam thinks it's the whole sun. You are bigger than both. Which means your sense of identity has to let go of these illusory selves and expand to a larger reality. As Jesus says in the course, as you awaken your sense of self expands. Because what you are really waking up from is being stuck inside little boxes and compartments, walled off from each other as if you have multiple selves that live in isolation.

Your enemy is yourself. The perpetrator is you. The victim is you. The fake innocence is just a "face" you put on to hide the pain and maintain the shadows. To take back your projection means only to reel in the projection of the shadow content, the sin and guilt, to try to bring it closer to its source. But it must also meet with your persona and cause the two of them to cancel each other out. You are larger than both aspects of the split mind, because you are the whole of mind. And only whole-mindedness, without the split condition, is a state of sanity.

The ego is always about taking sides, emphasizing differences, being special, having enemies, being offended, being at war with something. But what is this "opponent", except MORE EGO? It takes both sides of every conflict, it does not care who wins or loses. It does not care who is the victim and who is the victimizer. It is both, in a state of self attack. It doesn't even care if you live or die because it knows that someone will die, when you play its games.

So you have to realize that your "conscious ego self" is really only PART OF the problem and your sense of having a spiritualized ego is just as much part of the problem as the projected sin. Being holier than thou goes hand in hand with becoming highly judgmental and condemning other parts of yourself as unworthy and defective. If you feel unworthy it's because your conscious self believes it is superior. Inferiority and superiority go hand in hand.

The conscious ego self cannot wake up. Much of its efforts are to make its life better by continuing to repressed, reject, accuse, condemn, project, disown and kill off anything resembling "unacceptable and unlovable". And yet all the while, judging you are unlovable from the outside so that it is never satisfied with trying to make you more perfect through self mutilation. The ego is in two minds. It is not in its right mind. And it is not your mind. There is more to you than any of these roles or fantasies or illusions of being one thing and not another. You are everything.

Each time I am upset, it's because I am agreeing that something is true which isn't. Even if my upset seems to express the opinion that I do NOT agree, or that the thing is 'wrong', I am still upset because I see wrongness. Seeing wrongness makes me upset. Seeing rightness/real truth makes me happy.

It's quite possible that all you need to do to wake up is to get completely straight/correct about what is true and what is false. If you're upset, it's because you believe in something false and think it's the truth, which means you believe that some aspect of the truth is not true. You just need to be straightened out and clarified on what's really true here. This is the only process needed.

Once you are completely clear about what the truth is and what is false, it will be totally obvious that the ego is 100% false and unbelievable. But when you're not clear about what the truth is, you will experience upset and be offended by the very falsety that you believe is attacking you. And it's only attacking you because you believe in it.

Kind silly, and highly contradictory, how we WANT what we DON'T WANT.

1. We had the idea we could be separate from God.

2. We invested the idea with belief, even though it was impossible. We believed in a total opposite to God.

3. This mad idea was projected outward and formed the physical universe including the Earth as a picture of crucifixion, sin and death - ie heaven's opposite.

4. Since this was an idea of the opposite of meaning, it was a meaningless idea which projected a meaningless world.

5. Because the world has no meaning, it acts like an empty shell or screen onto which meaning can be projected.

6. You then project a second time, putting your ideas of either ego or God onto the meaningless world, to give it all the meaning it has.

7. False ideas about yourself become false perception, which highlight the temptations and lies of the meaningless world and makes it seem real.

8. True ideas about yourself become true perception, which overlook the forms and separations of the meaningless world and look beyond the body to the light.

9. When you project only love onto the meaningless world, you see the clear reflection of heaven/God/love in the mirror of the world. The world is the mirror because it has no truth of its own, and the reflection seen in it is not the mirror itself.

10. When recognized as a meaningless world, the mirror is regarded as "the forgiven world" and the reflection IN the mirror which points beyond the mirror is "the real world." The physical universe now disappears from sight and you wake up in heaven.

I hear the term "I don't know what anything means" thrown around quite a bit. It leads to this idea that we're meant to 'not know anything' in order to wake up.

I was just reading in the Text last night, Jesus was talking about power. He said knowledge is power, and here he is talking about real knowledge - knowing, direct experience of truth/God, which occurs in Spirit. He spoke of how we still have the power of God but we've denied it and covered it up with all of the things we've taught ourselves (of the ego).

And in that context alone, He goes on to explain that we need to admit that the things we have taught ourselves are not really knowledge - they are things of the ego, and in that sense what we think we know is not really knowing... and so what we think we know, we don't actually KNOW, we just justify and rationalize that it's truth.

We need to let go of THAT.... but, we're only letting go of that ego education so that we can reveal to ourselves the power of God/true knowledge, which we DO know and can know. We need to get back in touch with the power of God (knowledge), and we need to become aware of what we really DO know. It's still in us, just hidden by false knowledge.

The things I think I know, I do not really know, and are not really knowledge. I need to let those go and not depend on them. Then I can become aware again of the presence of real knowledge with God (awareness of love's presence).

Jesus says: "I am the teacher of the ego."

He also says "The ego is the idea of selfishness."

Now, consider this. Your mind is either in a state of sanity or a state of mental illness. When mentally ill, YOUR MIND is "being selfish". It believes in specialness. But when that SAME mind chooses not to be selfish, that mind returns to sanity. The selfishness itself is gone, and the mind remains.

So if the ego is the idea of selfishness, the ego is also the idea of or a label for "the illness" that seems to be occurring when YOU are mentally ill. It is perhaps far more accurate, then, to consider "the ego" to be more of an ATTITUDE, than a THING.

We should not think of the ego even as "the ego", because there is great temptation to label it as a "something" that "is not me" and to then seek to identify with Spirit in an effort to "dis-identify" from "the ego". There is some positive benefit to that "positive separation", but this implies the ego is a distinct something that exists separately from you. This results from putting the ego in a box and not realizing it is coming FROM your mind, and part of your mind is being thrown out in that same box.

The ego is not "separate from you", it has to live within your mind because ideas leave not their source. "The ego" is your bad attitude. It is better to think of it as "your egotism" than "an ego". Or similarly as Jesus says, it is YOU BEING SELFISH. And being not-selfish does not erase your self, nor does it require you to "separate from" the mind that was being selfish. The mind itself is not the problem, its attitude is the problem, and there is temptation to throw out the mind right along with the egotism.

Someone or something needs to learn. Someone or something is taking the course, learning the lessons, pursuing a curriculum. Who or what is learning? In a sense, the self - you, your mind, is the one learning. And this mind is learning "not to be egotistical". So its egotism is coming under scrutiny and it's having to learn to adopt a more loving attitude.

When the mind is believing things which are false, it is believing "in the ego", but moreso, is "believing in something false". This doesn't mean there is now an entirely separate ego "entity" that has come into existence. Or even really what we can label as a "false self".

Your self never becomes false, it is permanently in the sight of God, holy forever. What becomes false is your relationship with reality through the mind and YOUR attempt to block it. And that's more a matter of YOUR attitude and YOUR attempt to change reality into something else. It's still entirely within the realm of your will and your power of decision, as to whether and when you take the curriculum and learn your lessons.

It is YOU that is being educated, and while you are mistaken, you are "being an ego". ie you are ATTEMPTING to be ego. In pure purest most logical condition, "the ego" is really another word for "non existence". It's the logical opposite of existence, reality, truth, life and God. But such an idea literally does no exist, it is nothingness. You cannot go there, you cannot be it. So even in our egotism we HAVE NOT become "a non-existent self", or purely real death. It's literally impossible.

Our egotism is merely the ATTEMPT to, and failure to be, separate. It's our desire and belief and wishful thinking to be something we are not, but in such a way that can never succeed. You can't destroy yourself, and the only way to be purely ego would be to not exist. We attempt to get as close to that as possible, in death, but even that doesn't do it. We can't get outside the bubble of God's all encompassing love.

So what is an ego? It's not really anything. There are just some people who are confused. There are just some people whose minds have taught themselves things which aren't true, and whose minds need correction. And so those minds, although being egotistical and selfish, and seeming to therefore exhibit signs of "the ego", are really just minds in a state of denial and being mistaken. And mistaken minds can be corrected and healed.

So that means our egotism can be healed. Our mistakenness can be forgiven. We can be taught. Our "egoic selves", really a mind having an egocentric attitude, can be adjusted so that the egocentricity is "undone", the distortions of the mind untangled, and the mind restored to a state of accord and wholeness. This essentially means in a way that "our egotism can be converted to holiness".

"Ego", more as a label for "being egotistical", can be undone. And "our ego" is kind of "transformed" along the way BACK to the state of a holy mind that it was in previously. It can become untwisted and untangled. Corrected and healed. Not because the illness is changed into reality, not because the egotism ITSELF is maintained and becomes holy, but because the egotism or illness is just a label for the temporary states we APPEAR to get into when we're mistaken.

If I have mental illness, the illness could be called "ego". But when my mind is healed of the illness, it's not that "the illness" is still an illness but in a healed configuration. The illness is gone, the illusion of egoic stuff is gone, and the mind that "had" the illness is restored to sanity. As "the ego evolves" out of sin into innocence, the ego is simultaneously undone and transcended. IT doesn't become holy as such, we let it go. But "the ego" was always OUR mind's attitude, and our mind is what becomes transformed.

We could try to put all of the ego stuff into a box and label it "the ego" and then try to recognize that our self is really our soul and not the ego. This is sort of true. But this can be a form of bypass because the only thing maintaining the ego is the mind. There is some mind MIXED IN with the egotism.

The mind is "having" an ego, just as it has mental illness but is NOT the mental illness. Mind is not the ego but HAS egotism. When "separating" ourselves off from "the ego", we could risk trying to separate ourselves off from the mind that HAS the ego, causing a further split in the mind. And so this can be another form of disassociation, and another way that "the ego" tries to remove the ego.

This is also why we are responsible for all our choices, all our suffering, and all our mistakes. They are not real sins, but it IS us that is mistaken, not "the ego". Our mistakenness IS just another word for "the ego". Our false beliefs may seem to gather together to form "a sense of separate self" but this is of course an illusion. It can seem like you are letting go of "that self", but the mind that was producing "that self" is not let go. It is healed.

The world plays into this in the same way. The world is a symptom of the presence of mental illness in the mind. "The world is false perception". When the mind is healed, it no longer produces the world of separation. While producing the world, the mind thinks the world exists and it seems to be "a thing", with a label.

But the "healing of the world" or "saving the world" really means saving the mind that was producing the world, from its own selfish egocentricity, so that its dream is a happier dream. The world then appears to transform from hell to a reflection of heaven. Or as Jesus says, it is "translated". And the holy spirit is the "great reinterpreter" of it. A mind that is corrected and healed does not make hell and does not make ego errors, and in this view there "is no ego" because the egotism is gone.

So is Jesus teaching the ego? In a sense yes. He is teaching the mind that is trying to be an ego, that it is not really an ego but a holy mind. The ego, the mistakes, are not taught. They are corrected. Because true learning is correction and undoing, just as to atone is to undo. To truly atone or fix the ego problem, the ego must be undone, meaning the egotism must end, meaning the mind is freed from believing it is "an ego." Thus is "the ego" undone and the condition of the mind changed back to ego-free holiness.

Can the ego wake up? No, because it can't maintain what makes it ego at the same time as experiencing awakening. But the mind can wake up FROM the ego, or rather, FROM attempting to be egocentric. As "your egotism" or "the part of mind trying to be separate" learns not to be separate, the mind that was being ego DOES wake up, but it does not take the egotism with it. It wakes up BECAUSE "the ego" is left behind, ie by recognizing there is no ego within it. We do not "separate from" the ego. We erase it from ourselves so that there is nothing to separate from.

Ultimately there is no ego, and the Holy Spirit knows this. His is the mind that reminds us of our true condition of holiness. The recognition that we are sane and whole and true. And in that holiness there is no selfishness, specialness, or egoic attitude. Only an attitude of love and forgiveness. And a loving forgiving mind is ego-free.

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

For many, ACIM is about self help and doing the lessons and trying to get back to a simplified idea of God/reality. But the scenario of what is happening in this world, why we're here, and what we're returning to, is part of a big picture "story" that I don't really see talked about a whole lot. At least not in fully encompassing terms.

Basically we existed as eternal beings in heaven, God's sons, and he had also created the angels etc... and everything was groovy, and then this separation thing happened, there was "war in heaven", a split, and the descent into "hell" through the making of hierarchies of illusions, levels, dimensions, worlds etc... and we ended up with this physical universe.

And now God has created the Holy Spirit and is sending his angels to guide and support and educate us, to help us to come back home to our heavenly home. Which means... drumroll.. this entire world is like a DEVICE which heaven is using as a mechanism for bringing home all of the lost souls who attempted to war against God. And the whole purpose of this world is for the lessons and learning - the curriculum, which has been set up by God, by which we might learn the truth and return willingly to cooperation with God's will, freely.

When people for example have near-death experiences they go and encounter these situations, where they are having life reviews and meeting with God and talking to spiritual beings and all this stuff, and then being sent back and "its not your time" and so on... script to be fulfilled, lessons to learn etc.... and so you get this overall picture that this world is not just some random world that we're trying to wake up from, and we're not just trying to wake up to an nice sanitary idea of "reality" or "oneness" or "non-duality".

There's way more to this story. And there's an entire foundation for "the fall of man" and how we got into this mess, and realizing that this world IS the mess we made of reality, and how we now need to clean up the mess and go home. And that means that despite all the theories that various people have, despite all the religious beliefs, despite all the concepts of why we are here, the scientific models, bla bla bla, agnostics, atheists, whatever, basically underneath everything it's TRUE that we all descended from heaven, fell in the "tiny mad idea" which really was a huge monstrous idea, are now having go through a special curriculum for salvation, and eventually will be ready to return to God's Kingdom.

So all this sort of Christian-religious stuff about heaven, making hell, believing in sin, suffering, death, illusions, trying to be separate from God, authority problem trying to oppose his will, angels helping us, there being scripts and curriculums, life lessons that are orchestrated before birth, all this stuff, it's all actually quite correct. It's all part of this huge PLAN, the atonement plan. And all because of what went on in heaven, the fall of man, the descent into hell, and the subsequent need for the atonement to correct us and restore us to awareness of love's presence.

But I think we get really out of touch with this a lot in the course community, drifting off into these intellectual models of what the course is about, vague ideas of oneness/reality, somewhat clinical God-less models, and a whole bunch of skepticism about anything not "explicitly" mentioned in the course text. We get rather narrow and start to see things through a kind of "ACIM filter", through which we filter OUT stuff that doesn't seem like it's mentioned in course lingo etc. But if you look all this stuff is in there. It lines up quite significantly with what the bible says albeit that a lot of the bible stuff is somewhat distorted. But it has the basics down.

We are part of a giant classroom, in which the atonement plan/curriculum is playing out. And this is precisely the same atonement plan that is to do with our incarnations, our themes and scripts for our lives, our lessons that we agree to, the mighty companions and angels that help us, spirit guides, the astral plane and other dimensions, and the fact that no matter what anyone in the world believes they are ALL part of this same scenario. We're all in the boat of "wanted to be separate from God" and "made worlds to live in apart form God" and are all in various ways trying to find our way back because that's what God wants.

For some it's more accepted than others. For others they don't even think any of this is true, and fixate on various other explanations for why we exist. For many ACIM is just some nice little tiny behind-closed-doors self-study "course" with very little to do with this huge big story of how we got here.

But we can't change the facts. We're living the curriculum that God established to correct the separation. This world isn't just some scientific experiment. It's not some virtual reality. It's not just a random chaotic environment. It's a school - repurposed from the hell we made, designed to lead *everyone* of *every kind* of civilization back towards the reality of heaven, our true home. There's no way to avoid this fact. We can deny it and believe other things but this is the underlying "framework" that encapsulates this whole world.

God is using this world as a device to bring us back to God. The whole thing. It's one giant school for learning, to lead us back to awareness of love - back to God, back to the Kingdom that we fell from - where we are safe in God, dreaming of exile. This world is the exile. Going home to God is the goal for everyone, regardless of how much they accept it or are aware of it. This is why Jesus calls it "the universal curriculum". Everyone is part of the plan. There are no exceptions. Even people not "doing ACIM". Even the atheists and scientists. Everyone is part of this. "The great awakening".

Everything in the Course makes so much more sense to me now that I see there are MANY INDIVIDUALS in God's creation.

1) Recognizing that you and your BROTHER each have your own mind and your own free will

2) Recognizing that bodies were made to ISOLATE you from your brother

3) Recognizing that healing and miracles take place when you JOIN with your brother

4) Recognizing that what you thought applied only to yourself applies to BOTH of you (golden rule)

5) Recognizing that atonement is chosen be EACH brother individually and you therefore become PART OF the atonement plan to help OTHER brothers

6) Recognizing that miracles are a maximal service you can render A BROTHER, because there are others

7) Recognizing that there is not just one dreamer of the dream and therefore you can wake up while others sleep.

8) Recognizing that you have a self - a soul, which DOES exist, and you DO have a self, and your self IS NOT the ego.

9) Recognizing Holy Relationships - you have to HAVE a brother to have a relationship WITH.

10) Recognizing that YOU have a choice for which you are 100% responsible and to whom nothing happens without your choosing.

So many of the course's teachings RELY on the recognition or multiple brothers. It's got NOTHING to do with the illusion of multiplicity of egos or the separation of bodies. Every teaching becomes FAR clearer and makes much more sense when it very naturally acknowledges that OTHER PEOPLE have their own soul, mind, will, freedom, choice, path, awakening, atonement, lessons, etc.

How we ever could have taken on board the idea of us all being just one big blob with multiple personality disorder is quite bizarre really, and we did it in the name of thinking this was more spiritual.

Recognize this. The body was made to have permanently false perception. To be permanently unforgiving. It is absolutely incapable of ever forgiving anything. All it can do is sense what it detects seemingly in the world, and report it back as REAL. It cannot question it. It cannot rise above the battlefield. It will NEVER see reality. It cannot get even the slightest glimpse of real light or real truth It is permanently fixated on the physical form of objects, utterly blinded by them and incapable of seeing past them. It takes the form of objects as utter reality and meaning. It is completely convinced by the hierarchy of illusions, orders of difficulty, levels of problems and all manner of suffering. And to the body, every difference or change is real.

Every sickness appears utterly real to its senses. Every death is seen as undeniable proof of termination. It is tempted by literally everything it looks up or senses. It has never made even the slightest progress towards forgiveness, and it never will. It cannot step out of hell, it cannot wake up, it cannot even begin to suspect there is another reality, and it will not ever look upon God. What was made in vegas stays in vegas, and the body is MADE OF unreality.

This is just what the body is. It is a limited piece of biological machinery designed to deceive. It has one specific function of turning illusions into reality. It is an embodiment of the belief that separation is possible, and implements that belief. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh".

It is a reality inverter. It absolutely shuts out all trace of reality and light and truth and God, and only allows illusions and unreality and falsehoods to pass through its filters. And as false things pass through its filters, it regards them as the whole truth. What is false is seen as true, what is unreal is seen as real, and what is evil is seen as holy. This is because it was in an attempt to swap all the properties of what is true with what is false.

The body is a polarizer. It takes what is not true and makes it seem true. It takes what is true and makes it seem false. It denies God's Kingdom of heaven and opens itself up to hell. It makes itself "invulnerable" to eternal life and makes itself vulnerable to death. It is the very idea of exposure to death and to hell, to murder and sin, to suffering and fear. It is the inside-out expression of the desire to be unnatural and uncreated.

The body is always going to be like this. You can change the purpose that you use it FOR, but you cannot change its nature. You cannot make the body see reality, or wake up, or know what's true, or discern facts from fiction. The body is limited. It was made TO limit and to remain limited forever. It is the "lens" through which hell is looked upon and regarded as real, and not for a single second will any body EVER gain access to the light of reality.

The body ALWAYS sees with UNFORGIVENESS. It is absolutely locked into false perception. It constantly makes all unreal things real to itself. It cannot forgive, overlook, see past, recognize, correctly judge, discern, or recognize anything. It is blind to reality, and sees only unrealities.

And because the body itself is made of that same unreality, an unreality seeing an unreality registers as "truth". The body thinks an unreal world is true because unreality is the body's truth. Two negatives seem to make a positive. It does not see the world as opposite to its own nature, and so regards it with agreement. Even though both the body and the world are false. And this makes it utterly biased toward always regarding unreality as real.

The body will not ever show you God. The body will not allow you to be with God. The body will not bridge the gap to God. The body cannot open your mind. The body will never ever see the light of truth, or the real world, or heaven. The body cannot have visions of God or Christ. The body will never see Christ in your brothers. It is NOT CAPABLE. And it will always be incapable. And it cannot love.

The body is only what it is. It was made to confine and to limit and to imprison. You cannot use a prison to experience freedom from prisons. You cannot use handcuffs to know what it's like to be unlimited. You will not EVER turn the body into an awakened being, or get it to look upon reality, or make it able to forgive anything whatsoever. It cannot even BEGIN to forgive because it is absolutely PERMANENTLY HARDWIRED into hell.

There must be a better way, yes? There must be ANOTHER WAY TO SEE. There must be some way that your MIND can choose away from the body and experience without it. A way to escape from hell. There has to be freedom FROM the body. "Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have." If you want your mind to be free, it has to be free FROM the body. The body itself cannot be free because the body IS imprisonment. And there's no point polishing a turd.

We have to then learn to recognize the body for what it is and what it is not. The body is a JUDGER and a condemner. It is an accuser. It cannot stop judging sin to be real. It cannot stop testifying to the proof of sin. The body is utterly selfish. The body is so locked into unreality that the ego actually sees the body as its ally, something it is in "agreement with", because both the body and the ego identify hell as reality. That's why the body became the ego's "chosen home."

As Jesus says, we have to leave the desert. The body has to be transcended and the mind has to open up to ANOTHER WORLD, another vista, through another sight, which does not depend on the body at all. It has to get out of the box and step out of limitation. And if you are going to forgive at all, it CANNOT be that the body forgives. Your mind has to overlook what the body shows it and recognize it as false. Only if all of hell is false can heaven be true.

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

Picture yourself in the spiritual realm (non physical world) standing at a console where you are planning your next lifetime.

You look at possible life events in a brochure which precicely and specifically tells you exactly what will happen and what the results of this will be.

You find one you don't like the look of, some tragedy or a sickness or a guilt trip, and you almost want to skip past it. But then you take a look at the list of benefits that arise from the experience.

These include an increased ability to love yourself, an enhanced sense of compassion for others, a greater awareness of who you really are, the opportunity to help others to learn how to care more, and perhaps an increased sense of joy once you finally learn to let go of the experience.

You weigh up your options. You say, well, the experience sounds like it SUCKS, but the payoff is huge. So then you say, well, what's there to lose, since I'm immortal spirit and can't really be hurt.

From that vantage point, you decide that the benefits are worth the hassle, so you say yep, sign me up. I'll go on that trip.

Then you incarnate, and so it unfolds. And you forget you chose it. And then it happens and you think it sucks, which it does. But then you start to learn the benefits of the experience and move past it, and you gain great spiritual rewards from it.

Later, looking back, you acknowledge yes, I got exactly what I wanted, I came away with a gift and I am much richer for it. I'm more aware now and I am closer to God. I am grateful.

Then you pick up the brochure again and go on another trip, and another, and another, until you pretty much run out of benefits that you can gain from it. You pick your last trip, knowing that it's the final one and that you just need to clean up some loose ends.

Off you go. It all happens. You wake up and receive the gift of reunion with God. And it's all been worth it.

Here's another angle on the problem of regarding ACIM as "non-duality."

In ACIM we're told that God is a creator, and has created sons. You are one of those sons, which means you are a child of God. It means God is your parent. God is the CAUSE of you, and you are an EFFECT. In the separation from God, or "fall of man", there was a rebellion against God being your parent. The sons of God rejected God's causation of them and wanted to reinvent/create themselves.

They developed a problem with God's authority. The wanted to have power over God and to be his equal, instead of being his child. They did not want to be secondary creations, they wanted to be primary. They did not want to be an effect of him, they wanted to be "free from his influence".

This then led to the making of a world of bodies and egos where we would try to reinvent ourselves and deifne what we are, without God. But this means that in order to wake up to reality, to become "one with God", to experience oneness and truth, you have to actually return to a role and function where you are SECOND to God.

It is not about returning to being first, or primary, or God's equal, or having the same function as God. It is not about you going to the top of the mountain and having nothing above you.

In order to get out of hell you have to undo your problem with authority. You can only have a problem with authority if in truth you actually are BELOW God and God is GREATER than you, so that there might be grounds for wanting to overthrow his authority over you.

"recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER."

If you subscribe to a non-duality idea of reality, where you claim to return to oneness, where you claim to be God, where you see yourself as not a fully-created separate being or a "child of God", and where you do not acknowledge God as your father, you are missing a HUGE portion of ACIM's teaching.

ACIM doesn't teach that you are going to just become the oneness and be God and rule reality. It says that you need to accept God as your source, receive your inheritance from him, that you are only what HE has created you to be, that your only function is to EXTEND him, and that you will forever be an EFFECT of him.

This idea of being an effect of God, second to God, is absolutely core in ACIM's metaphysics. There MUST BE a created second being, a child of God, a son of God, in order for there to have ever been a separation ie authority problem in the first place. There could be no rebellion without you being LESS than God, in a sense.

So non-duality doesn't usually accomodate this. Nor does traditional ideas of "its all oneness". It doesn't usually acknowledge that God has created anything, that he has children, that YOU have a parent, or that there is something BIGGER AND GREATER THAN YOU.

But ACIM is telling you that the only way for you to find salvation and return to reality is to accept that God is your father, NOT your equal. You cannot regain your inheritance without accepting that you inherited it FROM God BECAUSE he is your parent. And you cannot resume your role and function in reality as co-creator without acknowledging that God is the FIRST CAUSE and you are SECOND. You are a CO-CREATOR not the PRIMARY creator. God came first.

"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him."

Since for example in Adviata non-duality usually means "there is no second", it is TOTALLY incompatible with ACIM's teaching. It does not acknowledge God having a child, or of you BEING a child. OR that your ultimate role and maximal experience of reality is going to entail you being what SOMEONE ELSE wants you to be. That you are AS GOD created you to be, not what "you chose".

It thus requires humility to accept that God is greater than you and that in ultimate reality you are going to return to a position in which you are NOT FIRST, you are not the prime creator, you are not the all-encompassing source of reality, and you DO NOT MAKE THE RULES.

Non-duality rarely suggests any compatibility with this idea of being a CHILD of God, or of there being any grounds for an authority problem, or a necessity for its undoing. Usually it points to the dissolution of your self, the erasing of God's CHILD, and some kind of lofty return to you being "only God". As if you are the oneness and you are the ultimate. YOU ARE NOT!!!!

God is first, you are second. That is what acceptance of the atonement means. God is your father and he is greater than you, and you're going to have to "suck it up" and accept it instead of wanting to be the central figure and star of the show. You are a secondary being. Not less than God but also not greater, and not equal. You are not equal to ultimate reality. You are a part within it.

To recognize this is to recognize that ACIM cannot be non-duality because it has to accommodate SONS OF GOD in order to accommodate the authority problem AND its proper undoing. You cannot wake up to reality without accepting that you are AN EFFECT of a creator other than yourself, that you did not create yourself, that you are not "God" in this sense, and that your function is to PASS ON what you have RECEIVED from him.

"The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function."

What you are is given by God and decided by God. You will have to be willing to accept there is a creator GREATER THAN YOU if you want to experience the truth. As such non-duality is generally speaking a problem with the authority of God, because it positions you AS God or AS his equal, and this is inappropriate. It suggests even in some cases that God is dreaming and making death. To say "I am God" is the arrogance of the ego.

Unless you can accept that reality contains you as a second-level creation, you are not listening to what A Course in Miracles is saying. And you are then missing out on the beautiful relaltionship which comes from the recognition that you HAVE A REAL PARENT. Someone who is in fact literally protecting you always, is maintaining you forever, and is making sure that your innocence is permanently guaranteed FOR you. This is not all about "me me me" self-centered non-dualtiy "I will be God" garbage.

"There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach."

You may not realize what this implies. But consider this.

It means that this entire world, planet Earth, its surrounding environment, the sun, all the stars and galaxies, which you made, you are dreaming of. And that means none of them really exist.

It means the entire history of the human civilization is fiction. It means there is no planet. It means your body is an illusion. It means that everything you think exists in the world is absolutely and literally nothingness.

Essentially, there is not really a dream. And everything that seems to be in the dream is not really anything at all. There is NOTHING HAPPENING. There is NOTHING HERE.

This is the proper use of denial. The recognition that what is false is false, what is true is true. What is illusion is not real. And death itself is something you made up.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

The trees are not really there. The cars are not really there. The houses are not really there. The planet is not really there. It's all a huge giant dream. Dreams do not carry over when you wake up from them, because they depend entirely on you being unconscious. Dreams require you to be asleep, ie in denial of reality, so that you can imagine something UNLIKE reality. Whatever you make up in the dream simply stops being MADE when you wake up from dreaming. It switches off.

This is why this is such a huge, immensely radical and totally amazing lesson to learn. It means you cannot be fully awake while maintaining a dream body. "The body is a dream". "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." This is literally factually true. The body IS NOTHING. There is no real body. There is no world here.

That's how much of an illusion this world is. And this is why it's such a challenge to come to really believe and recognize this truth, as the culmination of the entire curriculum. It means you have to learn not to be deceived by ANYTHING you see or sense. It means you have to realize all your body senses were made to NOT KNOW reality. It means you have to realize everything you THINK exists, is happening, or has ever happened in this world, IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Nothing but an illusion. Nothing but a dream. A fantasy fairytale imagined universe in which NOTHING REALLY HAPPENS.

No-one is ever really sick. There is no real death. You made it up. You are an immortal spirit being who God has established as permanently real and perfect forever, who cannot change nor can you change what you are. You are temporarily in denial, wanting to believe that this isn't true, and in your denial you are trying to block awareness of the truth by dreaming of a UNIVERSE in which all manner of other stuff seems true and real. And none of it is.

Literally, ONLY the Kingdom of God is real. This world you made is NOT real, whatsoever. ONLY God's world is real. The world you made is total fiction, illusion, unreality, nothing. Literally NOTHING. Made of nothingness.

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

That means you're here sitting there reading this crap thinking this is all real and happening, that even this message is happening, and it is not really happening.

"The world you made is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as himself."

Nothing in this world is eternal. Nothing. It is all temporary, fleeting, transitioning, changing, illusory. That's WHY it's an illusion. Miracles demonstrate that illusions ARE illusions because they CAN be changed. Anything that changes is not real. Nothing real can be threatened or changed. Anything that ever seemed to change or be affected or hurt was not real. Nothing real can be attacked ever. You are reality. You are the Son of God. You are immortal. You cannot be hurt. Pretending that you can is futile nonsense.

You cannot even die. You can confuse yourself with things that do. You can pretend to go through it. But it has NO EFFECT on who you really are. It does not even touch your spirit at all. It is totally immaterial, inconsequential. You made up death in your denial of the fact that you are immortal and have eternal life. You are PRETENDING you can suffer.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

You cannot be hurt. But you keep trying to prove it. You cannot die, but you keep trying to prove it. You cannot be attacked in any way, but you keep believing you can and have. This is confusion. You are mistaken. All beliefs in space and time are a mistake. There is no world here. Only God's Kingdom exists. Only the HOLY TRINITY is real.

There is no world. Sums up the entire truth about this realm. All of it is NOTHING. It's not even really here. It's all fiction. Do not believe it. The world is a lie. This isn't being negative about the world. It's factual. The world is not negative or positive. It is NOTHING. The body is not negative or positive. IT IS NOTHING.

"You cannot endow the body with attributes of Christ. Holiness is positive while the body is merely natural." (paraphrase). And when you think of the body and the world being NEUTRAL, you should NOT be thinking of them as being as SOMETHING. THEY ARE NOTHING. Neutrality means it has NO ATTRIBUTES AT ALL. The neutral world is NOT a world. The neutral body is NOT a body. You can't use neutrality to KEEP what does not exist.

We're hanging out on a fake planet interacting with imaginary characters played by sleeping brothers, pretending that things are happening, that we have important stuff to do, that there are places to go and things to see and do, important experiences to be had, magnificent illusions to sense, worlds to explore and accomplishments to be made. THERE IS NOTHING HERE. This is why ultimately "I need do nothing" - an atonement-level thought, in recognition of the fact that there is literally NO WORLD and NO SEPARATION and NO ILLUSIONS and therefore nothing has happened and there's nothing to do about it.

It's kind of like, you live in Heaven, but you're temporarily on a vacation to a fake imaginary planet Earth, and you're hanging out there for a LONG time, and kind of forgot to go back home. But some day you will go back home and leave this world, and never come back.

Here are some very interesting passages from the section about "The Mind of the Atonement" plus a few others. It's talking about God creating the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit is FOR.

Do not underestimate or disregard what GOD HAS DONE! Do not throw away the opportunity for healing that the Holy Spirit represents and provides! GOD HAS GIVEN YOU HELP!

It is clear that God created the Holy Spirit as HIS ANSWER to the separation, and is the MEANS BY WHICH the separation will be healed. He does not need YOUR answer to the separation.

"****Resign NOW as your own teachers.**** THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, ****which you can neither provide nor understand****, you will become excellent learners AND teachers."

What this means is, you need to "resign as your own teacher" and stop trying to wake up by yourself. GOD HIMSELF has created the MEANS by which you will wake up to reality. That means is the Holy Spirit. The means IS NOT YOUR EGO.

We are asked to LISTEN TO HIM, and to LET HIM help us. In fact, we're even told that we should not attempt to forgive AT ALL without first asking for his help. And secondly that his FUNCTION is to FORGIVE US, which means, to bless us with HEALING, AND to remove our fear and hatred FOR us, AND to undo all the consequences of our wrong decisions FOR US.

That's a whole lot of HELP coming from the Holy Spirit to correct the separation, heal the mind, and undo the ego. That means that OUR PROPER ROLE as students, is to LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION by asking him for help, letting him literally HEAL US, and allowing him to change our mind FOR us.

This is radically different than the typical ego approach which entails everyone running around like headless chickens trying to convince themselves that a bunch of concepts are true. Our own individual efforts to HEAL OURSELVES WITHOUT HIM, are egocentric and arrogant. You are shit at waking yourself up!

God himself has GIVEN US the help that we need. The Holy Spirit has the power, the ability, the wisdom, the knowledge, the holiness, the innocence, the perception, the clarity and awareness, TO BE of help to us, to give us the help that we need.

We are NOT supposed to be doing this course alone or without him. We are supposed to be making FULL USE OF HIM, as intended by God. And when we don't do that, we are depriving him of his function and are saying "no thanks" to God.

We must ask the Holy Spirit to HELP US to see everything in a better light, in a more forgiving way, and LET HIM actually MODIFY our mind and perception for us, so that we then in fact start to see with Christ Vision. Not as something we go out independently and try to manufacture, but as something he is there to install in us, to BLESS US WITH.

The holy spirit is our healer, our therapist, our comforter, our friend. We should rely on him for our entire awakening process instead of all this "self help - self study" bullshit. Are you done with going it alone and trying to do this all yourself? Can you save yourself like God can?

You are choosing a GUIDE FOR HELP, and if you choose the EGO as your guide you will reject the Holy Spirit's help in fear and arrogance and try to do it all yourself. When you choose the Holy Spirit to be your guide to awakening, your awakening will accelerate and skyrocket in ways you had never dreamed of.

"The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, ****induces a kind of perception**** in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven Itself."

"****The Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION**** for miracle-mindedness. ****It is the will to HEAL the separation**** by letting it go. It is IN you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. *****God Himself keeps it alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time.****"

"The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. ****It is the call to return****, with which God blessed the minds of the separated Sons."

"The Holy Spirit was ****God's answer to the separation, the means**** by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating."

"When man made the ego, God placed in him ***the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound.****"

"That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. ****But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it****. The Holy Spirit IS in you in a very literal sense. It is the voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again."

"********Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function.******** Your part is ***only*** to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to ****LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.**** On your little faith, joined with HIS understanding, HE will build your part in the Atonement, and MAKE SURE that you fulfill it easily. And ***WITH Him***, YOU will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace. I do NOT feel guilty, because ****the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.**** ****I WILL to let Him**** by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why ****the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist.**** HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore ****NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS.****"

"****The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist.**** He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. ****He needs no help for this.**** ****He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do****, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. ****Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.****"

The only reason you blame or judge or project or scapegoat or see yourself as a victim or experience effects from others, is because you do not see how you did this to yourself.

If you could see how you ONLY do things to yourself, it would be so obvious you are the cause that you would have absolutely no NEED to even begin to go looking for its source. You wouldn't even need to find out who else is responsible for this. And so you wouldn't even start to step onto the slippery slope of blaming other people for it.

It's solely because you do not SEE, that you did this to yourself, or you chose it, and therefore your vision is obscured, and so you quite literally are now INCAPABLE of seeing who really is responsible.

But you will try TRY to find out who is responsible, you'll search around the room angrily trying to point fingers of accusation and judgement. "Was it you? or You?!"... And beyond even asking if it was someone, which you strongly believe it MUST be because you didn't see yourself do it, you pretty much have found others guilty automatically.

Then you think that if you FIND or have found someone guilty, and can blame them, that you're simply being justified. You're simply pointing out what the cause is. You're just honestly and innocently identifying who is responsible. You think you're just doing the normal honest sane rational thing of finding out who caused you to be upset, and that you're just pointing it out. You don't realize you're totally barking up the wrong tree because the cause isn't out there.

So projection, blame, anger, judgement, scapegoating, it's all simply an effort to continue to recognize who is responsible, but at the same time as being irresponsible yourself. By not being responsible for who you are, you entered into darkness, could not see what you were doing, and now are attempting to find another person to pin it on. And you will be wrong.

You will ALWAYS be mistaken if you EVER decide that it's someone else's fault. Because it is ALWAYS YOU that is doing it to yourself. You don't need to find someone to pin it on. You need to wake the fuck up and SEE CLEARLY, so you can recognize that you only do stuff to yourself.

One of the core ideas of the Course which is perhaps the MOST resisted, is that there is no world. It is not a popular idea. People don't like talking about it. Whenever I post it about it the comments section goes quiet most of the time. It's like... there are some things that Jesus says in the Course quite clearly but our egos do not want to acknowledge it. We'd rather take the bits of the Course we think are acceptable and just reject the other bits as some kind of freaky fringe stuff that was just there by mistake or something. We gloss over it.

But Jesus is very clear.

God would not have created this world because it is a symbol of punishment, it is run by rules of suffering and it leads to death. It is a cruel world filled with disaster and sickness and pain and fear, and there is simply NO WAY that a loving God could create this. If God did not create this, that means we're finding ourselves inside what we value as a 'pretty cool word' when in fact it's just a great big illusion that we made up ourselves. It's not even real. It doesn't even exist. Can we accept that? Or do we want to remain in denial and pick and choose the bits of truth that we can allow?

The Course also speaks of how we are not a body, and Jesus speaks therein of how the body is so worthless and so illusory that it can completely disappear when you fully awaken. Not just that you wake up 'in' it and carry on having it, but that it can literally disappear from the dream. He also speaks of how he dematerialized his own body and how we can do the same. Is this too radical for us to accept? Is it such a tall order and such a strange, mystical, seemingly impossible fear so far outside our comfort zone that we would rather turn a blind eye to it? Oh... that's not for me, that's not something that can be possible for me. Resistance.

There is no world. There is no body. God did not create this world.

Can we accept this, fully? Can we accept the implications? Or do we want a watered down truth that lets us simmer in hell a bit longer?

There are two distinct aspects to creation. One is God's own Self which is complete, the other is God's creation or the exending/projecting outward of God. This extension is referred to as Christ or the Sonship or Kingdom.

Now, we're told that it is the Son who is dreaming, not God. We're also told that God does not believe in or acknowledge the dream, otherwise God would have become insane and there'd be no God to go back to. How is this possible?

Technically speaking, if everything is one and there is only God, then God is responsible for the dreaming of the cocacola delivery truck which just drove past my window. And he is responsible for babies seeming to die. And he's responsible for war. Can God conceive of war, even in a dream?

There's a bit of a problem there, because the course says "never was love in the world", ie, God did not "enter into" the dream. Jesus is also quite clear that while the dream never truly happened in terms of reality, the IDEA of it happening did happen. Can God have an idea of being separate? Is he even capable of that? What would happen if he were capable of that? Who is going to get God OUT of the dreaming state and wake Him up, if God Himself is asleep?

This is why God created the Holy Spirit to "do his dirty work" so to speak. To awaken His son from sleep, cooperatively.

What this all boils down to is this. If God is not part of the dream or dreaming, there ABSOLUTELY MUST be some kind of "distinction" or "separation" between what is God and what is the Son. The Son's mistaken use of will does not affect the father. The son can't cause the father. So that means the Son effectively has free will. COMPLETELY FREE will. It means if the Son chooses to try to will against God, although it in truth impossible, He can still imagine it happening, without God's "approval" so to speak.

Jesus describes mind (of souls) as having two potential functions. One is creation - which uses mind as a medium to Create along the same lines as God, AND He uses the term "co-create" several times. The other is the POTENTIAL of mind to PROJECT, which means it actually has the freedom to ELECT whether or not it will will with God or not. He even says that the fallen angels are "free to establish their kingdom wherever they choose". ie God isn't going to force them to comply with His will anytime soon.

This is ALSO why, the curriculum is mandatory and REQUIRED, BUT... you can elect WHEN to take it. You can postpone it, ignore it, choose away from it, and decide not to learn it right now. How is that possible, if God's will is somehow forcing you to act a certain way or make certain choices? And how is it possible that "love does not enter where it is not welcome", meaning that if YOU elect to do so, you are able to make love not welcome?

Basically, long story short, God does not WILL that there be death, God does not will suffering, God does not will war or conflict, God does not even will any kind of dream. In fact God wills that you WAKE UP from dreaming, and that's why He created the Holy Spirit to facilitate that. And this is why you also have to give your WILLINGNESS - your little willingness - in order to CO-OPERATE with God's Will for you.

There absolutely definitely IS a distinction between the freedom of God's will, and the freedom of your own will. Will does not coerce or force you. While you are an effect of God, you are not his slave. You are not created to "have to" do anything you do not choose to do.

The ONLY WAY that God cannot be the one who dreams, is by having given you ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FREE WILL. As in... practically the same thing as saying you are SEPARATE. Absolute complete freedom. If you did not have absolute total autonomous freedom to decide for yourself, dreaming would be impossible and if dreaming were happening God would die.

This is why A Course in Miracles is not well represented by thinking of it as a teaching of conceptual "oneness" ie singularity, or as a teaching of "non-duality". Non-duality completely ignores the FREEDOM with which God creates, and the total freedom He GIVES to his creations. As the course says itself

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer."

"The mind can be right or wrong, depending on the voice to which it listens. "

"Souls were given their own true authorship, and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author."

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS."

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

Honesty is the basic machinery of awakening. It means you have a willingness to accept what is true regardless of whether it suits your ego or makes you look good. It means putting the truth before your own personal position, and being willing to be seen in its light.

All parts of any forgiveness process entail honesty. You have to be honest to admit to and discern what is true and what is false. You have to be honest with yourself in accepting responsibility for having chosen everything you are experiencing. And it takes a lot of honesty to admit that you are not being victimized by anyone but yourself.

So honesty is really all about putting aside all of the ego pursuits, perspectives, and self-serving and face-saving attitudes, which are really all *lies*, and owning up to what's really going on. It's a matter of owning up to what is real rather than what you want to make of the situation.

Honestly also requires us to surrender every ego activity that we're using to try to win favor or defend ourselves or make ourselves look better. It means being what you really are, admitting to what really is, and accepting reality without you changing it.

Honesty is the best policy, because it is sanity. It is awakening. It is awareness of truth. It is allowing and accepting God's nature and presence. Sometimes it will take for you to really examine what you're doing and why and to have a 'little willingness' to admit the ways that you're mistaken or are trying to deceive. So really it all boils down to... is it really true... is it really factually real and true as in Holy Spirit's truth.... or is it false.

Honesty is the truth. Dishonesty is the lies.

So if we're to wake up to God and truth and reality, we're going to have to be really really really really really completely willingly honest at all times. Otherwise we're kidding ourselves, and fooling ourselves, and deceiving ourselves, and then we are the ones who end up suffering.

In all honesty, we are still as God created us. It we are willing to completely admit and accept that, it's game over for the ego.

Honesty gives you access to the truth which sets you free.

When you try to go into the light, while still holding onto ego in any way, you are trying to bring darkness into the light.

What that means is, you believe the darkness can 'stay dark' while you enter the light. But this is impossible because light dispels darkness.

So the light of God, Holy Spirit's mind, the right mind, 'level 2', etc... will repel the darkness of the ego. It would dispel the ego, so it cannot ever approach it. Darkness has no real effect on the light.

When you try to do this, you are creating a 'spiritualized ego' which attempts to make it SEEM like you're more spiritual or more light when in fact it MUST all be an illusory form or appearance, deceiving yourself, because darkness literally CANNOT, even a tiny bit, become light.

Darkness is REPLACED by light. When light replaces darkness, you wake up FROM darkness.

Similarly, you cannot bring the light into the darkness. You can shine a light SO THAT darkness is shone away. When you bring the light toward the darkness, the darkness MUST disappear. So again, light and dark cannot combine. The dark cannot be made light, and the light cannot be made dark. They are mutually exclusive.

So again, one of the properties of the spiritual ego is the attempt to bring light into the darkness, into the world, in such a way as to KEEP the world the same as it is and NOT dispel illusions. This doesn't mean you can't bring 'heaven to earth', because by doing so you actually dispel and REPLACE darkness. But the ego has many ways to pretend to bring light into the world which are deceptive.

The only option for you is, to leave the darkness behind and go into the light. That means detaching from the ego's mind, and attaching to Holy Spirit.

The ego mind is a mind of separation and conflict.

The ego mind always has two faces - a persona and a shadow.

Within the ego mind itself, one part of itself is against the other part. The ego mind attacks itself, being an idea of self attack.

The persona portion of the ego mind is what most people most often identify with, thinking that this is their entire 'self'.

The shadow portion of the ego mind is the part most people disassociate from, project onto others, and hide unconsciously. This part of the mind we do not identify with, and believe it is not even a part of ourself. Therefore we scapegoat it onto others and accuse other people of being it.

But at all times, both the positive and negative are within the confines of our ego mind. Both the stuff we think is good and the stuff we think is bad are within our mind. And the stuff we think is our 'self' and the stuff we think is 'not self' (i.e. 'others) is still within our own mind.

Both the enemies that we perceive as 'not me', or 'out there', and the innocent victim that we try to position ourselves as 'in here', are both a part of a single mind which is at war with itself.

This war is taking place between your mind and your mind. It is a war of self-attack. Within the arena of your mind, you have these two sides, comprising the persona judger and the shadow retaliator. Or, the persona victim and the shadow victimizer.

Most of the time the shadow is projected and disassociated from, meaning we see it outside of 'our self' (the persona self) and disconnected from it. We literally believe through disassociation that it is not our own self, we want nothing to do with it, we try to get rid of it, and we use the persona part of our mind to attack it. Even though it's a part of (not apart from) this one mind.

We become so deceived by this 'split' in consciousness, this mental delusion of two selves, that the persona part of us, which we most typically believe is the whole ego, does everything it can to disassociate itself from the projected sin/guilt/fear/wrongness. It wants nothing to do with it, entirely because this attitude increases the sense of *separation*, or the severity of the 'split' within the mind, between the good-favoring and bad-favoring parts.

We need to learn the secret to salvation, according to Jesus, which is that "you are doing this to yourself".

What this means is, our whole mind is a container in which there is both the ego persona and the ego shadow. The stuff we deny, reject, judge, project, and attack is the shadow part, but it's still a part of our own mind. And the persona part which tries to reject that part is also in our own mind. It is not that the good parts are good or that it is being attacked by the bad parts that's the issue. That's not the problem. The problem is the sense of *separation* between these two parts.

The sense that the 'bad stuff in me' is 'someone else', is our major error. The accusation of sin onto someone else, which is really our own sin, is a mistake. The belief that someone is not One with us, is a mistake. The projection of our darkness outward, and our cutting it off from ourselves to create an enemy, is a mistake.

The darkness of the shadow ONLY appears to be dark and unwanted because of how intensely the 'good-seeking' persona part of us, that we retain identification with, tries to increase the 'contrast' between the two. The darkness would not appear AS dark if this separation or rift or split were not as pronounced. But this would also have to mean that the good-focused part of the mind be diminished in its exclusivity, its favor and its judgement.

See it is not just the bad icky shadow stuff that we need to 'get rid of'. In fact it is the ego persona that tries to get rid of that stuff, which means the ego persona is kept, and therefore the ego is kept, making this a trap. The more you try to get rid of stuff the more you manufacture a story about how dark that stuff is, and it will grow stronger as an enemy of the persona. All enemies are pretty much tied into the persona's idea of what it does not want, in order to make itself look better. But if the persona is going to attack the shadow, then the mind is going to become more split, and both parts are still going to stay within the confines of the single mind. So you will suffer.

Enemies are not the problem. Separation between good and bad is the problem. Separation between good-loving persona and good-hating shadow is the problem. And not realizing that both of these parts of your experience are entirely WITHIN your own mind, and has NOTHING to do with anyone else, is the big realization here.

You need to come to a perspective, an awareness, where you are looking at the contents of your mind, and realize that both the persona part of your mind is within you, AND the shadow part - the enemy, the attacker, the things you don't want, the parts you think are 'other people', that is ALSO in your mind. And you need to get to where you can see BOTH at the same time as being part of YOU. It is that awareness, where a sense of Self 'spans' and INCLUDES both parts, that you are in the kind of space where you can see that you are, literally, doing this to yourself. You are the victim and the victimizer. You are the persona and the shadow. You are both parts of this separated ego.

When you see this, and hold this perspective for a moment, where you can see both 'characters' if you will, both parts of you at once, you will see in that light how ridiculous it is that you are against yourself. The awareness that who you thought was an enemy, is YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that you thought you were against some other person but were in fact against YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that the behavior of the enemy, which you thought you had nothing to do with, is actually just another puppet - another part of YOU, that YOU are using against yourself... seeing that will wake you up.

You have to get to where you can see and accept that both sides of the split-mind war are WITHIN your mind and are both parts of what's going on inside yourself. This awareness will show you the utter ridiculousness of the war that you are waging against yourself, the roles that you are playing in your mind which you thought were distinct, the Self that you are - the awareness which encompasses the persona and the shadow, which is your real PERSONALITY. You are the awareness in which you see the war that you are waging, and the fact that you are playing BOTH SIDES, that you are literally against yourself with two artificial personalities.

You have to see that you are BEING both of those fake personalities (persona and shadow, victim and victimizer), and that it makes absolutely no SENSE that you can possibly be truly both at once unless you lose sight of this awareness. And since you are in this awareness, the 'illusion' that you are only one of these two parts cannot be maintained. It's like realizing that two characters in a play - enemies - are both being played by the same actor. And that awareness will set you free from the illusion of a separation.

This awareness is the key to salvation, because in this awareness and in the admitting that you are both the victim and victimizer, you will see how utterly futile and ridiculous that is, as well as owning up to the awareness that you are the one doing this... nobody else is involved, because the 'other person' was actually your own shadow, which is part of your own mind, part of your split identity - one of two parts of you. This UNIFIES your awareness, because you are likely willing to drop this stupid activity as soon as you see it, because it is so obviously insane and self-defeating.

When you see this... just wait to see how long you need to have this awareness before the entire thing just disappears ... it only takes a moment. It only takes for you to glimpse this, and both the persona and the shadow will cancel each other out. As soon as you see that you've been doing this all to yourself, both sides will collapse. The awareness that saw both these parts as parts of itself, is the light which will dispel this darkness. The darkness was the *illusion* of a separation between these two parts - the idea that one of these parts was 'not you'. But it is you. And that undoes the separation, so both sides have to now cease to be separate. They come together, unify, all contrast disappears, and ONENESS is restored. And it will be like nothing even happened.

The secret to salvation... you are doing this to yourself.

We are immortal beings. But we keep trying to prove that we're not.That's what all the activities of the world are about. All the sickness and suffering. All the death. All the guilt and fear. It's all people trying to disprove their immortality.

Being immortal you cannot be attacked, upset, unhappy, sick, dead, suffer in any way. You can't be guilty or afraid.

We came to this world attempting to die. Except that we can't. So how did we try to pull it off? We invented bodies, fake identities, which we pretend to be. And then we attack them and make them suffer, to try to prove it is we who are suffering. And to do that we identify with them and forget who we are.

The question is, why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep trying to make bad things happen? Why do we keep inflicting suffeirng on ourselves? Why do we keep choosing sickness and pain? Why do we keep trying to destroy ourselves?

It's a bit insane in and of itself, but even moreso when you realize that it really cannot work. What is immortal cannot be attacked or die. So... the whole exercise is futile and cannot work. You'd have to be in denial to think it could.

That's the main problem. We're in denial because we are DENYING that we are immortal. And we keep pretending that we're not alive forever.We might then think that we are struggling against attack, against externally inflicted suffering, against contracting sickness from the environment, against other people.... but all of that is a decoy and not the cause of any of it. It's us trying to prove we can die.

"Swear not to die, you holy son of God"

"You are immortal and you cannot die"

How can an immortal being even seem to die, given they cannot? They have to themselves fake their own death. They have to pretend to suffer. They have to make bad things seem to happen to try to justify it. But all of it's just a lie, a performance, a cover-up.

When you just accept the sanity that you are already immortal and perfect and there is no point to the world, you'll wake up to the eternal life God gave you and which you can never lose.

"They die till you accept your own Eternal Life."

"IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt,"

"Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; Eternal life must die."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

We've become proud of what we've learned, we've become proud of our education, proud of what we've accomplished on our own, proud of how we've overcome problems by ourselves, proud of our problem-solving abilities, proud of the development of various other abilitites, proud of the information we've accumulated, proud of the 'success' that we've had as a result of this. And therefore we have become very enamored with ourselves and how SPECIAL and IMPORTANT we've become... But.....

This is all to do with what we did alone, in isolation, separate from Holy Spirit. This is all to do with how we depended on ourselves and a our limited little abilities in place of allowing ours leves to be helped. This is all to do with not being open to guidance and support from Spirit. This is all to do with running the show and playing at being God. This is all an authority problem where we can't accept that God is the authority and that we are what He wants us to be. And really none of this has anything to do with being spiritual or real or honest.

This is all to do with what the ego has to offer you. It's all to do with the ways that the ego deceives you and LURES you down a dark alley. It's all to do with how the ego wants you to get further away from God so that you will not wake up to your TRUE POTENTIAL. It's all to do with how the ego wants you giving IT your power and trusting in IT for success and USING its services to get what you want to happen. The ego is running this world - or it thinks it is anyway.

And so after all this 'filling up' with yourself, your accumulating of abilities and skills and information and prowess, all of that has to come melting down as you relinquish and let go and surrender to a power greater than yourself. You can SHARE IN God's power and use it far more supernaturally than anything you can accomplish on your own. But you cannot posess it and claim "I did this on my own". That's the game that you have to give up. Are you going to be of service to the ego, which is what you're being when you're not of service to God, or are you going to put yourself back into your proper place and role as an extender of God's will?

Thy will not my will be done.

Jesus says in the miracle principles, that miracles should be happening ALL THE TIME, and that when they are not happening, something has gone wrong.

What this MUST mean, is that miracles are not simply shifts in perception TOWARDS truth, but they are expressions OF truth. The expression OF truth may well shift perception if perception needs shifting, but the miraculousness of the miracle is an expression from a higher place of LOVE.

When there is love, there is miraculousness. When there is love, supernatural "abilities" are absolutely unlimited. When love is not blocked, there are NO LIMITS to what the mind can do. There is nothing that your miraculous holiness cannot do. Being miraculous is a PERMANENT CONDITION.

Being miraculous is not something that just happens in the dream while we are waking up and then STOPS. Bullshit. Miracles are supposed to be happening ALL THE TIME, and when they are not happening, something has gone wrong. Therefore, the only time where miracles are NOT happening is when something has gone wrong, meaning we are in the ego. When we are NOT in the ego, MIRACLES WILL BE CONSTANT.

YOU are also a miracle of God. God's CREATION is a miracle. Miraculousness is NATURAL. It is the natural way that an immortal spirit is able to create using the UNLIMITED power of the mind, at any time, in any way. It is an expression of LOVE. Love is always expressing "supernaturally", in comparison to this world's unnatural nature.

You will not put miracles aside when you wake up. When Jesus woke up to God he did not STOP being able to perform miracles! In fact he is now utterly UNLIMITED in what He can do. There is nothing your holiness cannot do. ALL EXPRESSION OF LOVE ARE A MIRACLE. When you return to being loving you will RETURN to being miraculous.

Permanently miraculous. You will become "miracle minded". A miracle worker.

Miracles shift perception towards God and atonement, IF that perception is unhealed and "needs a miracle". When perception is all the way SHIFTED, and is IN the atonement, the mind does not suddenly drop its ability to perform miracles or to heal. It becomes EVEN MORE ABLE. AND then its focus will be more on performing miracles for OTHERS, because miracles are the MAXIMAL SERVICE that you can render to others. Ie, loving others unconditionally and fully is healing and helpful to the absolute maximum degree possible. Meaning, unlimited.

Miracles are an EXPRESSION of the atonement. Miracles are love. Love is natural. Miraculous love should be happening all the time.

I'm somewhat tired of hearing people say that, given this world is an illusion and doesn't exist, all you need to do is recognize this and disappear off to heaven. This "seems" to make some logical sense, to the ego.

This is not only level confusion, it is also selfish. It is the EGO trying to interpret what atonement means, because it wants to "get" the atonement without any of the responsibility of sharing it or giving it to help others.

Jesus has a PLAN OF ATONEMENT, which He also refers to as "the great crusade". This plan includes you accepting atonement, but also entails you become PART OF the atonement plan, so that you can HELP to fulfill the rest of the plan.

Accepting Atonement entails a willingness to receive miracles, a willingness to admit you are worthy of love, and thus a willingness to accept that others are worthy of love. This automatically opens the door to you loving others and helping them. And you will help them by sharing the miracles you have received.

"When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. 6 As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. 7 The power to work miracles belongs to you. 8 I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing."

Here is how Jesus describes the fact that He did not accept atonement solely for "himself", but in fact had to SHARE it in order to HAVE it.

"I heard one Voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. 2 Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. 3 The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. "

Essentially, by accepting atonement, you receive miracle-working abilities, and are more or less given a "mission" to help others through miracles, teaching, loving, sharing. There is nothing selfish about it.

The other main part of the problem many people have, is the way the ego comes to logical FALSE conclusions. It SEEMS logical to say, well, this world is an illusion and does not exist, therefore I only need to "do nothing" in the world and sort of ignore it and go off to heaven. That's ego bullshit.

The result of that "reasoning" is that the truth of the higher level or "goal" of "there is no world" is used as JUSTIFICATION for behavior WHILE STILL IN THE WORLD. That is pure level confusion. That means, people will then "do nothing" in the world, while still in the world, will not help anyone, will sit on a fence smiling at the illusion, will not perform any miracles, will not heal anyone, and will basically BYPASS MIRACLES.

This is used as a broad brush stroke to GLOSS OVER the REQUIREMENT that you perform miracles as part of Jesus's plan of atonement, IN THIS WORLD. If you jump from "I'm in the world" to "there is no world" while you're still in the world, you will put up a BLINDNESS OF DENIAL against anything you could possibly ever do while in the world.

This has been used, en-masse, to justify NOT performing any miracles, NOT changing the world, NOT helping others, and basically disappearing up your own butt while everyone else "who is an illusion" continues to be in suffering and loss. EVEN IF that suffering and loss is an illusion, that does not mean you should not help anyone who is having a "false experience". How cold and callous can we be, to put up a middle finger to the world just because it's a dream and let everyone who believes in it continue to be in despair?

We have a FUNCTION of being the LIGHT OF THE WORLD, to heal the world, to correct it, to demonstrate truth through miracles, to prove this world is NOT REAL by showing that its forms can be changed by the mind, and to help others to overcome the suffering they have themselves implemented.

It is because people do not want to do this, the ego does not want to do this, that we disappear up our own selfish butt holes imagining how we will "gain" atonement for ourselves and be done with this whole world. "There is no-one to save"? That is level confusion. "No-one is sick so there's nothing to heal"? That is level confusion. "Death isn't real so there's no point reversing it"? That is level confusion.

You can't use a truth that only applies on a much higher level, to explain why you should or should not do something on this lower level. While we are in this world, we are to heal, help, perform miracles, enlighten, share, love, teach, and HELP OUR BROTHERS. Even if this whole world is fiction. Even if no-one is really sick. Even if death isn't real. Even if none of this happened. OTHER BROTHERS do not wake up just because you wake up. Other brothers do not get healed just because you accept healing for yourself.

The function of a miracle worker is to SUPPLY A LACK, to give to those who temporarily have less, from those who temporarily have more. That means when you accept atonement and "have more", you GIVE IT to those who have less. This is your RESPONSIBILITY.

All the belief systems that have interpreted the course in terms of "there is no world so just get out of here and go home", are ALSO the belief systems which POO POO miracles. They are also the belief systems which justify "doing nothing". They are also the belief systems of people who believe ACIM is non-duality. And they are also the belief systems of even some of the best teachers who are IN DENIAL of Jesus's atonement plan, or the fact that giving and receiving are one and that you must GIVE the miracles you have received in order to receive or have them.

And what is behind all of this level confusion? What is the driving force of fear behind all of this BYPASSING of performing miracles? What is the foundation of this "reasoning" which SEEMS to make sense, to the ego, that we need do nothing here other than forgive and go home? What kind of selfish motivation is behind all this?

IT IS THE EGO.

This is the ego's interpretation of the atonement. And it is INHERENTLY FALSE. When something makes sense to the ego, the ego has MADE NONSENSE. It is NOT your only responsibility to accept atonement for yourself. You must accept it SO THAT you can extend it to others through supernatural miracles and healing and being truly helpful. Being, essentially, "a disciple" of Jesus, proving that you ACTUALLY believe God's laws by demonstrating them IN the world, where help is still needed.

Each time, and in each way, that we perceive that someone else is meant to change, that there is something wrong with them, that they have caused us to be upset or changed in any way whatsoever, or that anything outside of us can do something to us, we are being irresponsible for our lives.

This means we are not owning up to the full responsibility we have to be the causal power of everything that we experience. It means we're shoveling off our sense of Self and responsibility for our life onto someone else. We're wanting them to change in order to INDIRECTLY cause us to be happy or in a preferred state, and if they don't comply we get upset.

It is not anyone else's responsibility to live our life for us, to wake up for us, to change to suit us, to match our opinion, to be corrected on our behalf, or to be any way 'for us' in order for us to get what we want.

If you look you'll notice yourself being 'riddled' with this situation, where in small ways and in various relationships, you truly believe that someone else (or reality, or the world) is not meant to be the way it is. This is irresponsibility. It means you are not being responsible for what you are, and so you see everything outside of you reflecting that - that it too should not be what it is.

So when there is irresponsibility in your mind and perception, where you are not squarely owning and being centered in the acceptance of what you actually are, you are going to experience that outside of you in everything you look at. Other people and places and events are going to start to show up to you as being 'wrong' for being what they, that they should be something else, that they SHOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE for being what they are.

This is why the acceptance of ourselves is an act of responsibility, and is then reflected outside us as the world appearing to be accepted for what it is, also. You can't accept the world if you can't accept yourself.

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE this Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within."

There are many things often quoted from the course, perhaps loosely from memory, something that stuck in your head when you read it. But which really is not well thought out or deeply considered. "Heaven is not a place" is one of those things, which has been widely misunderstood.

See, places, in general, are an aspect of spacetime. In space, there are many places. Over here, over there. My place, your place. Many places. There are places in spacetime because space separates everything out, based on the idea of separation and lack. But you have to remember, that spacetime itself is nothing but an illusory ego belief. Space time, does not exist.

Now, when Jesus says that Heaven is not a place, he is merely referring to the fact that SPACETIME does not exist in Heaven. There is no localization or confinement to one area, in heaven. There is no cut off piece of it that is kept apart from others and labelled as if it's not the rest. It's all joined. It's one. Heaven is one huge infinite unlimited PLACE, that has no separate places within it. Everything is everywhere.

It's perfectly legitimate to say it is not a place, while still not contradicting the fact that Heaven IS A SOMEWHERE, a locale, a home, somewhere that you can actually BE, live, dwell, and experience reality. It is actually a something, a somewhere. It's just that it is not limited. It is all things real and everywhere real.

But heaven is not an isolated place. It's not a United States. It's not a Russia. It's everywhere without limit. That's why it is "not a place". It's not a separated off thing with a label to distinguish it from the rest.

Especially if you consider the fact that space-time is a belief that is unreal and an illusion. There is no space or time. Both are made up. Which means ALL PLACES within space and time do not really exist. So every single PLACE that you ever thought of as being a place, is not REALLY a place. In fact, it is not a place at all. It's a nowhere. Spacetime is the idea of NOT EXISTING FULLY ANYWHERE, which is why every "place" within it is NOT THE WHOLE.

So when you throw out spacetime and shove it in the trashcan, what are you left with? You are not left with places. You are not left with isolated boxes and confined locations. You are only left with the only REAL SOMEWHERE, the only ACTUAL REALITY, the only REAL PLACE that you can be. And that is Heaven.

Absolutely. Heaven is the ONLY REALITY, the ONLY REAL PLACE you can truly exist. That's why "You are at home in God, dreaming of exile". You can't leave Home. You can't leave heaven. But you can DREAM of being OUTSIDE of it in another WORLD, full of places, where none of those places are really anywhere.

Where is Jesus? He is IN HEAVEN. There are so many references in the Course to being IN heaven, in stark contrast to being ON the earth. Jesus makes it clear that there are two WORLDS, they are two PLACES, they are OPPOSITES. "Heaven remains the one alternative to the strange world you made" for example. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "Heaven is all that remains."

When the world disappears, which it will, where will you be? When there is no world, where do you live? When space and time collapse into nothing, where are you then? When the world spins "into the nothingness from which it came", and "gone is place, as well as time", where will you be? How will you exist SOMEWHERE, in a real SOMEWHERE, without any PLACES to exist? You MUST have a home, a real somewhere that you can experience. Where is that? Where is Jesus, in his home, not of this world? He's is in Heaven.

Heaven absolutely 100% is a PLACE. You can GO THERE. You already are there but you don't realize it because you're sleeping and pretending not to be in Heaven. When the dream world stops existing, you will wake up IN HEAVEN. It's reality. It's a REAL PLACE. It's where God lives. It's not "merely" an "awareness of perfect oneness", as if to imply you will KEEP THE WORLD and have some kind of heavenly mindset at the same time. Newsflash... not possible. "You cannot remain in this world with this knowledge."

There is no world. Central lesson. The world is NOT A REAL PLACE. When there is no world, the ONLY PLACE LEFT, to live and experience and be real, is Heaven. Heaven is THE ONLY PLACE THAT EXISTS. There is no other place. All other places are illusions.

So absolutely, it is false to interpret Jesus as saying that Heaven is NOT A PLACE. That's not what He means. He means only that it is not SPATIAL. And in that He also acknowledges that ALL SPATIAL PLACES ARE ILLUSIONS, which is why Heaven is NOT AN ILLUSORY PLACE. It's real.

It's your home. And it's the ONLY place that you can ever really exist.

Notice the quote also ends "Nothing OUTSIDE this Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within." Which means heaven as a place does not coexist with THE ILLUSORY WORLD. There is NO WORLD outside the oneness of heaven, the place of heaven. The world you THINK exists right now, is an illusion of being outside the Kingdom. It does not exist. It is not HERE NOW. You are not in a place NOW. You WILL be in a place when you wake up to reality.

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. This means you recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only heal. By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others. The message you then give to them is the truth that their minds are similarly constructive, and their miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this you release the mind from overevaluating its own learning device, and restore the mind to its true position as the learner (T-2.V.5)."

In accepting the Atonement for yourself, please note that you accept it FOR everyone. This is clearly spelled out in the Course. It is not possible to awaken in isolation or TO an isolated state of being. You are awakening FROM an isolated state of being TO a state where everything is SHARED and One. This means, as you accept the atonement 'for yourself' you are accepting it for the whole sonship.

It is very easy to be misled (by ego) by this statement, to decide it means you should 'just do the Course for yourself'. You then go about doing it in isolation, in quiet, in private, not telling anyone about it, not sharing it, etc... going around not mentioning it to anyone etc.... it's all very well not preaching it or pushing it down anyone's throat, or using it to attack their problems, etc... but that doesn't mean there isn't supposed to be any flow of love through you, or no miracles given you to another, or that you just wake up in a cave not caring about anyone.

Accepting the Atonement isn't something you can do in part, either. It's something you do ONCE and FULLY and that's it. You cannot fully accept that 'nothing happened' until you have completely undone all beliefs to the contrary. ALL of them.

Accepting the atonement 'for yourself' also means "you recognize the mind is the only creative level". "Once you accept this, your mind can ONLY heal." Think about that. This means when you finally fully accept the atonement, as a single one-time 'act', THEN you are only capable of healing.... thus only capable of ONLY miracles. Before you accept the atonement you ARE capable of miracles but not only miracles, because you're still capable of offending.

"By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others."

Level confusion = magic = sickness. By recognizing ONLY your mind is creative and the world is an effect, you can heal the sick and raise the dead.

The ego produced the idea that when you cause something, it produces an effect, but the effect itself is not CAPABLE of causing something in turn.

This shows up in the relationship between mind and matter or mind and body. The body seems to be an "end result" but of itself it cannot create anything. The ego made the illusion that it can create children but really it is a dead end.

This is because the ego "separated" cause and effect, meaning that mind seemed to become cause and matter became effect, so that mind would seem to STOP being able to CREATE something that in turn can create.

When you think about your self in heaven, you are an effect of God. But in God's world cause and effect are not split apart like this, and an "effect" is NOT a dead end. When God creates something, he give it ALL of his own ability to create, and therefore it ALSO becomes a CAUSE.

You are an effect of God, which means you are still as God created you, but it DOES NOT MEAN that you therefore have to be whatever God forces you to be. You are not like the "body of God" or some kind of projection of Him that cannot think for itself or has no will of its own.

This is a very important point because in terms of the ego's thinking, if you are just an EFFECT, then you cannot CAUSE anything, and that basically means God created death, or created an end to extension.

You are created TO EXTEND, to CO-CREATE, and to CAUSE CREATION. You are an effect of God but you are ALSO FREE to cause of your own free will. If you were not given the freedom to be a cause, you could not be like God or in his likeness, and you would not be able to create like Him.

So God has created you, you are the effect of Him, but you are also a cause. God causes causes. God creates creators. And because you ARE a creator and you can create, you MUST HAVE freedom to WILL freely. Your independent free will was given you BECAUSE IT WAS NECESSARY in order to grant you the ability to create freely.

By God having created creators who can create creators, and IF those creations freely willingly choose to extend or "will like God's will", then creation extends endlessly as a continuous outflowing of creativity. When a creation of God freely chooses to dream and to pretend to oppose God's "intention" and tries to block their own free will, his "communication channels" are blocked and God thus recognizes his son is "sleeping" and creates the Holy Spirit to help him to FREELY CHOOSE whether/when to wake up.

"What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between."

I thought it was interesting in lesson 140 - only salvation can be said to cure - talking about a cure vs the world's remedies etc. It says that we need to awaken FROM the dream world. In this awakening, it does not matter what the dream contains. Nor does it matter to especially change the dream to some other form, in such a way that doesn't awaken you FROM the dream.

It says you can cause bodily healing on the form level but without awakening the mind FROM the dream, and therefore not really enacting a real change. You can thus DREAM OF healing, in which there may be bodily changes, but WITHOUT the mind changing. True healing, and the true and only cure, is to cure the mind in God, such that the mind is waking up from the entire world. Getting your head out of the sand.

It says to me that our forgiveness really is a very GLOBAL function that applies to everything all at once. Like when we say that "nothing in this room means anything." We have to realize that the ENTIRE CONTENTS of the world means nothing, or is not true, or is false or unreal. Not just some parts of it. Not just certain people. We need to realize we are HAVING a dream, and EVERYTHING the body sees is part of that dream world. The WHOLE THING is false and we should to believe ANY part of it.

We need to awaken from the whole world, from all of space and time, and from the whole universe. That kind of global perspective is a universal perspective, just as the course says that "miracles are a universal blessing from God." We need a more "blanket statement" kind of approach to forgiveness which renders everything in the world as EQUALLY UNREAL. The people's bodies, the events, the speeches, the behaviors, the happenings, all of it must be put into a single category of unreal.

We thus need to assert that not one single bit of this world is true. As in "nothing the world believes in true." That not one single body is real. That there is no one single shred of REAL sickness or death anywhere. That all appearances, all forms, all events and happenings are NOTHING and nowhere. Nothing in this room is really happening right now. Nothing that you see really exists right now. Nothing that bodies are claiming is true right now. None of this world is reality. Mind needs to wake up OUT OF this dream realm.

Awakening is truly a movement AWAY from the ENTIRE world. A movement into "awareness of dreaming". A movement in the direction of God away from spacetime, away from Earth, and away from bodies. The WHOLE THING has to go.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful or sinless; neither good nor bad. Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made."

"Do you believe that truth can be but SOME illusions? 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, and that escape depends, NOT on the dream, but ONLY on awaking. COULD it be some dreams are KEPT, and others WAKENED FROM? The choice is NOT between which dreams to keep, but ONLY if you want to live in dreams, or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select SOME dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some. For you are either sleeping OR awake. And dreaming goes with only ONE of these."

"Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes return again to bless the world he made. In error it began. But it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And we will sleep no more and dream of death."

"Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

I will awaken from the dream that I

Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,

And know I am the perfect Son of God."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

When Jesus says that nothing can happen without our consent, and that nobody can die without their own consent, what he's saying seems pretty extreme.

We are so used to living in such a way that we constantly believe things happen by accident, or that something can "go wrong", or that there is unfairness and injustice, or that victims have nothing to do with asking to be victimized, or that war is a haphazard chaos.

Yes these are very common perceptions and this is what we're up against, these beliefs and ways of perceiving which fall for all kinds of illusions and trickery. On the surface it definitely appears that all of these things are true, that nobody wants to be victimized, that bad stuff just happens, that things go wrong, and that we don't want to die.

But that's the challenge, you see. That's the spiritual challenge, because what many do not know is that this entire world is a big trick, a set up, orchestrated by those to whom nothing happens by mistake, and who have such power of creation that if they so choose it, it will happen, and nothing else will happen. I know this sounds like some kind of 'God' pulling the strings. But in truth you are God-like.

So all these beliefs about having not chosen, about not having freedom, about being affected, about stuff happening that we don't want, and about the horrible idea that death is just going to happen to you against your will, ALL of these have to be questioned and undone completely. Because they are all false. They are all lies, that everyone is falling for 24/7. Yet as Jesus says in ACIM, you made sickness and death and you can abolish both.

This is why A Course in Miracles is so radical. The Truth flies in the face of how everything appears in this world. It goes against how everything is set up and how everything was deliberately designed to look like it proved we did not choose this. This entire world is a cover-up in which the Son of God is pretending to hide from a made-up enemy, and He very much is responsible for animating every single character and event in this dream regardless of whether He appears to suffer at His own hand.

Attempting to 'wake up' from the illusion of this world does not seem to be easy. It's a huge mind-fuck. As the Course says, we do not escape this illusion through death, but by TRUTH. Only the real Truth can set you free. And as a certain movie says, "you can't handle the truth".

Well, you can handle it... when you're ready to accept it. Because it's a pretty huge Truth that is not at all like what this world seems to suggest is true. And to go there, to be open to it, seems like a huge journey somewhat 'against' the world. But everyone is making this journey, and sooner or later everyone will come to realize what the Truth really is, and this entire universe will disappear.

There is a huge rift in the ACIM community.

It mainly hinges around a single assumption. Some people make this assumption and some do not.

Those who make it are very consistent in the consequences of that assumption, because it leads to massive level confusion. There is an entirely different interpretation of the meaning of almost everything the Course means, which arises based on that one assumption.

The assumption is this:

Everything about the course applies to "my identity" as I see it right now. It ALL applies to ME.

This is a MISTAKE!

And this happens because .... every course student has a EGO, which is a false sense of identity or self, which perceives that everything is about IT. It is an ego-centric interpretation of the course.

Here is a fact which you can deny or accept:

Sometimes the Course is speaking to and about an "individual son" as part of the "sonship." "A son", "A brother", "my brothers", "God’s children", etc of which there are many. And sometimes, the course is speaking about The One Son of God - "The son", "God’s son" etc.

These are two very different LEVELS OF IDENTITY. The scope of these levels is vastly different. What applies to one individual may not apply to another individual. What applies to the one son, does not apply to an individual son in isolation. The mind of the One Son is HUGE, it is the mind of Christ. The mind of an INDIVIDUAL SON, has its own individual free will choice and its own ability to independently deny God.

Confusing or combining these two levels, which is a confusion of identity, will lead to massive level confusion and false conclusions.

When YOU, as an "individual son", think that everything the course says about the One Son applies to YOU, you are making a massive level confused mistake! It does NOT apply to you! When you, as an individual son, believe that every teaching in the course is ABOUT YOU, as you see yourself as an individual right now, you WILL come to false conclusions. And these conclusions are radically warped in comparison to what they would be if you saw all the levels in their appropriate placement.

Some parts of ACIM are talking about an individual son, and some parts are talking about the One Son, which is a vast difference. Knowing WHEN Jesus is talking about WHICH LEVEL, is very important, otherwise you will just lump them all together and .... come to some very distorted conclusions.

To understand and accept this DOES REQUIRE that you believe that there ARE multiple sons. Some people refer to multiple souls as mentionedin earlier versions. Or the sonship, which even in edited versions talks about multiple sons. The sonship IS supposed to be a term that refers to MULTIPLE INDIVIDUALS. The sonship is NOT the One Son of God. The sonship IS NOT CHRIST.

If you confuse certain intentions of "which level of identity" Jesus is talking to or about, it will produce huge differences in what you think he means. If he says something which only applies to the One Son, and you think it applies to YOU as an individual, you will become mistaken.

This is what is happening throughout the course community. A kind of rift or difference of opinion, between those who take the course as "all one level talking about me as the only son" versus "multiple levels talking sometimes about me as an individual and sometimes as a shared single identity."

Those who believe the course always is talking at one level, who fail to see the levels or discern when Jesus refers to which identity, WILL come to the following FALSE CONCLUSIONS:

1) "I dreamed everything in the world, it’s all in my mind, therefore if I heal my mind, it will heal everyone else, because they are all part of me." —�- NO. This is only true of the One Son! It is not true of individuals. You as an individual are NOT responsible for what other individuals are experiencing!

2) "I dreamed the world myself"—�- NO. The One Son dreamed the world and you are INSIDE HIS DREAM. You are having an ADDITIONAL LAYER OF DREAMING within his dream.

3) "When the course talks about perception, he is talking about my pecteption." —� NO not always. E.g. When he says "the world IS perception", he literally means, planet earth is part of the perception of the ONE SON. It showing up is the One Son’s dreaming. You, as an individual, have your own INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTION *OF* the Son of God’s perception of a world. There are two levels here.

4) "I need only change my mind about the world to be at peace". —� NO. When you heal your individual perception OF the One Son’s perception, you will wake up IN the dream, but not FROM it. Many gurus have done this. Doing this will still result in death.

5) "If I change my perception, I will be able to transcend sickness." —� NO. If you change your perception of something which you think has been put there by someone else, in order to deal with it, IT will still stick around, proving that the One Son’s mind has not been healed.

6) "God created the world" —� NO. A person WILL come to this conclusion if they do not believe that there is a sonship of many individuals. This is because, somehow, they have to account for what the world IS or how it got there beyond their personal perception. Since they don’t believe there is a separate LEVEL of identity of the One Son, and they think they ARE the one Son at this level of individuality, they MUST conclude that the only identity LEFT who might be responsible for making the world is God! They do not see, that the One Son made the world, NOT their individual self.

7) "If you heal your perception you cannot perceive sickness in another." —� NO. This level confusion comes from believing that you, as an individual, are the one son. This means that everything you see in the world is "part of you". That then means that if sickness is showing up, like a person has cancer or some disease, it must be "part of your mind". And this leads to the conclusion - if I change my mind about this sin I’m seeing, that person will get healed. NO—�- it does not work. That other person is NOT part of your mind. You are an individual, they are an individual, and you both have free will. Believing that you are the one son of God at this level makes you delusional that a) you are responsible for other people’s sickness, b) they are sick because of you, c) if you withdraw your projection they won’t be sick. NOT TRUE. You are having an INDIVIDUAL FALSE PERCEPTION. And so are they. You are not the one son of God at this level. Other people are NOT part of your individual mind. They are part of the One Son’s mind, and that’s NOT your identity right now, not even if you reach true perception.

8) "What I project onto others affects them or is in them, so I need to take back those projections so they will be healed" —� NO. Your projections within the scope of your own individual mind, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. It only seems that these things are outside of you in another person. You have a belief in sin - an independent belief. Not the one son’s belief. This independent belief splits your independent mind. Your mind then has one area which seems innocent and one area which seems sinful. You will shift your identity to associate with the innocent part, and disassociate from the sinful part. This is internal denial. Your mind is at war with ITSELF. Your identification with the innocent part makes it seem like the sinful part is OUTSIDE of IT, but it is still within YOUR individual mind. You will hallucinate that because it seems "outside me", it is IN or belongs to or is doing something to other people. IT IS NOT. All attack is SELF attack. You NEVER attack others. Your projection DOES NOT leave your mind and go onto them. They HAVE NOT been affected by your projection! And when you take your projection back, it will NOT CHANGE ANYTING in terms of what the other person is experiencing. This is because both of you are individuals. Interpreting this whole part of the course based on the assumption it’s referring to "you" as "the one son" is a huge error.

9) "If I stop identifying with the body I will be free"�— NO. This is part of the belief that the body is there on its own, which is part of the belief that either God or the Son of God made it, and that if you just detach from it you will be free. The body is showing up because YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL are projecting it. What YOU, as an individual, use the body for, it will become to you, individually. Use it for attack it becomes sick, use it for love it is healed. This is about you as an individual son, not as the one son. You can’t disidentify from something that YOU are responsible for putting there. This includes all sickness in your body. YOU, as an individual son, made sickness and death, and therefore can abolish both.

10) "If I stop projecting sickness I will not see my brother as sick" —� NO. This is the erroneous assumption that everything "out there" is "in you". Therefore that you are the one son, not an individual son. This makes you believe if you correct your false perception of sickness, you will never again be able to SEE that someone is sick. You will think of people as just parts of your own mind, that their sickness is your own, and that therefore YOU need healing. THIS IS FALSE. You can get your individual self to a healed state and be whole as an individual, free of sickness, while other individuals continue to be sick. You will not be blind to their choice to be sick. Because at this LEVEL, they are OUTSIDE OF YOU. They are inside the One Son, yes. But you are NOT the one son at this point. Healing your perception heals YOUR perception, not anyone else’s. Accepting the atonement accepts it for you, it doesn’t force anyone else to accept it. Other people WILL NOT suddenly become cured when you see correctly. True Perception is INDIVIDUAL. You will still see the illusion of sickness other people are projecting, you just won’t believe it is real. People can stay sick in spite of you!

11) "I can be at peace with death" —� NO. You cannot. This suggests death happens regardless of you choosing the truth. Which suggests God is doing it to you. This is not true at ANY LEVEL of identity. If you are going to die, as an individual, it is because you, as an individual, have a belief in death. And it will not affect anyone else.

�—�—�—�

There are other examples but I’m out of oomph right now. We need to be careful to read the course, maybe even re-read it, knowing that there are TWO levels of identity. And we need to discern, when is the course talking about me as an individual, and when is it talking about the entire One Son. At times it talks about perception and seeing in terms of The One Son’s perception, not yours! And we have to recognize, while we’re in bodies, if we’ve awoken to the maximum limits of our individual mind, our individual identity in its most natural whole state, that mind is STILL MUCH SMALLER than the mind of the one son.

The mind of the one son can experience THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE at once. Recognizes that absolutely all individuals are part of itself. Knows that IT dreamed the entire universe. Knows that it has the power to create planets. That One Son’s mind is huge. To awake to THAT mind requires a TRANSCENDENCE OF INDIVIDUALITY where a single son in the sonship unites with God. Just like Jesus did. That happens AFTER you wake up individually in the dream! Becoming the Christ, is another whole level of awakening FROM the dream, that takes place after you as an individual wake up IN the dream. Becoming healed as an individual IS NOT the same thing as becoming Christ! You have to transcend the entire sonship to do that!

For me, the Course makes so much more sense, is much easier to understand, is clearer, more consistent, less confusing, and gives you much more relief of responsibility and guilt if you can recognize that there is MORE THAN ONE LEVEL in what Jesus is presenting. We need to learn the individual level first, then the second level later. That there are two levels in the awakening is clear, evidenced by some individuals who have woken up IN the dream, believe they are done, only to find they are NOT done. They still die. And they still do not perform miracles. Because they did not transcend the sonship yet to return the mind to Christ.

It’s a simple concept that there are two levels of identity. But failing to recognize which identity you have right now, and which identity Jesus is speaking about or when, WILL lead to huge level confusion. And many many false conclusions have come from this.

Here are some of the miracle principles with particularly speak to the idea that a miracle is something that you receive from God, and GIVE TO another person. Remember giving and receiving are ONE.

3 - Miracles occur naturally as EXPRESSIONS of love.

8 - Miracles are healing because they SUPPLY a lack. (remember he who temporarily has more gives to he who temporarily has less)

16 - Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to GIVE as to receive.

18 - A miracle is a SERVICE. It is the maximal service you can render to ANOTHER.

19 - Miracles make MINDS (plural) one in God.

21 - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS.

24 - Miracles enable you to HEAL THE SICK and RAISE THE DEAD because you made sickness and death. (the dead aren't going to be raising themselves, they need YOU, the un-dead, to perform the miracle!)

27 - A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me TO ALL MY BROTHERS.

35 - Miracles are EXPRESSIONS of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

40 - The miracle acknowledges EVERYONE AS YOUR BROTHER and mine.

45 - A miracle is never lost. It may TOUCH MANY PEOPLE you have not even met.

AS you can see, if you study the miracle principles it is CLEAR that a miracle is NOT just a shift in your own perception, OR just a healing in your own mind. It is something SHARED and EXPRESSED to others to help them. It's not all about your spiritual ego.

Now, you could loosely interpret most of these in a mindset of, well, this is only speaking of my 'perception' and 'seeking not to change the world' and all that... you could read into that if you want. You could say that your forgiveness just blesses people in a kind of passive way. But miracles are much more than this. This is what we have to wake up to. It's much more than just dealing with your own separate identity. It is about sharing God with others!

What is the title of the book?

"A Course in MIRACLES".

You'd think anyone who knows of Jesus would want to know how he performs miracles, right? He already demonstrated them and now he has given us a manual to learn how to do the same. Hello!

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you." God has given you freedom. This cannot be revoked. You are free to create, or to mis-create. God cannot oppose your will because it is part of his own freedom.

This means that you have to decide to go back to God, of your free will. You can't be forced, coerced, manipulated or made to do anything you don't want to. You have to willingly choose heaven again.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

"But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth"

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Does this mean that you can take forever? Does it mean that you can decide NEVER to return to God? Does it mean that you could stay in separation and never wake up?

Given that you have total freedom, it should mean that you can take as long as you please, and even to never return.

The thing is, that while God wills that you be free forever, he also wills that you be one with him forever. And here we have signs of a "natural limit" placed by God.

"Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

"Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose."

The way I read this, "will" always has an element of freedom to it, even when will is being USED to try to be unwilling. You cannot escape willingness. You will always have some willingness even if you are highly unwilling, which means that you will eventually will to be back with God.

"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."

God has also placed a limit on spacetime, ie the separation. It has been repurposed as a classroom to learn lessons, which involves consent. And we have all willed freely to participate. In effect, there is a guarantee that we will wake up eventually.

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

"For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die."

Another thing is that trying to be away from God is painful. It is a rejection of happiness and love and ease and joy. A rejection of health and wholeness. It is a state riddled with suffering. And eventually this is intolerable, especially when it becomes extreme.

The more extreme the separation, the more it hurts. The more you try to be evil, the worse your life gets, and the more you become insane. The harder you try not to exist, the more you repress and hate yourself. And it does not feel good. Some people have extreme tolerance levels but not unlimited.

"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."

This is part of the fact that there is a safeguard built into free will. Basically, in order to fully will something, you have to be fully willing. If you become unwilling, ie try to use will to NOT will, you are arresting the will. This causes you to shut off access to your power to create, and you become "weaker".

Effectively, if you oppose God's will, you become powerless. If you deny your freedom, you imprison the will. It all gets automatically shut down because by choosing separation you're literally denying freedom and power.

""Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."" ... "If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The end result is that you cannot use will to attack will, or to attack or change God. Or to change the truth or anything real. When you try to, there is a lack of will, which shuts it down and causes nothing to happen. You might hallucinate that the nothing is something, but nothing is really created.

Also the Holy Spirit has been created to guarantee holographically that the whole is always in the part, and thus no matter how many times mind tries to split itself the whole of God is still there. You cannot leave eternity or really separate.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

So God has naturally caused a number of things all which guarantee you are not only protected and safe (immortal) and have not really done anything, but also has the side-effect that when you choose away from him you do not like it, and inevitably choose against it. It's almost like saying the impluse to return is built-into the attempt to leave. And you never did quite leave in the first place.

"I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

We could say then that, we are always free, and can choose when to return to God, but at the same time staying away from God is fundamentally unpleasant, and eventually you will seek to return.

Another aspect of this is that God is so certain and so powerful, and the Holy Spirit shares his infinite power, such that he CANNOT FAIL in helping us to return. In his repurposing of the world we made, he guarantees that we will return to heaven. There are no loopholes in God's plan for salvation.

The Holy Spirit has effectively already finished the job.

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"God's promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation."

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

"No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever."

"The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions."

"Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE'S dream."

The VITAL thing thing to realize, which is brought to light by the Atonement principle, and seen with true forgiveness, is this.

IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SIN. You cannot do it in reality. You are literally incapable of changing God. You are literally incapable of making effects in God, stopping His will, changing who you are, corrupting your innocence, becoming sinful or dying. LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

You HAVE NOT sinned. You HAVE NOT separated. You cannot leave God. You cannot do anything to change reality whatsoever. God's Kingdom is totally the same as it always has been. His Kingdom cannot be assailed, it is permanent. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. You are 100% incapable of separation or sin or death. This is literally absolutely true. You simply HAVE NOT DONE, what you think you have done, and you ARE NOT doing it now.

So the question remains, what exactly IS this "state" that you are in? If it is impossible to sin or be separate, why does it seem like you are?

Simply, because you cannot ACTUALLY sin or attack reality or kill yourself, you have ONLY IMAGINED that it is possible. And that means, you are simply IN DENIAL, and you have made the ERROR of BELIEVING that you can do what you cannot do, that the impossible is possible, that you have done what you have not done, and you think something unreal is real.

So it's not like, you actually DID separate or sin, and that now you need to undo all that and heal it. You DIDN'T do it. You HAVE NOT produced real consequences. NOTHING REAL HAS HAPPENED AT ALL because nothing real can be threatened. So it has not been threatened. Whatsoever.

All that's "happened" is you've pretended to be ABLE to do what you CANNOT do, pretending to have done what you CANNOT POSSIBLY have done, and now you are "dreaming", literally "wishful thinking", having a fantasy, that you've convinced yourself you actually DID do it. That you are doing it now. That you are PROVING that it is real and possible. But you're not. You're failing to prove it. Reality is unaffected. You are just delusional.

So it's not that you're inside a real separation trying to get out. It's ONLY that you BELIEVE you are, you THINK you are, and you are MISTAKEN in believing and thinking you are, because in truth YOU ARE NOT. You have not done anything real whatsoever. You're just someone who believes they have committed a crime that they HAVE NOT committed. You think you sinned, but you didn't. You think you had a power that you do not have. You think you've CAUSED something REAL to happen against God, but you DID NOT.

LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

All you have is a case of BEING MISTAKEN. All you have is a case of having MADE THE ERROR, of believing, that you can and have done something that you shouldn't have done. It's not even that you DID make a real mistake. You just THINK you did.

It's like, a child who does something and they think they broke something, and they become upset and start crying, and hurting themselves, because they feel bad about what they did. And there's the adult trying to reassure them, that what they THINK they did, it totally does not matter, they DIDN'T cause any real harm, nothing has really been affected, and if they will just open their eyes and LOOK, they will SEE that it's TRUE, that NOTHING HAS GONE WRONG.

It's the recognition that everything is STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Everything is still perfect, holy, whole, innocent, unharmed, safe, protected, undefiled, unattacked, completely happy, and totally healed. Because it's only your MISTAKEN BELIEF that ITS NOT, that needs to be undone. You are just mistaken. Just very deluded and deceived, in believing something is true that isn't. YOU ARE JUST CONFUSED.

What you think you've done, you HAVE NOT DONE. What you think was possible, IS NOT POSSIBLE. You're merely in a state of denial, pretense, trying to convince yourself that you ACTUALLY CAN DO what you cannot do. You're using all kinds of illusory dreams of weapons against yourself and others to TRY to bring about the death of God's son, to try to attack, to try to produce PROOF that you ACTUALLY HAVE sinned and that you ACTUALLY DO deserve to die. But not only have you not sinned, YOU CANNOT DIE. And even your attempts to prove it with a DREAM, wherein the dream body seems to die, STILL does not prove it. Because you carry on.

"You have made a bargain that you cannot keep." You literally are NOT CAPABLE of proving to be true, what is NEVER true. You literally CANNOT destroy the Son of God. So this whole ENTIRE dream world, designed to try to demonstrate and prove that God's Son can be anything less than immortal, is TOTALLY FUTILE. It DOES NOT WORK. Death does not work. Death is FAILURE, failure to make illusions real, failure to prove death overcomes life, and failure to have ANY REAL EFFECTS WHATSOEVER.

So basically, there you are, an innocent IMMORTAL BEING, who can NEVER stop being immortal, PRETENDING to be mortal, pretending to suffer against your will, pretending to be a victim, pretending that a dream world is choosing everything for you against your will, and pretending that you can die. ALL TOTALLY FICTIONAL. All fake. All made-up. All illusions. Because NOTHING can change the sheer FACT of what you are, a totally immortal spirit being that IS STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Which you can NEVER CHANGE. EVER.

"I am still as God created me" is atonement thinking. This is a forgiving perception. It is a recognition that only the truth is true. It is a remembering that NOTHING HAS REALLY HAPPENED. Nothing has gone wrong. You are totally safe and loved in Heaven. You HAVE NOT SINNED WHATSOEVER. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING REAL HAS BEEN AFFECTED!!! Not even a tiny bit! You're just sleeping and dreaming of being a sinner. You'll wake up to realize and remember, that dream was so ridiculous, it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for you to sin!

Absolutely EVERYTHING In this ENTIRE WORLD, this whole universe, is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS NONSENSE. Not one single thing about it is true. It is the dream of death, a TOTAL FICTION, absolutely bullshit in every way imaginable. It is a state of denial, a state of unconsciousness, a state of dreaming that you're exiled from Heaven.

You are having nothing more than a bad dream of death, in which terrible things seem to happen, impossible things, unthinkable things. And yet when you wake up, you will know, without a doubt, the ENTIRE THING was totally impossible. And you will thank God that NOT ONE SINGLE THING IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAS EVER TRUE.

This is atonement. This recognition is forgiveness. This truth, that you HAVEN'T done anything, that NOTHING happened. That THERE IS NO WORLD, NO EARTH, NO SPECIAL THINGS, there is NO DREAM, there is ONLY HEAVEN. "Only the creations of light are real" "There is no life outside of heaven." Therefore you are JUST MISTAKEN to believe otherwise, and recognizing this is a forgiving attitude.

You ARE forgiven, fully, because you LITERALLY have NOT DONE ANYTHING!! Your only choice now is whether to recognize and accept this truth, or whether to stay in denial and pretend you can and should suffer. And it's not God's will that you suffer in any way.

"Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."

Everything about most religions is fairly accurate in that it describes what's happening INSIDE THE DREAM. They describe what APPEARS to be true here.

It SEEMS that sin is real, it SEEMS that therefore God will judge and condemn us, it SEEMS that death can be justified, and it SEEMS that we can never be with God again.

The key point is, there is a chunk of metaphysical truth regarding what happened BEFORE the separation, before the dream, which frames the entire dream in a different light. And this chunk of truth, missing from religions, is extremely key in putting everything into its proper perspective.

Recognizing that Heaven is real, God is unconditional love, separation is impossible, and the innocent cannot sin, would have to tell you that the entire content of the dream and everything that goes along with it is not REAL. It is impossible.

But without that key fact, if you only look at what seems true within the dream, after the illusion of separation, it starts to seem quite sensible to conclude the exact opposite. You'll then say that sin is real, death is real, God has vengeance, you need to repent of real sins, etc.

The religion then becomes all about this fiction of having "actually sinned", and what you need to do to atone for it. And ultimately within that same idea, there MUST be also the idea that only death can atone for sin. And so the religion, while seeming to uphold moral values and lead towards love, also inadvertently supports death.

Descriptions of what seems real in a dream can only ever be opposite to the truth.

This is the one key area in which A Course in Miracles is different, because it explains what happened BEFORE separation or what conditions were like, such that the entire content of the dream is clearly RECOGNIZED as being false, unreal, untrue and impossible. It gives us the clarity to see that everything within the dream is an ILLUSION, not a reality.

This puts an entirely different spin on everything we perceive here. It totally reverses the illusion of the meaning of what seems to happen, or all the conclusions that have been drawn from appearances. The proper framing of everything that goes on in the dream world puts everything into its correct place and perspective, recognizing the real truth for what it is, and recognizing the illusion as an illusion. Failure to do this, or the deliberate "omission" of this key foundation at the core of truth, makes the entire content of the dream suddenly twist to a completely opposite and confused explanation of events.

Only a truth based on completely pure non-duality can explain and properly frame why and how everything within the dualistic world is false and unreal. Otherwise if you stop just short of awakening from the dream, or you stop just beneath the peak of the dream's heights, it will make the dream seem to be real and you will not wake up from it. This is why those religions ultimately keep people asleep. They are religions of the ego, based in the ego's thought system, worshipping the ego's God of death.

Death can't be true and separation can't be true and sin can't be true because God only creates eternal innocent life. If the absolute truth remains hidden, all true meaning is lost and insanity begins to seem sane.

It's somewhat a course myth that "you need to do forgiveness."

The course is actually saying that you do NOT need to be forgiven, because God created you so perfectly that you could never possibly do anything that would require forgiveness.

What it does say is that you do not RECOGNIZE your eternal changeless innocence, and so the only seeming need you have is to WAKE UP TO THE REALITY OF your innocent state.

That's matter of recognition and acceptance of what already is. It is nothing to do with you putting that innocence in place. This is why "atonement" or the seeming process of healing and correction, really is more of an UNDOING or stripping away of all the bullshit lies that you've placed on top of your perfect innocent self, to claim that you're not innocent, even while still continuing to be innocent underneath.

So forgiveness and salvation are not actually something you really need as such. In truth you are forgiven arleady. The Holy Spirit already sees you as perfect. The only "problem" is only in the mind, and it is only in terms of you seeming to block out, deny, not want, or be unwilling to admit to, the ACTUAL CONTINUED TRUTH of your innocent self.

So if it seems there is any forgiveness "to be done", that simply means that you are out of touch with the fact that THERE ISN'T, and whatever process of awakening and recognition you need to go through to open up to and accept that TRUTH, you could maybe call "practicing forgiveness".

But it isn't in any way a practice to put forgiveness in place, or to make you be forgiven. It is purely a matter of you being OUT OF ALIGNMENT with the innocence God gave you already.

Forgiveness recognizes that there is nothing to forgive. Healing recognizes that there is nothing to heal. Peace recognizes there is nothing that has ever disturbed your peace. Love recognizes that there is only love to love. And your immortality recognizes that you never even began to be mortal.

"YOU need NO forgiveness, for the wholly pure have never sinned. Give, then, what He has given you, that YOU may see His Son as one, and thank his Father, as He thanks YOU."

"Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made."

"You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as Your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am Your Father and you are My Son."

"Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible, and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God."

"The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his "sins" are but his own imagining. His REALITY is forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but AWAKENED. In his dreams he HAS betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been REALLY done."

The ego is a state of insanity, in which what is true and false are completely confused with each other. In ego we have conditional love. We believe that some things are just downright evil, guilty, bad and wrong. We categorize the world into a hierarchy and we decide certain things like murder, war, sickness etc are all hell, while other things like sunsets and rainbows are lovable.

Unconditional love on the other hand would say that it loves ALL the time regardless. It sees innocence and harmlessness everywhere. Which means it continues feeling love even in the face of evil and war, attack and murder and death. It keeps smiling regardless. It even finds something beautiful to see in it.

To the ego it's going to have a reaction that this is completely insane. To suggest that war is not bad, and sickness is not wrong, and all forms of suffering are lovable. You'll feel like protesting against the idea of awakening because it flies in the face of everything the world believes. It goes against your moral compass and your sense of values and of what is good and evil.

Real love doesn't change when situations change, it doesn't adapt to the situation and it doesn't pay any attention to the form of what's happening. It could be considered oblivious and seemingly inconsiderate in a sense.

ACIM it telling us that we need to find a way to love the world even though, in and of itself, its own nature seems unlovable. Even the war and destruction and murder has to be somehow forgivable, and forgiveness is an earthly form of love. A form of unconditional love. But the idea of loving hell, or loving attackers, or loving abusers, or loving punishment, it all starts seeming outrageously blasphemous and offensive to the ego.

The ego in its insanity always believes that anything truly sane is insane. It thinks God is evil. It believes heaven is hell. It wants nothing to do with the truth or the Holy Spirit. Ideas of unconditional love are seen as treacherous and ignorant and lacking compassion for the "real suffering". Anything which really makes true sense is seen as completely nonsense.

This is why it can seem challenging to "wake up" because our egos actually believe the direction we need to head in is going to take us further into insanity, closer to evil, and away from safety. At first the notion that you can see beauty in something "the son of God made in hate" seems impossible and ridiculous. The idea that objects and forms of separation and attack could be regarded as representing the truth, seems completely false.

But somehow we still have to find a way to consider how it may be possible that there is a higher vantage point, capable of being forgiving towards attackers, capable of loving hell, and even capable of translating hell into heaven. The idea that earth can reflect heaven in spite of its completely flawed-seeming nature, at least on the level of form, seems far out of reach, and unwanted, but must be accomplished if we are to rise above the battlefield into the light.

This is the law of cause and effect. Where there is cause there must be effects. Where there are effects there must be a cause. There cannot be effects without an ONGOING cause. As soon as cause is taken away, effects must vanish. If something is continuing, so is the causing. When the flashlight switches off, there is no light. Wen the flashlight switches on, there is light. It is entirely fiction that causes are moments in time which trigger something and produce a chain of effects which are completely divorced from the original cause. There are no effects unless the original cause is STILL THERE.

Everything is deliberate. Everything is chosen. This is because you always have free will. This can never be violated. If anything is to occur, you must consent to it. Anything you do not choose simply does not happen. Your mind causes all events and effects. Nothing in the world can change you or affect you or decide for you. The body has no ability to choose anything. It is entirely an effect of your mind.

"Your mind makes this decision as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."

"No-one dies without their own consent."

""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."

If you are unhappy, you chose to be. If you are sick, you chose to be. If you are dead, you chose to be. If you are healing, you chose to be. If you resurrect, you chose to be. If you are not at peace, you chose to be.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"No one comes to the atonement except willingly."

Just as you choose and cause everything that happens, so too you can choose the opposite.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo." ... Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"It is you who has the power to dominate everything you see, merely by recognizing who you are."

The world does not turn without a mind making it turn. Plants do not grow without someone willing it. Bodies do not become sick without a mind using them for attack. Death does not occur without a deliberate intention of suicide. Suffering cannot happen unless you attack yourself.

Literally nothing anywhere eon any level can EVER happen without someone choosing it. Recognize this, take back your power, stop destroying yourself and wake up to freedom.

In heaven, we’ve had an innocent little idea. We’ve wondered, what it might be like if things weren’t the way they are.

Nothing happens. We just have an idea. Like a daydream. We use our "imagination" to imagine what it MIGHT be like. We visualize it.

As a human, I can similarly take a moment to IMAGINE what it might be like, if I were a different person. I can imagine myself perhaps from a different country, with a different body, a different lifestyle, doing different things. I can imagine it in a fair amount of detail, maybe even imagine sights and sounds and smells and experiences, which seem partly real to some degree.

But my imagining what that might be like, is a far cry from what it would mean to *actually* be another person. When I stop daydreaming, I come back to my senses and remember the obvious fact of who I "actually am". Who I imagined myself to be is simply dropped, like a discarded toy. My body didn’t actually turn into another person from another country. Who I seem to be is not changed at all. I was just having an idea.

When I wake up from my little visualization, it no longer exists. I was just dreaming. Imagining. There are no consequences to "this" reality from my little daydream. Everything in the daydream does not exist and never really did.

The Son of God is having a little dream like this. Except the Son of God’s mind is VERY powerful. It is able to have really, really big ideas. When the Son of God imagines He is not as God created Him, his little fantasy is *extraordinarily* sophisticated. Very, very elaborate.

He dreams of an entire universe, with billions of planets, all kinds of creatures and objects and strange things happening. A massive history of time spanning billions of "years’, and even an illusion of time passing very slowly.

He also dreams of planet Earth, complete with human bodies and plants and animals and mountains and oceans. He does this in such extraordinary detail, with such POWER, that it produces a massive massive dream. A huge visualization.

But remember, this is just an IDEA. He’s having a thought. He is not CREATING it for real, it is entirely him "wondering", exploring the idea, thinking about it, imagining it. This universe "showing up" is HIM THINKING. An idea.. what MIGHT it be like IF I were separate from God. This IDEA contains the entire physical universe and the Earth. It’s a huge idea. Everything that seems to happen is INSIDE that idea.

"Ideas leave not their source" ultimately means that the universe we made (this "world", containing Earth), did not LEAVE the IDEA. Nor did any causes in the dream leak out" and effect reality. Nor did any of that idea of separation *actually happen*. It ONLY IS AN IDEA. A "what if?"

This idea, did not ACTUALLY produce a separation. God is sitting there totally happy and unaffected. The Son of God is just a little bit asleep having this really really big idea. And that’s all. Nothing else is happening! Just an idea.

The entire "universe of separation" is inside of and part of that IDEA. It’s just a dream. A fantasy. Imagination.

There is a MASSIVE difference between, an IDEA of separation being dreamed, and an ACTUAL separation happening in reality. Separation does not happen in reality or in truth, at all. All that happens, is the Son has an idea. And everything he imagines INSIDE that idea, is still just part of the idea. It‘s got nothing to do with reality.

Since we as the Son are dreaming, having an IDEA, we are seeming to currently experience what it’s like INSIDE the idea. And inside the idea, it seems huge and elaborate and convincing. This makes us THINK, that "it is really happening". We even think, we really are a body. We even think, there really is a planet earth!

But the truth is, there is ONLY an idea of a body, there is ONLY an idea of a planet earth, and there is ONLY an idea of being separate from God. A visualization, an imagined image of what it MIGHT BE LIKE, *IF* it were to happen. Not *AS* it happening.

We are mistaken when we believe this idea is in fact HAPPENING. We are mistaken when we believe we are ACTUALLY a body. We are mistaken when we believe that the universe we are IMAGINING, is actually existing. We are mistaken when we think the PLANET EARTH, actually EXISTS.

All of this, is inside of an IDEA. Just a THOUGHT. Not a thought which "DID make something happen". Not a thought which "DID happen in reality". It’s a thought that DID NOT HAPPEN IN REALITY, or TO reality, or outside of the IDEA.

An idea of being separate from God, is NOTHING LIKE *actually* being separate from God. Being actually separate from God is IMPOSSIBLE. Being separate from God HAS NOT HAPPENED AT ALL! The *idea* has had no REAL consequences outside of itself. In other words, the DREAM of what separation *might* be like, did not cause anything to happen OUTSIDE of the dream. It had NO EFFECT on God, no effect on the Son of God, and no effect on reality.

Separation from God is just an idea. "We" as humans are living INSIDE A THOUGHT ABOUT SEPARATENESS! Not inside a real separation. Sin, the idea that we actually DID separate from God "for real" and that separation had "real consequences" on "reality", ie something *leaked out* of the dream/idea and did something IN REALITY. If this were true, God would have been affected, and you as the DREAMER would no longer be as God created you.

For example, in this dream, when something *seems* to happen, we tend to believe something REALLY happened. This is a belief that sin is real - that dreams affect reality. Then we believe there are "real consequences", that something "real" was affected and changed. And this of course produces guilt.

We therefore need to become able to recognize, that whatever seems to "happen" inside this huge IDEA, is not actually happening in REALITY. It is not happening TO reality. Nothing is REALLY happening. Therefore whatever appears to happen "as a sin", is not being done TO reality and has NO REAL CONSEQUENCES. God is not affected in the slightest. Your real self, which is dreaming this whole thing, has not been affected. Your real self, your dreaming self, having an IDEA, is STILL as God created you.

Since sin did not happen IN reality or TO reality, that must mean, that you are only having an innocent idea. Your idea has no reality. Your idea has no consequences. It’s FICTION. Which means, whatever you think you DID, you DID NOT DO IT in reality. You only do it INSIDE AN IDEA. Inside a dream. And it does not leave the dream. God is unaffected.

Which means....... drumroll...... that you are STILL 100% INNOCENT, you HAVE NOT sinned against God, there HAS NOT been a separation, there ARE no consequences, you are NOT guilty, you are STILL as God created you, and your idea is ONLY an idea.

When your dream ends, when you stop having the idea, when you stop imagining that you can be something you can never be, what has happened? Nothing. Just an idea. Just a thought. Just a little daydream where you wondered what separation might be like. You don’t return from a real separation. It was NOT a real separation. It was nothing more than an IDEA. And ideas ARE NOT in any way anything like THE REAL THING.

Your idea is an idea of impossibility. "It is the world you see that is impossible." This "world" is the content of EVERYTHING inside the idea. An entire universe of fantasy separation. That includes the entire planet Earth, the sun, the moon, and the whole rest of this universe. This is the world you MADE UP. You did not create it. You did not make it ACTUALLY EXIST. You just dreamed of it.

This means, even the Earth, the sun, the galaxy, the universe, all bodies, all physical forms, all creatures here, the oceans and mountains, has never ACTUALLY existed in REALITY. It has only seemed to exist inside an IDEA. A dream. A fictional fairytale. An imaginative visualization of something impossible seeming possible.

So when the Course says, "there is no world", it is saying, this entire "world" - dream existence - that we thought about for an instant, and never actually created, DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. This world, including earth, does not exist. It does not exist IN REALITY. Dreams do not exist in reality. Sin does not exist in reality. "The Earth" does not exist in reality. This whole physical universe does not exist in reality.

Were just having a little idea. That’s all. The idea has no real effects. Having the idea doesn’t create the thing we’re having an idea about. The world we made-up is a figment of our imagination. It’s not there!

There is nothing in, or about, the Earth, which will ever be a part of reality. It is made of thought. IT’s an idea. And this tiny mad idea was over the instant it seemed to be thought. It’s already over. The thought of limitation has been limited. The idea of an end has ended. Not a single note in heaven’s song has been missed.

The really key thing to realize is, AT NO TIME did Heaven stop being Heaven. At no time did you stop being as God created you. At no time did God change. Your inncence was NEVER affected. You did not sin, requiring you to have to undo the sin. There is no sin. There is no death. There is no world. Your real self, did not stop being real. Even when you had this little idea, your true self did not change even slightly. It is as God created it RIGHT NOW, always has been, and always will be. Just because you are having a MAD LITTLE IDEA, doesn’t change anything real AT ALL.

When you dream at night of all manner of strange things happening, perhaps that you have a terrible disease and people are chasing you down a dark alley, you wake up the next day.... where is the terrible disease? Did it leak out of the dream and affect your body? Not at all. Where are the figures who seemed to chase you? They are nowhere to be found. They were fiction. A dream. NOT REAL. Not happening. Nothing. Just a temporary idea, which seemed convincing from inside it, but was utterly unconvincing from outside of it.

You are just inside a dream. IT’s not happening. There is no earth. There are no bodies. There is no death. The son of God is FREE! Separation has not happened. There is no sin. You simply had a little idea, and it is already over.

An idea of something happening is not the same as something happening. Nothing has happened. There is no world. Accepting this is the atonement. Stop dreaming. Wake up.

Jesus said a curious thing to me last night, after I was pondering how I seemed to be here and was uncertain if he was present. He said:

"I'm not invisible, you are."

There is quite a lot of truth to this. This world we live in that we think is visible, is really invisibility. It is the attempt to hide from God, in darkness, and be unseen. It's a world of a lack of recognition. Of unawareness. Of not seeing. "I cannot see in darkness but in light".

And then there is a world, Heaven, where Jesus is, which is completely exposed, absolutely obvious, totally visible, where everything is seen in the light and nothing is hidden. How can that be called invisibility? Yet it seems invisible to our BODY.

The body was made specifically to feast its 'eyes' upon form and be blinded by it. It was made to shut out VISION, and to replace it with 'sight'. But that sight was designed to ONLY show you illusions and errors and projections and dreams, and not reality. It was in fact made to cover up reality and shut out vision.

So here we are walking around thinking everything is oh-so visible and yet this is a movement into invisibility. And we think that we're the ones who are 'showing up' and 'being present', through physical means, but physical means is the OPPOSITE of showing up and being present.

Jesus is therefore saying, he is right here in front of our face and we don't see Him. He is not hiding. We are. And he is totally visible, and we are not.

Beings who have gone before us and are of a 'higher vibration' and who are ascended etc seem to leave the field of frequency of our body's ability to perceive, but it's not actually that they stop being with us or around us, it's just that WE stay in too low of a frequency and we think that visibility is invisibility, and vice versa. They actually enter into visibility, and we stay invisible, and then think we can't see them any more.

So what Jesus is saying to me and to you is, he is with you, all the time, fully and completely, 'in person', and he is even more present than you are and it's you that needs to wake up and become aware of 'sights' that you are missing and things that you are not seeing. To join the heavenly party.

Jesus is waiting for us to show up!

When I had an awakening experience in the presence of God, it was so profound. I had no idea it was going to happen and had no idea that God would be so loving, gentle, soft and joyful. I especially did not know that God was not far away, but right under my own skin.

I was aware that God was real and that I was becoming merged with Christ and that my ego self was just about going to disappear. I felt myself "pull back" from the dream as though snapping out of it, into a state of such intense awareness the likes of which I had no idea was possible. I thought I was awake every day of the week when I got up in the morning, but this was a whole other level of wakefulness.

Later, when I had to go back to work, it was surprisingly bizarre how I seemed to be aware of something as though it was totally obvious, and yet nobody else seemed to be aware of it. I couldn't figure out why they didn't know about it.

They acted like they were in some kind of unconscious sleep, seemingly awake but somehow not, totally oblivious to the presence of God which was everywhere. It was like there was this huge elephant in the room that I was aware of, and nobody else even had the slightest idea that it was there.

Trying to interact with people was very peculiar because I had to sort of pretend to be at their level, and all the things they thought were important were not important at all. It was kind of funny how fixated on "small stuff" they were.

It was like looking in on the scene from outside of it, watching the people go about their lives seemingly normally but as though they were half asleep, not even realizing what they weren't realizing.

As I "fell back asleep" over the following weeks, I returned to the same state of mind as them, more or less, and once again was not aware of the presence of God. At this time was quite devastating and I had a huge sense of loss and grief.

But from time to time, God pops in to say hello and I gradually inch my way back to an awareness that I now know is possible. But I can at least understand that when we do wake up, it's going to be a bit bizarre being in a world where almost everyone is still sleeping. I guess we'll have to tiptoe quietly.

The happy truth behind every seeming disasterous illusion in this world, is that nothing has gone wrong at all and we are still with God.

The happy truth is also that it is actually possible to be immortal, as spirit, and to even manifest a seemingly incorruptible body if you so choose. Doing so is nothing compared to your real power.

All things that could ever go wrong to hurt you, come from you, and are a choice, and therefore not choosing them renders you invulnerable. If you do not see this clearly it's because you believe the *illusion* that people don't do things to themselves.

Nothing happens to anyone without not only their consent but without them actually literally orchestrating and doing it to themselves. So this myth of vulnerability, that you can be affected, or that death can come along and attack you without having the power to stop it, is a complete lie that has been perpetuated for millennia.

The happy truth is that all the things that you're concerned about, are not true. And nothing is really wrong. And nobody is really getting hurt. Of course that flies in the face of what *appears* to be happening, because that's us falling for the illusion that people aren't choosing.

If we could recognize and see the choices everyone is making and expose the entire back-story of how everyone has deliberately chosen every single thing they have ever experienced, we would not be able to believe for a second that something can happen to us against our will. And our belief in death would be totally blown out of the water.

It's only because the truth seems to be hidden, i.e. your are unaware of it, that it seems plausible that things are happening to you that you did not ask for. And this also means that once you are aware, you will no longer make yourself suffer and die, and lo-and-behold will find that nothing beyond you has the power to make you die either.

As such you are completely protected, perfectly safe, only love is real, and really this is all just a big joke. The Son of God is playing with illusions and toying with death as part of His little fantasy story-telling adventure, and one day we will wake up to experience this truth and know that nothing ever really happened to anyone.

And then we'll remember to laugh

There are two worlds before your eyes.

1) An illusory world

2) Your belief that the illusory world is reality.

You are meant to correct your misperception of the ILLUSORY world, by undoing your belief that it is REAL.

That's what it means when the Course says "seek not to change the world, but seek to change your mind about the world."

It does not mean, change your mind about a REAL world. It means, your idea that the world even IS real, IS your misperception of the illusion, and that in TRUTH, this world is ONLY an illusion, not a reality.

Seeking to change your mind about the world, to fix your perceptual errors, should NOT lead to a state where you are still seeing the world as "real" but with some kind of "peace" happening.

If you deeply and fully have removed the insanity from your mind, have undone your perceptual errors, and are no longer mistaken, you MUST be in a state of mind that recognizes the world is NOT REAL. You MUST be seeing that it is in fact an illusion, through and through.

Many people are very deluded in their comprehension of what the Course means by this, and therefore develop this attitude that the world is objectively real and you should therefore just change how you look at it. That you should "look at the real world from a peaceful perspective".

That leads to tremendous POWERLESSNESS, whereby you think that you only need to fix your misperception of a REAL world, so that you will see a REAL world correctly. NO!

THE WORLD IS NOT REAL!!!!!!!!!!!

If you do that, and your goal is to see this "real world" in a perfect way, you will HAVE to at some point become stuck. At some point, your belief in its "reality" is going to put a ceiling on how much awakening you can have, because if you were to go further, you would have to question whether the world is real or not. And since you believe IT IS real, that means you can ONLY fix your interpretations of stuff happening outside your control, and basically will WELCOME DEATH with open arms as though - you know... it's a part of life, meant to happen, inevitable, etc. Then you will "die in peace". COME ON!!!!

The world is an illusion. All sin is an illusion. All death is an illusion. All bodies are illusions. The entire world AND the entire universe is an illusion! This is not REALITY that you're in. It's a delusional hallucination. At most it is an illusion, but you've been trying to make more of it... to "make it real". If forgiveness is the undoing of "making the problem real", then that should tell you, that forgiveness leads to the awareness that IT IS NOT REAL.

The only way you can claim the atonement for yourself or anyone, is if you are prepared to be aware that this entire world is an ILLUSION. You must be willing to accept this or you CANNOT wake up from it.

If the world is real, you cannot be innocent, you cannot be sinless, you cannot be guiltless, and you cannot be free from fear. AND, you cannot be forgiven. The only way you are innocent, and the only way you can claim the atonement, is if this is all just an illusion. Reality is elsewhere! This is just a dream.

Forgiveness is nothing more than seeing correctly.

It means recognizing that illusions ARE illusions, and not falling for them.

It means overlooking illusions and seeing past them, rather that taking them at their appearance and thinking they are real.

This extends all the way to the illusion of death, which is where the Son of God in all HIs divine freedom and power creates the ILLUSION that He has absolutely no freedom or choice left, or that things can happen to Him against His will.

This is of course impossible, so it is an illusion, bit it APPEARS on the surface to be an unwanted death, happening to someone who didn't seem to ask for it. But the Son of God is faking it.

If and when you can recognize and see that this is in fact an illusion of death, not a real death, then you are now over-looking and not falling for the trick. Believing it's real is a complete mistake.

You will only believe illusions are real when you forget to forgive, which puts you into so-called "judgement", which is really to do with attacking appearances and making them out to be the truth.

Illusions are not the truth. Death is not truth. But as soon as you are convinced that it's real you've become blinded, you've been tempted and you've succumbed to the deception. You didn't notice that it was the Son of God, infinite and immoral, who was pretending He can die.

And so because you didn't look past the ILLUSION of death, to see its Author, which would reveal to you plain as day - this is absolutely pretend - so you enter into the illusion yourself and go unconscious.

All you need realize then is that all you need to do to 'wake up' is to see correctly, ie have your perception corrected, so that you are not falling into the lie, are not believing the trap, and didn't go along with the story. It means fixing your vision on the truth, on what is really going on here, not buying into any form of victimhood or suffering or accidental events, and staying very certain that the immortal Son of God cannot be harmed. Death cannot be real. And nothing is really happening.

To overcome an illusion, ie "forgive", you must learn to see past the deception that you've fallen for, remember the truth, and stop taking it seriously. It's like some old trick that someone keeps playing on you and finally you figure out that someone is behind it and it's not just some random bizarre thing going on, his cover is blown and the illusion is broken, and now you can no longer fall for it. That's all it is, just learning to recognize and see the truth and stop being deceived by appearances.

All false appearances are your interpretation of the 'illusion of separation' as though it is not an illusion. Behind this misinterpretation there is still an illusion being created by the Son of God, but it has no power to convince you it's real unless you choose to play along with it. Then it's just something you can't believe anymore and you know is false. As such you escape death, because death is just part of believing that illusions are the truth.

Liberation from ego requires only that we RECOGNIZE what is true and what is false. In that recognition, nothing needs to be added to the ego to explain why it is false. You don't need any special beliefs to organize it in a particular way. You don't need labels for it or anything. You only need to see clearly what it IS.

It's kind of like this... you're looking at an orange sitting on the table and you see it clearly. You can tell clearly its an orange. It's not an apple. It's not a banana. It's just an orange. But then if you enter into ego, you start taking things out of context, and you switch around your idea of what is true and what is false. So then you start thinking, well, maybe it's an orange-colored apple, or, maybe it's a squished-together banana.. and before you know it you don't even see it AS it is anymore. And you're insane.

So then all you need to do is become clear. Get your awareness back to clear seeing - vision of Christ - which is able to simply see without any distortions. And when it sees the ego for what it simply is - that is is an illusion, it is not real, it has no truth to it, it's a mistake, it isn't doing anything, it's imaginary and doesn't even really exist. That's the truth of it. That's seeing it WITH truth.

And then you don't need to really DO anything about the ego. You don't need to defend against it or control it or fix it or change it because you simply RECOGNIZE it isn't even really there. You recognize it is a completely ridiculous, unbelievable, wholly false idea with absolutely no value or meaning or purpose whatsoever. And then it is absolutely effortless to dismiss it.and let it go. It IS nothing and it never was.

The only struggle we have is when we believe that things which are false are true, or things which are true are false, and we're just not seeing clearly. We're mistaken. We become severely mistaken about all the ways we are stuck or sick or unhappy or lacking or deprived or abused or whatever... all these reasons which says... the truth is not true, the truth is false.. and this suffering and the need for it is true instead. That can only be perceived with a distorted, unclear perception. You must be seeing wrongly and it produces a vision of something which IS NOT TRUE.

So everything that you think is keeping you from love and happiness, is not TRUE at all. Anything anyone seemed to do to you, they didn't. Every piece of ego that you believe has the power to keep you from God, NO, it doesn't have any power.

This is all we're doing to wake up to the truth... sorting out what is true and what is false. Becoming clear. Becoming able to SEE clearly. And that's all we need to do in order to recognize the ego does not even exist. There IS NO SEPARATION. There is no sin. There is no death. This is TRUTH. But if you can't see it, you will believe otherwise (or you'll believe otherwise SO THAT you cannot see it).

"There is a Light in you Which cannot die, Whose Presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."

"You sacrifice YOUR innocence with his, and die each time you see in him a sin deserving death. Yet every instant can you be reborn, and given life again. His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it. But its origin is where it must be changed, if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be."

"You have nailed YOURSELF to a cross and placed a crown of thorns upon your own head. Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the Son of God as crucified you are asleep. And as long as you believe that YOU can crucify him you are only having nightmares. You who are beginning to wake are still aware of dreams and have not yet forgotten them."

"Your will is His Life, which He has GIVEN to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"It is in this that the teacher of God must trust. This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself."

Often overlooked here is not just that it is the responsibility of YOU to accept atonement for yourself, but it is the responsibility of a MIRACLE WORKER. Accepting the atonement is an important PART of becoming ABLE to perform miracles AFTER the accepting of the atonement.

"The teacher of God is a miracle worker because he gives the gifts HE HAS RECEIVED."

When you go to the atonement and accept the truth about yourself, you will be willing to receive God's love. This receiving and willingness to accept it mean that YOU BELIEVE that you are worthy of God's truth, and therefore, SO IS EVERYONE ELSE. And therefore the atonement puts you in touch with the ABILITY and WILLINGNESS to extend The Power of God to others!

"Yet he must first accept them. He need do no more, nor is there more that he could do. By accepting healing he can give it."

By accepting healing, HE CAN GIVE IT. Meaning, after you receive healing yourself, you are in a position to GIVE HEALING to others, to facilitate it and to bright light and RELIEF to their darkness, to heal the sick and raise the dead because YOU have been healed of sickness and raised from death!

"If he doubts this, let him remember Who gave the gift and Who received it. Thus is his doubt corrected."

And in miracle-working, the Holy Spirit will give the gift of love and healing TO OTHERS through us, through our hands, because we have received it FROM him. Therefore we have been willing to be OPEN to allowing it to move THROUGH us.

Jesus also tells us about how HE DID NOT accept the atonement "for himself alone".

"I could not atone for myself alone. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to SHARE IT in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn TO EVERY MIND CREATED BY GOD, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son."

So Jesus is telling us simply, receive God's healing, accept atonement "first" so that you are willing to receive AND GIVE (because giving and receiving ARE ONE), and THEN you will be willing to share it and GIVE IT to everyone else, to help them wherever they are at, and to EXTEND YOUR HEALING to them.

This is why the atonement is NOT supposed to mean, "I accept this only for myself in isolation, fuck everyone else."

Nor does this mean therefore, "I am only supposed to accept atonement, therefore I will not perform miracles or do anything in the world"! A GROSS DISTORTION.

We are to accept atonement SO THAT WE CAN HELP OTHERS IN THE WORLD, to help them to heal, to wake up, and to come home to God WITH US as our brothers.

"***Now is the body healed*** because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

"***The body CAN be healed*** by its EFFECTS, which are as limitless as is itself."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a ***picture of a body still***, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But ***THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all.***"

"***The BODY is healed*** BECAUSE YOU CAME WITHOUT IT and joined the Mind in which all healing rests."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. ***Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed.*** The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone. "

"***A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed.*** A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. "

""Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; (I am as God created me) arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain ******and his body healed*******, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. ""

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. 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. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

"I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

Notice that it is very clear here, that Jesus is saying when you are SANE, your body can and must also be HEALED. That there is a direct parallel between a healed mind and a healed body. Sanity of mind produces bodily health. As you wake to happy dreams your body should not have sickness. The body's health is fully guaranteed, sickness is impossible, and your body becomes a symbol of eternal life and harmlessness. This is a radical teaching particularly for anyone who thinks that it's okay for the body to remain in states of sickness while the mind is allegedly "separately" healed. When the mind is sane, it WILL heal the body. And the body will then testify to your brother's innocence. "Brother, at your hand I LIVE".

In the separation from God and yourself, all that's happened is a part of your mind has believed in being separate. This "split mind" believes things which are not true, and not of God.

We call it the ego, but it's just a part of your mind's faulty belief. It believes in all forms of separation, suffering, specialness, exclusion, attack, destruction and death. It believes in everything opposite to God's nature.

In every way imaginable, with every attribute of God, it has opposed God and come up with its opposite. This egoic mind wants nothing to do with heaven, wants to destroy God's son, wants to kill God off, and wants to rule its own kingdom.

That mind which believes such insane things is in your mind, as part of your mind. You do believe this. That's why you have "an ego", or a part of you that is acting against you, against God, against life. When you, as a whole, attempt to approach God, heaven, light, the Holy Spirit, anything true or good or holy, this OTHER PART of your mind will object. It does NOT want it. It does not understand it, misinterprets it, sees it as an enemy, is threatened by it, hates it, and wants nothing to do with it.

You basically have this anti-christ in your mind, this "devil", this evil-seeming self, which wants to run away from God and go live in hell in its own little kingdom of death and suffering forever. It does not want help, it does not want salvation, it does not want healing, and it definitely does not want your real identity.

That part of mind is very confused, lost, alone, sick and afraid. It is weak and powerless. It is offended by everything and loves nothing. It is backwards and twisted, deprived and depraved. It believes it is at war with God, even though God isn't remotely at war with it, although God is opposite to its nature.

When you try to bring "yourself", your mind, any part of mind, into the light, this part of you will object. This part of you will feel offended by you reading A Course in Miracles. It will feel upset about what it has said and what it implies. It will believe that the truth is out to destroy it. It will hate the course. It will not want to wake up.

This egoic part of mind will resist the truth. It will dig in its heels and produce feelings of overwhelm, tiredness, blockage to energy flow, unwillingness to see or hear or read, avoidance, procrastination, disobedience, and all manner of defenses. This mind can also very much induce all forms of sickness as an attempt to escape from exposure to the truth. It does NOT want health or happiness.

Every time you "do the course" therefore, this part of YOU, this part of your mind, is like a belligerent unwilling child that you're dragging screaming and kicking into the light. It is terrified of God and does NOT want anything to do with ACIM. It will literally feel hurt and upset and offended and scared by what ACIM says.

As a result, very very often, you will find that when you try to do the course, you will have rebounds afterwards. You will feel upset, afraid, angry, hurt, offended, left out, ignored, as if the course hasn't acknowledged your existence or your specialness. You will feel like your very existence is threatened and will take steps to defend against it.

This happens simply because the mind is split. One part of you is trying to become more whole, the other part is putting up a fight and does not want anything to do with it. As you step into the light, the ego screams ever louder in its fear that you're torturing it or trying to make it encounter God. It sees this intimacy with God as a sure sign that it will be exterminated. It sees your efforts to be spiritual as offensive hateful attempts to destroy it.

It is absolutely no wonder then that as you take steps towards the truth, the egoic part of you that still believes wrongly will OBJECT, and sometimes strongly. It will try to reinforce and re-emphasize what is not true. It will tempt you to stay body identified and possessive of your physical treasures. It will try to get you to separate more. It will do whatever it can to preserve itself. Or in other words, YOU will try to preserve yourself because you think you are opposite to God.

We have to learn therefore that we are kind of "wounded people", and our wound is not very happy with the "remedy". It's like rubbing salt in the wound. Or it is painful to the touch. It's like a bruised part of mind which needs careful handling. Sometimes that means you have to go slow, take a break, and "throw your ego a bone." Do something normal, enjoy something physical, indulge or whatever. Just because that "addicted to hell" part of you believes that it NEEDS these things to maintain a sense of peace.

When you are seeming to appease the ego it will calm down, become quieter, relax, hide its defenses, pretend to be your friend, seemingly approve of your unsavory self-destruction, and even help you with your bad choices. It's when you start to move against it, in the direction of the light, that it will decide to no longer pretend being your friend. This doesn't mean it's becoming stronger, but it just means that PART OF YOU does not want to wake up.

"What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend." UrT2E12

So we have to do what we can, at a gentle pace, to try to awaken from this self-made nightmare, keeping an eye on the fact that we DO NOT WANT TO, and that part of us is still addicted to hell and suffering and death. Part of us wants to die. And that part is going to take some convincing. But while we have these two parts - a willing part and an unwilling part, we're going to keep encountering the fact that whenever we try to purify ourselves by moving toward God, the unhealed part of us is not going to like it.

Eventually of course this will wear off as more and more of the mind heals, the egoic nature becomes lighter and less believed in, less offended and less upset by what we are becoming exposed to. It takes time and trust and patience. Be gentle on yourself and don't push too hard.

This is a long and winding road, with many ups and down, and hopefully overall steady and sure movement towards the light. The ball and chain around your ankle will gradually lighten as you courageously learn to let go of death and destruction. Two steps forward, one step back, is understandable. Keep going, you'll get there. It's guaranteed.

Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.

How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.

If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".

You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.

Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.

The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.

Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.

You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.

When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.

That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.

Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.

As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.

Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.

Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.

We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.

That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.

And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.

When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.

Aware of all that is - God.

"Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense."

In ACIM terms, before the separation from God, we simply enjoyed what Jesus calls "awareness". This awareness is tightly tied into oneness and knowledge.

In awareness, you ARE that which you are aware of. There is nothing truly "separate" to observe that isn't already you. Since you ARE that which you are aware of, you have immediate and direct "knowledge" of it. Thus knowledge and awareness and oneness is all tied together.

Awareness also has power and love and creation in it. It can cause by will the creation of extensions to God's kingdom. It extends ITSELF as a co-creator, also extending God, to KNOW that which it creates. Just as God created US through directly KNOWING us.

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them."

In the separation, we attempted to reject all this. We rejected oneness and introduced separation. This now meant that we wanted something to "come between" ourselves and ourselves. Between us and God. Something which can be different over here than it is over there.

As a result, mind split and now formed what ACIM refers to as "consciousness". It's a separated state. The mind in this state is NOT creative, and does NOT have knowledge. Instead of being causal and powerful and one with everything, it is instead a state relying entirely on maintaining separation.

"Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego." At the same time of course the sense of identity went from you being the whole, to you being only a part. And now in the egoic consciousness state of mind, the mind became UN-creative (mis-creative) and unwilling to be one with everything.

Mind's rejection of creation and knowledge was kind of like trying to make the mind empty, or to stop broadcasting (creating). So instead of extending and uniting and sharing, it became sort of passive and unwilling.

As a result, mind now regards itself as a sort of RECEIVER of inputs, signals, which come to it from something it regards as NOT part of itself. Not one with itself or known. As such there now develops ideas of space and time, of distance and delay, or separateness between self and brothers and God.

"Perception is a RESULT not a cause."

"Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to PERCEIVE is NOT to know."

"Consciousness is the level which engages in the world, and is capable of responding to both external and internal impulses. Having no impulses from itself, and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong."

The perceiving "consciousness" state has now gone from being a powerful knowing creator-extender that is one with everything, to a disempowered passive state that doesn't know anything and sees everything as separate. Effectively it now sees itself as a victim or at the EFFECT OF things separate from itself.

Signals then enter the conscious mind either from without or within, and from the superconscious (God level) or subconscious (miracle level). Consciousness sort of RECEIVES these signals and thus PERCEIVES what it is TOLD exists. As though something outside of itself is making impressions upon it and giving it signals and telling it that stuff exists.

All of these signals in the perceiving mind are SENSED, in particular by the body. There is now a separation between self and other, so a separation between observer (who has awareness) and the observed. Because of the separation split between these two, it introduces the delay and distance of spacetime.

As such, every single physical object, all matter, space and time themselves, all human bodies, the planet Earth, the sun and moon etc, it's all ONLY a perceptual signal occurring in a state of separation. Separate things, being sensed by a separated mind, in a state in which the mind is not ONE with those things, and in which both the separated things AND the "separate observer" (ego) are illusions.

Both the ego mind (separated self) and the world it perceives (spacetime) depend entirely on maintaining separation and differences in order to maintain the mind split that leads to perception and consciousness. Without this "first split" in the mind, consciousness is not possible, perception is not possible, and separate objects are not possible.

This doesn't mean that the separate objects can be perceived "as one with" the observer. If the two are separate, perception is possible. If the two are one, perception is NOT possible and separation is NOT possible and OBJECTS are not possible. Matter is not possible, space and time are not possible, without a split mind.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

Thus if you are still perceiving, you are NOT knowing. Even true perception is NOT knowledge, not oneness, and not a healed mind. Thus you can seem to wake up to or attain very high states of CONSCIOUSNESS, in which you can perceive the "real world", BUT, this is not the same as the realm of total oneness which is heaven.

"Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light. But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

Waking up WITHIN consciousness, in a perceptual realm, is still a split-minded state of separation. Only when consciousness ENDS, the split is entirely healed, and separateness becomes impossible, does the mind return to TOTAL KNOWLEDGE, oneness, perception is impossible, and space and time are impossible. Without the split of consciousness, there is no world. And the mind must wake up FROM consciousness in order to return to the awareness of reality.

No more dreams, no more material objects with differences, no more bodies and planets, no more observers and observed things. Only a directly known realm of SPIRIT AND LIGHT, created by God to last forever.

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

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

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then. You will also remember that I made it very clear that the Resurrection was the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's."

"Awake in the dream" is where a person has near-total christ vision and is still in a body, still seeing the world through physical senses while simultaneously overlooking it with direct mind-vision. The world appears as a thin veil, it is recognized as a dream, and is regarded as unreal. The body is still being used by this "healed mind", but the person is highly identified with spirit and is not deceived by anything the body shows them. They are the light of the world, and a teacher of God.

"Awake FROM the dream" occurs only when christ vision is total, the veil of physical matter becomes so transparent that it parts entirely, is completely "seen through" (overlooked, forgiven), making it transparent and eventually to disappear from sight. Christ vision becomes the ONLY vision, the world disappears, the real world is seen for an instant, and then you WAKE UP ENTIRELY FROM DREAMING as all perception (even of the real world) ends. You return awareness of the Kingdom as your only reality. And that means goodbye bodies forever.

"It would indeed be impossible to be in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally knows also it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."

"But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this ***no longer sees the world***."

"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, ***and disappears*** before His holy sight."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. ***What further sight is needed***? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love ***behind all forms***, beyond all purposes. "

"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 which it came."

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

Can you accept the atonement?

For the ego, atonement means that you really did something wrong, and now you have to pay for it. This is the idea that you must make up for the losses you caused, because of your guilt. It calls for you to make a sacrifice, to have some portion of yourself or what you value taken from you, to make up for what you stole when you sinned. It suggests that if you "do your time" and suffer enough, MAYBE... just maybe, there might be a forgiveness or a pardon.

MAYBE those with authority and justification and righteousness to judge you guilty might decide to pardon you and let you off the hook. Except that, these judgemental accusers are never really satisfied, and there is no amount of atoning you can do to make up for your sin. Once a criminal, always a criminal. And all crimes are considered punishable by death. Even little ones.

If you believe that this is the truth of what atonement means, you will not want to accept the atonement, or understand it.

Similarly, it is believed by many that when Jesus allegedly died on the cross, he was suffering and in pain. And that this tremendous suffering, having to undergo death, somehow "carried the weight" or "paid for" or "took on the sacrifice for" or "suffered for" everyone else's sins, so that everyone else could be considered forgiven thereafter. It's even said that God, in all his loving ways, condemned His beloved son to death, in order for this atoning to occur, so that everyone else could be let off the hook.

Nevertheless, it's quite obvious that in spite of this alleged atoning and suffering, pretty much everyone is still riddled with sin and guilt and fear and murder and death. So it didn't exact "work", according to the evidence. And the fact that this explanation is evidently false is covered up with further theological justifications which are all unfounded band-aids trying to patch up a broken fundamental misunderstanding of what atonement is.

Jesus's atonement was misunderstood. He did not suffer on the cross. He was a profound miracle worker, had no guilt in his mind (the guiltless mind cannot suffer), did not believe in death at all, had already raised the dead, had power and authority over all illusions, and was an embodiment of the power of Christ. Nothing could happen to him against his will. He was not a body at all, and anything seeming to happen to his body did not happen to him. He was truly beyond it, beyond all suffering and death and sin.

He was not a victim in any way at all. It is claimed that Jesus was "sacrificed" for us. How can sacrifice be in any way associated with Jesus, who does not believe in the sacrificial thought system of the ego, and its belief in egoic atonement through loss? Jesus was not asked to sacrifice and he was NOT a sacrifice. He was a demonstration that sacrifice was an illusion and was not POSSIBLE, because sin was not real, and He had not done anything wrong. And he knew that we hadn't either, so sacrifice was never even called for.

His act of being on the cross showed that in spite of the fact that he was supposed to die, he could not die, and could not feel pain, to DEMONSTRATE the miraculous truth that you are not a body and you are invulnerable. And upon returning in a brand new manifested body later, He further demonstrated and proved that bodies are not who you are, that you cannot die, and that you are immortal spirit.

Jesus knew this because He knew what the atonement really was. He knew that it meant that, in truth, nothing real can be threatened because the entire world, bodies, and death, are all illusions. He did not believe in them. AND he did not believe in SIN. Not one bit. He had no sin in him because He did not believe in it. In that view, HE knew that everyone else's "alleged" sinfulness was forgiven, because nobody had really sinned at all. And all of the ways that people believed they were sinful, HE knew that those were not "real sins" in the eyes of God, and that all sin WAS undone because it had not really occurred. That's the true meaning of the atonement and most people did not get the memo.

That also demonstrates why, in spite of the fact that Jesus knew and perceived and experienced the atonement principle, that nobody was sinful or guilty at all, claiming it for himself and thus for everyone, this didn't prevent everyone else from STILL BELIEVING IN SIN. In fact, most onlookers believed in sin so much that they thought that his death was real and did not "get" the teaching of his demonstration that the body is not real at all. And it was precisely the people who DID believe in sin and death and bodies, who MADE UP the interpretation of Jesus being "really sacrificed" and "really suffering for us", which has been an ongoing ego myth for 2000+ years. The ego rejoices that so many people believe that Christ could suffer and be sacrificed. It's satanic!

And so people have carried on believing in real sin and in BEING in sin, because they still believe that sin is real. That's why Jesus's atonement did not instantaneously lift the belief in sin from everyone's mind, which it should have done if what is claimed about the crucifixion were true, ie that Jesus took the hit for us. If he did that, why are we still believing in sin and death? Jesus's awakening should've removed all sin from everyone. In HIS eyes, this was done, but in OUR eyes, it was not done, because WE still freely chose to continue believing in real sin and real death. And plenty of people have demonstrated this by DYING ever since.

Jesus IS the atonement in that Jesus has united with the Holy Spirit in a mind of pure innocence, in which God recognizes the truth that we HAVE NOT SINNED, and that sin is not reality. Jesus knows this is true of us, but WE have not woke up to this reality yet. And so we DO continue to still do "real sins" because we still believe in real sin. That keeps us bound to sin and death. We CAN be liberated from this if WE will accept the atonement, but WE do have to willingly do that ourselves. Jesus can't force it on us. He knows we have not sinned but we don't believe him. Not really.

So all these false definitions of atonement have to be thrown out. The atonement means that literally nothing "real" has actually happened, and that all the things that you thought were "real" were just imagined, just a dream, a vast illusion, masquerading as a real world with real bodies doing real bad stuff. Its UNREALITY is the proof of innocence. You cannot have become less than innocent if you did not achieve a REAL sin. Make-believe sins do not count! You cannot REALLY sin and you have not really sinned. But while you believe that you HAVE, that's a problem. That's keeping you from the truth and keeping you from ACCEPTING Jesus's demonstration of the atonement.

The world is not reality. It is an illusion. And you have not really done anything wrong here, because everything you've ever supposedly "done" has ONLY ever been a portion of a made-up dream that isn't really real. It sure as heck can seem real, but ONLY because you believe that dreams are reality. Look around you at all the people who have set up camp in this dream, believing it's the real world, believing it is real life, prepared to hang out here and just die and not wake up to the truth. There is more than this.

Undo all of your beliefs that the physical world is reality. It is not. Jesus proved it, IF you will believe it from His vantage point. He knew that there was no real sin, and saw that everyone's sins ALREADY were forgiven before He even came to that awareness. God does not condemn. God does not judge. God knows your innocence is still pure and holy. And God knows that you cannot POSSIBLY "actually" separate from Him other than in a dream-like illusion of separation. Your innocence is guaranteed. It is ALREADY the truth, even while you believe that you have really sinned.

The truth of the atonement ALREADY WAS TRUE before Jesus became the first to claim it for Himself and for all. It was ALREADY TRUE that God had not condemned us and had not believed that we really sinned. It was ALREADY TRUE that God's unconditional love had not wavered for a second, and that He KNEW that it was IMPOSSIBLE to actually separate from him. Real Sin is impossible. Jesus came to ACCEPT that the atonement is true, He did not CREATE the atonement. The truth of the atonement is God's truth, and has always been true and always will be.

It's a done deal. Nothing happened. Wake up.

In this world, the ego has reversed everything. What was visible has become invisible, and what was nothing at all seems to be something.

Similarly, in the world of form, "space" seems to be where nothing exists. And it seems like objects in the world exist within that space, as though they are real things and the space is nothing.

Space is not nothing, as such, it is "no thing". It is the container of things.

In reality, the container of everything is God, and is presence, and is all that is. It is the opposite of nothing. But in the ego's world, with everything back to front, space has come to symbolize nothingness.

So now in the ego world, you look to see where something is, and you look to objects instead of to the space that contains them. You think where objects exists, there something is, and where there are no objects, there is nothing. This is the ego's distraction. It is a device for making it appear that what is, is not, and what is not, is.

The ego has set up the physical universe in this way to always seem to point you in the wrong direction, to make it seem like the very thing that won't help you is what you want, and the very thing that would help you you do not want.

When you are thinking about questioning the ego, it would tell you not to look at your mind because, if you do, you'll discover that there is guilt there. It tells you not to look at the guilt, that you want to get away from it. And it tells you that getting away from it through denial and projection will make things better for you - that you'll become innocent. But this is a lie as well.

If you were to look within and question the guilt and question the idea of sin it's based on, you'd find out there is no sin. The ego doesn't want you to do that. Again it puts guilt in place as a signpost pointing away from itself, so that you'll head in the opposite direction. Similarly fear distracts you away from itself so that you think the problem is someone else.

Also in the ego's world, "change is life" and stagnation is death. Yet, stillness is actually life, and change is death. What we call life - stuff that changes and transformed and is born and dies, is not life at all. It's an illusion of life. Artificial. Backwards. It's a movement into not living. If stillness is life and in the ego's world stillness will kill you (e.g. your breathing stops), you will avoid stillness. See how cleverly it's set up?

Similarly every ego deception takes you away from yourself, takes you away from truth and leads you towards destruction. When you are trying to wake up from this illusion, that's why it seems so difficult. You are going against the grain of the entire world. It tells you to go one way, you need to go another. The ego tempts you to believe something, you need you unbelief it. You fear that someone is causing problems, you need to realize that you are the cause. We literally need to deprogram ourselves from being physically-oriented and deceived by this worlds' rules and all the ways in which things seem to mean something based on appearances of how they work here. This entire world is a grand deception and none of it is truth.

There are no laws but God's.

This world is an illusory opposition to God, and God did not create it.

"T-22.III.5. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

**** This is a very important part of the Course. ****

Jesus is telling is clearly here that the physical world of FORM, all objects, all matter, the physical universe, the world, are NOTHING, it is the way that we experience a 'wall of sin' which stands between us and God, and we are quite literally incapable of seeing God while we use the body's eyes to see.

It is also telling us that the physical universe is not reality. Perception of 'form', which means, physical materials, objects, people's bodies, the planet, etc... if you are seeing that, you are seeing an illusion.

This is very hard for many people to accept even intellectually yet alone to experience this truth. "There is no world" fits right in here.

So it's one thing to wake up to the point of still seeing the physical world and yet somehow 'seeing God in it' because God is in your mind. Okay, that's a step closer. BUT... that's not going all the way.

Jesus is telling us from a CHRIST perspective, that we have to become able to recognize that ALL FORMS ARE ILLUSIONS and that there is a REALITY that is beyond form, formless, in which you not only live your real life with God but you also are completely infinite and unlimited.

It's not enough just to find a different way of perceiving form. It's not enough to learn to not judge form. It's not enough to overlook your personal judgements or mental distortions or guilty attitudes about the world or yourself. That is not the end of the story.

We are asked to really go ALL THE WAY.... to go beyond form entirely. To go all the way to IMMORTAL SPIRIT. To transcend all forms and all physical matter and all of space and time. To go all the way to the complete and total and permanent awareness of the ONE REALITY. That reality is completely abstract and has NO FORMS IN IT. None. No objects. No bodies. No physical universe. No planets.

So that means, it's important to learn at some stage how even the body's senses are misleading you, how you are deceived by the appearance of differences and objects, how the physical world is actually set up to BLOCK you from God, and how the world PHYSICALLY STOPS YOU from being with God by completely deceiving your awareness.

You need a vision which transcends form. A vision which sees Christ. And that doesn't just mean seeing Christ in your brother or seeing Christ in the body-self of your brother. It means seeing past ALL FORM to the Christ and ONLY SEEING THAT.

Not just to see and be aware of God, but to see and be aware of NOTHING ELSE as well.

As Jesus says, "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you." - ACIM

Pure heaven.

The ego doesn't have any real power of its own. Its only strategy is to try to get you to willingly give your power to it.

To do this, it has to present to you some kind of temptation or lie, something untrue, and generally something that upsets you in some way. If it can especially get you to have a reaction, or be triggered, then you have fell for its trap.

The ego uses your own beliefs and your own blind-spots, as a way to get you to agree to go along with it. While you remain unconscious and attached to a certain egoic belief, you are quite literally agreeing with the ego and giving it permission to use this against you.

The ego cannot take power from you, you have to give it away. When you give it away, you give it away through playing the role of a victim, perhaps entering into fear or guilt etc. This is your way of making it seem as though the power you share with God has now been separated from God and is handed over to the ego.

In certain other religious circles, this principle is taught in terms of the devil, sin, and how the devil operates. That is, that you first must sin which means you believe in something that's mistaken. Then based on this sin, you have literally agreed that something untrue is true. And now this creates an 'open door' and an invitation and a resonant agreement, which allows 'the evil' to come in and control you. This is also how evil 'spirits' enter people's lives. Because YOU have violated a law of God, so to speak, by going against it, you have permitted darkness/ego/devil to use this darkness against you.

But notice here that the ego/devil does not actually have its own power. And it completely depends on you agreeing with it, and continuing the 'sin' i.e. the false belief. It also does not actually have any power to prevent you from undoing that belief, or choosing again, or waking up. It has ZERO 'actual' control over you, besides your own willingness to play along. If you were to decide to stop playing along, and to withdraw your belief, and to take back your power knowing it is yours, and knowing that the ego can do absolutely NOTHING to stop you, the ego would be dis-empowered.

The only tool the ego has is the presentation of illusions, in an attempt to try to play upon what you believe and to convince you that it is either your friend and ally, or to distract you from choosing again by throwing fears or guilts or rationalizations or whatever else your way, to try to once again push your buttons or pull up your past hurts or play upon your own fears, to keep you ensured in its mindset. And often, in unconsciousness, you will go along with this and be pulled right back in, but ONLY because you have not become conscious/aware enough yet to discern and to decide not to listen or believe what it's saying.

So really the ego is just a mirror for your own mis-beliefs. And it shows you and reflects back to you what you currently believe. Change your belief, and the reflection of that belief - the ego - must disappear.

There is nothing keeping you stuck. There is nothing stopping you but yourself. There is no reason why you can't be loved. There is no reason why you can't wake up. The only thing keeping you asleep is yourself.

I’ve been studying passages about perception lately. There’s a lot of them. The body’s eyes are only capable of fixating on forms and appearances of physicality. They were made NOT to see. They only register "physical signals" of light coming from the outer surface of objects. They eye’s "perception" is equivalent to false perception, because they are blinded by form. The eyes do not see at all.

They pass signals to the mind. The mind is the only thing that sees. The mind then interprets the signals based on the belief system and values. Whatever you value, you believe in, and want. This turns into what you "want to see". Similarly fear is used to shut out perception of things you do not want to see. When you have ego values, you see what you want to see as special, and what you don’t want to see is regarded as unreal or evil. This is a dualistic view.

Your perceptual mechanism is a layer on top of the mind which filters the body signals and interprets their meaning. This is where the "world you see", in your mind, is based on the meaning you give it. The body’s eyes are never capable of showing you reality. They can only send pictures to the mind which are illusions. The world they depict is fundamentally an illusion regardless of HOW the picture is interpreted. It is not possible to use the body’s eyes to see Heaven.

When you move towards true perception, which is still interpretative, you start to put all things into one category in your belief system and value system, rather than categorizing the world in dualistic terms of special love/special hate. All of the pictures being sent by the body are categorized as UNREAL. They are recognized as being fundamentally illusions, which, when viewed WITHOUT distortion (accurate perception) are easily discerned to be NOT reality. A mind "without illusions" in its perception does NOT "see reality", it interprets body signals as the LIES they were made to be.

To see with true perception lines up perception with the laws of God and allows the mind to see "through" the perceptual filter without distortion or bias. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." The mind then uses perception to see the "physical signals" "as-is", with no additional meaning being given them, nothing denied, nothing hidden. When seen "as is", they are simply registered as FALSE. They are OVERLOOKED with forgiveness.

Perception of form becomes very "thin", like a thin transparent veil. The body’s eyes here are still registering signals of a physical world, where bodies are in various states of sickness, people are still at war, and so on, but the mind interprets it all as unreal. The mind is in touch with the fact that it is the one DREAMING, and that it is the one who has sent the world out there to report back what’s out there. "Miracles remind you of who the dreamer is."

So then the mind knows that ITS DREAM is what is brewing shown to it by the body signals, the dream is fundamentally FALSE, and does not really exist. It is a very small step from there, "illusions recognized must disappear", for God to now take action to END YOUR DREAMING, remove perception from your mind entirely, and thus collapse the entire dream including the body and the physical world which were nothing BUT an illusion. In false perception you ADDED illusions ON TOP OF the illusion. There are TWO LAYERS of illusion. In true perception you came to look at the illusion WITHOUT illusion being added, and recognizing it only for what it is. Then when the world illusion has been recognized, it disappears.

I’ve been hearing people use the term illusion in an incorrect way. As if it means, "illusions about" something. You guys need to brush up on your grasp of what an illusion IS. People have too easily equate an illusion with "a false perception of something", and then equated the "disappearance of the illusion" with true perception. As if true perception does not SEE illusions, but sees reality. Let’s be a bit more precice in defining what is an illusion and what is reality.

I was driving one day and saw what I thought was a two headed bird. It was a large bird like a crane. I stopped the car and had a good look. Sure enough it dam well looked like a two headed bird. It seemed REAL. I drove forwards a little and took another look. Driving forwards introduced additional information which was HIDDEN from my perception before. Suddenly I was able to see additional legs, and then it became clear that there were in fact two birds, standing right next to each other. The illusion that there was a two-headed bird in reality, was blown. I was now SEEING the TRUTH (true perception) "about" what was ACTUALLY THERE. Seeing the truth, however, merely revealed the information that was hidden, and the parts of "whats there" that I could not see. My perception became more full and whole and inclusive. I was now looking at what was there "as is", instead of with a deluded interpretation.

This is also how it works in the course. You perceive with the body falsely. If you believe that what the body shows you is truth, you are deluded and in false perception. You believe the ILLUSION or the parts which function together to make it seem like soemthing, is real. You don’t see all the information. They are key facts hidden by denial. You are unconscious. When you open your awareness by removing "blocks to awareness", you gain access to information and facts which you did not know existed. You start to see more FULLY, all of what is there, as it is, a complete picture, without distortions or hidden information. This merely shows you the "apparatus" that was being used to make something look like somethig else. It’s like being privy to a "behind the scenes" look at the making of a movie. You see the cameramen and the fake stage and all the actors "out of character" and it blows the whole illusion.

True perception shows you these hidden details. But the fact is that SEEING CORRECTLY (corrected perception) only shows you the TRUTH ABOUT what is out there. It only reveals it "as it is "without your interpretations and strange meanings and lack of context. It only shows you an undistorted view of what is there. This undistorted view is, you could say, "free of illusions", but more accurately, it is free of BELIEVING that what is out there is REAL. It does not buy into the illusion any more. It’s like when you solve a puzzle and now you can never be deceived by it. Or you hear the punchline to a joke and it’s never as funny after that because you recognize that the setup is a lie. True perception shows you, without distortion, accurately, correctly, that the physical world the body looks at makes no sense, is deceptive, does not match up with God’s nature, is fundamentally flawed, IS ITSELF AN ILLUSION, and IS NOT REAL. Jesus is very clear on this in stating that true perception recognizes that what you see in this state is categorically UNREAL.

Bodies, forms, objects, animals, weather, forests, oceans, the planet, galaxies, all of it is a movie set. And when you are aware of ALL of the parts of it, see it clearly, and stop buying into its appearance, you will no longer be willing or desiring to believe that it is anything other than FALSE. A big lie. A trick. Just a great big scam. That’s why you WAKE UP after seeing that "forgiven world", because you see that what is here - this world - is NOTHING REAL, it has NO VALUE, it’s nothing but smoke and mirrors that you USED to think was true, and now you RECOGNIZE it as FALSE. Then it disappears.

You then find yourself in Heaven, where there is no world, no bodies, no spacetime, no planet, no critters, no forests and oceans, and "nothing there but shines and shines forever." Now you are in KNOWING of what is REAL. And it sure as fuck was not planet Earth. You’ve now left the MOVIE SET behind, have given up your little toys and fake play things, have become COMPLETELY DISILLUSIONED with the world, and have now decided to GO HOME TO HEAVEN, leaving this world behind. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "The body is a dream." "The body is the central figure in dreaming and without the dream it does not exist." (paraphrase)

So all you folks saying "illusions about", are not RECOGNIZING that the world ITSELF is a mechanism of illusion. FORM is an illusion, no matter HOW you look at it. If you look at it and think it IS REALITY, now you are blind and decdived. ONLY by looking at it with true perception can you be NOT DECEIVED by it, not blinded by it and realize it is 100% fundamentally a device for deception and untruth, which can ONLY deceive you if you don’t realize what it is doing. In this truth, you SEE form - body signals - as something that you USED TO think was real, and now you realize it was just a TRICK. If you don’t recognize how this world is LYING TO YOU ("nothing so blinding as sight of form"), and if you think illusions are ONLY your "interpretations" of what’s out there, you’re going to be staying sleeping for a long time to come.

I think the big gross error that some people are making, is that they have decided:

1) When I’m in ego, I’m not seeing correctly, so I’m making a shit hole out of something that isn’t shitty.

2) When I’m in true perception, I will see the beautiful lovely world with the credit it deserves.

That’s totally fucked. I’m sorry. It’s 100% backwards.

1) When you are having false perception you are BUYING INTO the illusion and not recognizing it. You think it’s reality, even though you’re having a nightmare. It’s a state of hallucination and distorted interpretation.

2) When you are having true perception you STOP BUYING INTO the illusion, you recognize it is NOT TRUE. You realize it’s NOT REALITY. You are no longer having a nightmare, but you ALSO ARE SEEING THAT THIS WORLD IS NOT REAL. You stop hallucinating ABOUT IT, but that doesn’t suddenly mean "its reality." You are now seeing the TRUTH ABOUT it. The truth about an illusion is that IT IS AN ILLUSION!!!

This ties in exactly perfectly with what forgiveness is. Forgiveness OVERLOOKS FORMS and does not make them real. The idea of "looking at" the physical world "with love" and "seeing it correctly" and it being fundamentally "a lovely thing" is bullshit to the 10th degree. That’s a total failur to understand what an illusion is. You are supposed to stop believing it’s real, not believe it’s MORE REAL than before.

This is the *incorrect* view of the metaphysics:

1) False perception shows you a false world or false view OF the world

2) True perception shows you are true world, or a true view OF a true world - as if what’s out there is true and real

THAT IS WRONG!

This is the CORRECT view of the metaphysics:

1. False perception shows you a *FALSE WORLD*, AS IF IT IS TRUE, making it SEEM REAL. It is backwards perception. It renders reality an illusion, and illusions reality. You do not realize what you’re seeing "as real" IS NOT REAL. False perception sees this world AS REALITY.

2. True perception shows you a FALSE WORLD, which is NOT REAL, and recognizing that IT IS NOT TRUE. That the "truth about" it is that IT IS NOT TRUE. It renders reality as reality and illusion as illusion. Truth = true, false = false. Here you RECOGNIZE that what you’re seeing IS NOT REAL. True perception sees this world AS ILLUSION. **A LIE**

In true perception you will then be so certain that you aree merely PERCEIVING A DREAM, not a reality, that you will be ready to WAKE UP FROM DREAMING.

When you wake up from dreaming, the UNREAL WORLD - Earth - does not suddenly become real! IT DISAPPEARS beacuse it was never real to begin with!

What REMAINS is Heaven, which has nothing to do with this unreal illusory world whatsoever.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made." You MADE this world with illusions. Making makes illusions. It is not creation.

Before the ego existed, you had a self, created by God. Just as everyone did. In the separation, you denied your self. The denial of self, was an attempt to destroy your self. But you had to have something to identify with. So you shifted your sense of "what am I" away from your soul, towards an ego that you invented.

The ego is really the idea of the denial of life, of God, and of your soul. It is the attempt to eradicate you, which is why all its efforts lead to death. While the ego seems to be a self, it really is a lack of self. It is the absence of you and the rejection of mind. It masquerades as a self, when in fact it is the opposite of having a self.

Having identified with it, when people talk about oneness and non-duality you might feel frightened, as if it means that YOU are going to end. So long as you are identified with your ego, which is a false and second self, you will interpret any movement towards God as threatening.

The ego does not understand union or oneness and interprets it as death. This is also why you have ego rebounds and feel afraid and offended when you try to move into the truth. It's not really that YOU are under threat, it's that the ego is. But having identified WITH it and believing it to be what you are, you interpret ITS fear as your own.

So then the idea of returning to oneness, seems threatening to your ego, because your ego indeed cannot exist in oneness. And if you think that your ego is your self, YOU WILL not want to wake up. It will seem to threaten you. Especially the idea that the ego does not exist at all, is taken by the ego as an attack, and YOU will experience this as an attack upon your very existence. But only IF you believe the ego is your self.

The truth is that when the ego is undone, this happens as a result of YOU dis-identifying with it. Or to put it another way, you reintegrate yourself, identifying with your soul/spirit, reclaiming your mind, and dis-associating from the ego. This means you stop believing that the ego is your self, or that you even have an ego. Once you can recognize that your self, and your ego, are two different things, you are no longer threatened by the idea of undoing it.

A return to heaven is not really a return to no self. In fact, the ego is the state of no self. It is the state of self denial. It is a denial of life and a denial of existence and of identity in Christ. Returning to heaven is a REUNION with your real self, a re-identifying as a soul or Son of God in the Sonship, and a reclaiming of your true nature. You actually are returning to HAVING a self. That's why this is all about RESURRECTION.

The self God created you to be is permanent and will always exist in reality. Your Holy Self is God-given and cannot ever be destroyed. It's only your identification or sense of "who am I" that has become confused. Shifting your "who am I" from the non-existent ego to the permanent soul, can be nothing but reassuring and authentic.

Some people interpret the course to mean there is either a oneness or a duality, either God alone or many egos. And that undoing egos results in God being alone again. But this is not sufficient or accurate. God created you as a real living being, and it is you IDENTIFYING WITH ego that produces the ego and the separation, NOT the creation of an individual identity. You were an individual (who also shared everything) before this all happened.

Returning to God is not the annihilation of your individuality, it is the reclaiming of your individuality. The ego is NOT individuality, it is the rejection of having any real identity at all.

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

Sometimes (ok, often), I think I know what is good or bad. For myself, for other people etc. But I have to question this. Do I really know anything?

What if my efforts to help are hurtful? What if I'm distracting someone from a spiritual lesson? What if I'm taking away someone's lesson, even if it's painful, that they need in order to wake up? What if my fixing is actually undoing an opportunity that someone has to find their own strength? What if my attempt to take over something is disempowering for them, even if it was with the intention of helping?

Ultimately then it comes down to just... allowing oneself to open up to the idea that I do not know ANYTHING as to whether something is right, or wrong, for myself or anyone.

The Course asks us to be open to 'not knowing', as a doorway to knowing. What I see it as now, is that when we're constantly in this tug of war of seeing something as right or wrong, we automatically then leap off that springboard into ego reactions and coping tools and ways of 'doing something about it', all of which is based on us thinking that we KNOW... believing that we KNOW what is going on or why it's happening, when we actually don't.

What the Course is warning us against is FALSE knowing, which is ego knowing - and the ego actually cannot know anything. False knowing is where you believe you know, you have some opinion, you judge it, you label it, you decide something is right and okay, or something is bad and not meant to be this way, and then you proceed to pile extra reactions on top of this. You even make decisions about what to 'do about it' based on this. But this basic perception of ... its wrong. .. or ... it shouldn't be like this. .... that's something WE are making up.

I don't know what's right or wrong for people. I don't know even what's right or wrong for myself. I don't know what's helpful or hurtful. I don't know whether my attempts to fix and save and heal and cure are actually interfering with someone's spiritual growth. I could be doing more harm than 'good' in spite of my belief that I'm helping. Or vice versa, I may be holding back on helping in certain ways that would be truly helpful because of a belief that I shouldn't, or don't want to, or can't love a person enough etc.

So it's like, here is this neutral situation, and then the ego will waver off to one side or another, taking sides, either for or against this thing, and basically go off on a tangent of believing that it knows that this diversion away from 'what is' is based in truth.

It takes a tremendous amount of humility, therefore, to admit truly, honestly, that if we really get down to it, I do NOT KNOW what anything means, I do NOT know what anything is for, I do NOT know whether something that's happening is good or bad, I do NOT know if it's meant to be happening and is helpful or whether it should not be happening and is harmful. And maybe helpful/harmful is entirely an ego-made up idea? How about that? What if there was absolutely no good or bad of any kind? What is everything that's happening, no matter whether I love it or hate it, has absolutely nothing to do with my ego's judgements about it? What if I have NO CLUE about it, other than that IT SIMPLY IS WHAT IT IS?

And what is it that I ultimately REACT to? It's my own perception that I've invented that something is wrong with the picture. I am the one deciding that, thinking I know, when I don't know. And then I react to my own conclusion. I don't really know anything, or at least, my ego doesn't really know anything.

But God knows everything. Holy Spirit knows everything. I guess I should trust Him and let Him decide for me?

Whatever you are perceiving, whatever you are believing, you ALWAYS believe that you are experiencing the truth.

If you are feeling guilty, you believe this is the truth. If you are projecting guilt, you believe that its true that the other person is guilty. If someone else seems to do something to you and you perceive it this way, you believe this is the truth. Always you are locked into an idea of the truth, regardless of whether this truth is ACTUALLY true.

You can even believe that death is real. You can believe that death is salvation. You can believe that attack is salvation. You can actually walk around believing that it is "totally true" that death means life and there is no God. You can be convinced this is the truth. It doesn't matter that you're grossly mistaken. One thing holds consistent - no matter whether you side with Holy Spirit or ego, SOMETHING is always the truth for you.

Now, whatever your grasp of truth is, this is manipulated by your beliefs. Beliefs are "truth modifiers". You use them to redefine the truth and to make something else be the truth that isn't. This is the ego's tool to convert the MEANING of God into something that God does not mean. It changes the meaning of the truth, the meaning of your identity, the meaning of what and who you are. You use belief to convert yourself into a sinner who deserves to die.

Ok now, given that you always believe you're experiencing the whole truth, this can lead you to not suspect that your grasp of the truth might be faulty. You believe you are complete right now, whole right now, aware of everything right now, that you know everything right now, that you are aware of the entire content of yourself right now, and that this is completely true. EVEN THOUGH... this is not true at all for most of us.

We are always convinced by truth, and we are allegiant to it and protective of it.We will defend it up and down. We will not want to question it. The ego's purpose for questioning truth is to replace it with something even less true that it still thinks is the truth. It does NOT want you changing the truth back toward the REAL truth. So it becomes very easy to mangle and distort the truth and to be caught up in thinking it is REALITY and to be totally convinced that you are RIGHT about it, but to still be very mistaken.

And given you can be really convinced about this, that really forms a strong barrier against even suspecting something is mistaken or that you might be wrong. Why would you even think to need to correct something if you are sure it's already perfect? Why would you even suspect that there is a happier way to exist when you already believe that your SUFFERING is happiness? Why would you want to live forever when you already believe that death is your ultimate salvation and that you will die no matter what, dam it?

You can be lost in the truth. Lost in what the truth seems to be. This is why it's like a hallucination.... you're seeing something that's not even really there and you think its real and you're scared and upset by it as if it's totally real, and yet it's just some silly illusion. You can run away from imaginary monsters and cower under a bush. You can be frightened by what seems like real political nightmares. You can be troubled by what looks to be a genuine threat of terrorism. And yet... this is all still just a dream. It's not TRUE.

Snapping out of a state of 'fixation' on an hallucination, snapping out of a strong conviction that someone else really is wrong, snapping out of believing the story, snapping out of reacting to the world that APPEARS to be real.... it's not easy. But it's what we need to do. We need to wake up.

It's okay. ... you are safe... in heaven.... with God... right now.... and nothing has gone wrong.... and God still loves you.

Its quite easy to write something that says the truth. For example, refer to my previous post about a model for healthy existence. All the statements are true.

Now, when you read such statements .... you are worthy of love, you're innocent, there's no guilt in you etc... to some degree this 'news' can feel good. I mean, as you read it sometimes it feels like a relief to just see the words written and to experience that. I remember many times reading the Course itself and Jesus would say something simple like "there is no sin" and I'd feel this sense of relief and joy, like it soothed me or healed me in some little way.

Thing is, this is all very nice and I think maybe you can experience some degree of healing and help from reading or writing such things. And then everyone applauds and likes it and so on (thanks ;-)... BUT.... this CAN become a substitute for really deep healing and change. And it also at times becomes a bit of a quote-fest where we all like to take our favorite (special?!) bits of the Course and throw them out there, because... to some degree, it sort of makes us feel a bit soothed or tingly inside.

But we really need to make sure that this isn't all that we're doing. It's not enough to just repeat what's been said or to read the text or to quote it or to discuss the words or to say things that sound spiritual. We still have to do healing work. We still have to be willing to realize that everything happening in our normal mundane everyday life is only there as a spiritual lesson, nothing is not a lesson, and we have some work to do.

We still need to find our blocks to awareness of love's presence, which can come in the form of some deep healing at times. It can mean healing what you think of as 'past stuff', ie reinterpreting it. It isn't all cerebral. There's a lot of cerebral superstars working with the Course who are good at dealing with life on that level but don't really ever talk about how they just were a blubbering mess or had a huge catharsis or are struggling with ego reactions or having a hard time forgiving a particular person. That's where the work is, and that's where the blocks are getting removed.

So there are a few activities or types of Course people, and only one of these is actually really helping you to wake up:

1) Quote what the Course already said

2) Quote what some other Course person said

3) Refer to your favorite course sound byte

4) Discuss or debate what the Course means

5) Think about the metaphysics and figure it out

6) Understand the course concepts

7) Try to be more loving and spiritual

8) Seek for the obstacles to awareness of love and remove them

Only the last one is actually getting you to be awake! Its a dirty messy nasty business that involves a lot of healing and inner transformation. It's not about thoughts. It's not about discussion. It's about you being faced with your personal curriculum on a daily basis, which is not the same as anyone else's, and being challenged to learn a lesson, and not wanting to, and having to find a way to forgive and heal and release and transform your viewpoint to that of the Holy Spirit, using this personal situation for that purpose. It's laborious. It's long-winded. It takes time and effort and willingness. It's not comfortable. Sometimes it hurts. But unless you're actually working on changing what you are EXPERIENCING, you will not be able to eventually experience the truth.

Sometimes when I post loftier thoughts and metaphysics and statements about what God thinks of you, it can sometimes lead you to falsely conclude that digesting it is your only role, or that you should attain such a truth overnight. That's misleading. I apologize for that confusion. If its not practical and you can't really use it to help you heal, then what use is it other than to have a passtime of being interested in Course stuff, being a commentator, or a critic, or a storyteller? The Course is meant to be USED to change your mind.

One thing I never could make sense of in the Course was when Jesus referred to minds being joined or how it wasn't possible to be sick if minds were joined.

My ego could not understand this. It made no sense in terms of people being normal separate minds in separate bodies. I could only think in terms of doing something to something separate. How does anyone join with the mind of someone else in the first place? And why would that bring about the impossibility of sickness?

What I see now is that individuals in separate bodies are just fragments of a larger Self - the Christ Self, the One Son, and that identity has a single mind. There are not multiple Christs.

Mind, in its natural condition, is a single mind shared everywhere. It is the mind of the Whole Self. When pieces of mind seem to split off and be separate, that's because there is an illusion of separation happening. This separation is the root of all sickness.

Separation is two-sided, in that when the mind is divided, there is a piece of mind over here and piece of mind over there and they are kept apart by some kind of illusion of not being joined. That belief in separation produces sickness because it's a belief in limitation and lack. The separation blocks awareness, and blocks to awareness are denials which deny Life and thus produce death.

So when separation is present, and there are "two selves", that's a state of sickness. The mind is sick. It has multiple personality disorder. I'm talking about the one mind here, not an individual's mind. An individual's mind also is sick and divided within itself - each personality of the multiple personality disorder of the one mind, has within it further multiple personalities, lol

Ok so, to maintain the separation between selves, and thus to mantain sickness, both of those parts of the multiple personality must continue to exist. Without them being different from each other they would be one. If one of those two parts of mind decides to transcend what seems like the illusory limits placed upon itself, and redefines itself as the WHOLE, not a part of the whole, then it comes to experience Oneness with the other part of the mind, recognizing it as literally itself. Then there is only one mind. The two parts of mind are joined as One.

If the other part of the mind was trying to be an individual, it no longer can maintain that state of sickness because the first part of the mind has decided not to believe in it. So it doesn't have support for its belief and no matter how much it tries, it can't establish separation. If part of mind has woken up to the One Self (Christ), the other part has no way to remain in separation either. They must both wake up together to a single identity.

When Jesus woke up, He must have woken up to the reality that we are all One. And thus His awakening must have been the awakening of everyone. I don't know if this means that our minds MUST be healed, but certainly that it is POSSIBLE to be healed. If we were to decide to be one with Jesus, we would be healed instantly.

In the thought system of Holy Spirit, we are all one shared mind, and one identity. Holy Spirit looks upon CHRIST. Nowhere does it say he looks upon multiple real individuals.

When minds thus join, there is a healing of the separation between them. The separation defines their separate identity, so this must mean the undoing of a false sense of isolation and opening up to realizing that you are much more than you thought you were. An increase in awareness. Awakening. We awaken TO the Christ mind, the one mind, that we all share as the One Son of God. We're all the same Self. And this is how miraculous healing is possible.

The ego does not exist. It cannot be loved or embraced. It cannot be turned into a friend. It cannot wake up or heal or convert into something spiritual. It is nothing but an artificial idea of impossibility, and as such is impossible. It does not exist, cannot exist, and has no reality. To have a relationship with it is it attempting to have a relationship with itself.

Light dispels darkness. Ego is darkness. Love is light. If you shine your love in the direction of the ego darkness, it simply will disappear, because it does not exist as anything other than the illusion of the absence of love, which is impossible. It's not there. Shadows are not truth, light is truth. And darkness cannot hide the light. You cannot "love your ego" without your love disappearing it.

While it may be a stepping stone to learn not to fight with the ego, since that is the ego fighting itself, and to not resist it, and to not attack the body, and to undo all basis for ego thinking and reactions "to" the ego, this is only so that the ego itself is undone. The ego is already undone, we just are hallucinating that it exists at all. It never existed to begin with.

Eventually we have to look within and be willing to see that not only is there no sin, there is no ego either. There IS no central core of isolation. As the clouds which promised to conceal an underlying artificial identity clear, you discover that there is nothing there. It was not what you expected. There is no ego to go up against or even to really undo. Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all.

Holy Spirit knows that the ego does not exist and this does this forgiveness teach:

"T-9.IV.5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear."

(do not use fearfulness or making illusions real in an attempt to relate to or deal with or undo or address the ego at all)

"2 Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it."

(do not make the ego a real thing and then attempt to have a relationship with it or deal with it or change it or do anything really about it directly)

"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."

(True forgiveness is fore-giveness, it gives ahead of time. That means, it looks WITH a forgiving attitude, IN ORDER TO ENSURE that it is not mistaken, so that it does not MAKE error or ego, so that there IS no ego or error to have to undo. Only when forgiveness fails do we enter judgement - he who would not forgive must judge - which makes the ego, and so if we simply remain fore-giving the ego does not come into manifestation at all.)

"4 Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."

(Pretty straightforward isn't it? If you make the ego real in any way then you will start to fight with it and believe that you have work to do or stuff to fix or whatever, and doing so you will be stuck.)

"5 What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent."

(Error does not exist because true forgiveness fore-gives, failing to make errors or perceive erroneously, and therefore RECOGNIZES that there IS no error, therefore there is no ego.)

"6 By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it."

(There is no ego, period. Believing there is an ego, is an attempt to make an ego real, which is impossible. Ego is fiction. It's just a useful concept for teaching that it does not exist, and nothing else.)

I find very often that if I am not constantly "rebuking" everything the world seems to portray, I will fall into temptation and buy into problems. Then I'll have reactions based on ego and form and bodies and appearances, and will suffer, wondering how to get out of it.

The fact is that we're presented with a false word, right in our faces, 24/7, every single day. The body continuously reports on it as if it's real and makes it seem real. Every single sensory input is a lie to the mind, suggesting that something untrue is true, something impossible is possible, and something that can never happen in reality is happening.

It may seem completely casual, living our everyday lives, interacting with objects, doing household tasks, looking at things and commenting on them, seeing bodies, etc... as though this is totally normal and natural. We can just "live an ego life", a body life, functioning the same way we always have. Immersed in space and time and physicality. Interacting with the world as if it's just another day, things are just ticking over as they always do, as is this is totally normal.

But as we start trying to wake up to reality, we start to find that the world is absolutely opposite to reality. And now we're tasked with trying to peel ourselves away from absolutely everything the world throws at us. Every appearance is false, every body sickness is a lie, every picture of death is unnatural, every problem isn't really there. If we don't counteract these inputs, they become overwhelming and we just sink down into them like it's what everyone does.

It seems then that we have to constantly fight against illusions. Every second. The kind of life we live without even thinking about it, as if it's normal, is riddled with deception. If we drop our guard and just go through the motions acting like everything in the world is how things are supposed to be, within seconds we'll find ourselves thinking and speaking and acting based on what the body says is real. And now we're lost all over again. And every morning we wake up immersed back into the same dungeon of deception and darkness.

It sure as heck seems that if we aren't CONSTANTLY asserting God's truth, constantly denying what is not of God, constantly stating and affirming that body states are not fact, constantly PUSHING and broadcasting God's truth and light all the time, repelling sin and hell, then we will just once again fall for the next subtle trap. The next little everyday seemingly insignificant scrap of an illusory world which is just as deceptive and distorting as all the rest.

The impression I'm getting lately then is that we have to eventually get to a state where we are "professing christ" all the time. And I mean like, being on our guard at all times. In a sense, praying a higher prayer all the time. Giving off happier more loving vibes all the time. Teaching only love, all the time. Refusing to accept anything we see in the world, all the time. And that means being really heavily centered in God's truth and laws and mindset and just constantly vigilant for staying in that mindset as much as possible, even when the world is sandblasting you in the face with visual lies.

Jesus says in the course that atonement is our natural profession. That we should PROFESS christ. Which means to express, emit, teach, radiate, give christ at all times. To counteract and fly in the face of the world. To be coming from God at all times. To be healers at all times, in the world but not of it at all times. Under no worldly laws but God's at all times.

Because, quite frankly, what I've found is that if I DON'T attempt to do that, I will just sink right back down into ego land, body sensations, false perceptions, reactions to bodies and sicknesses appearing real. At every turn, someone's sick body is attempting to testify to them having been changed and corrupted against God's will. And it is our task to NOT believe that, to assert and SEE and claim the truth of the person that they are still as God created them. Which is in complete defiance of what their body looks like, staring you in the face with its fake suffering and temptation.

The degree of temptation is just so totally off the charts. It seems that if we don't rise above it and stay above it and continually REPEL it every minute of the day, we're just going to keep falling back into it. Maybe over time we can talk ourselves into such a state of conviction that we can more effortlessly remain in the light and the truth and not have to make such an effort of it. But meanwhile it seems like a constant fight, a constantly struggle, to get out of hell and get back into a more heavenly state. Day after day after day of the world trying to pull us back down.

"The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness."

If we are to INSTANTLY meet every perception with forgiveness, that means we have to CONSTANTLY be in a state of forgiveness every single second. We have to be on our toes. We have to be totally ready and right minded at all times. As in keeping our mind right-side up at all times and sane in order to be ready to perform miracles.

"Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do. You must be READY to listen WILLING to learn and ABLE to do"

To stay OUT of deception and temptation and distraction is difficult. Everything the world believes is not true. Everything physical matter shows is false. We have to pierce the veil and push past the body and connect with the divine. To have "reality contact".

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."

It really seems to me that in order to be a consistent miracle worker we have to be practically from another world, a temporary visitor here, come to help and heal and uplift, siding entirely with God, falling for no temptation, buying into nothing the world suggests. As if we were briefed before we came, that the world was going to try to eat us alive, and that we had to stay on our toes and not for a second believe a single bit of it. To float above the battlefield constantly lest we fall off the wagon again and again and again. To clarify just how extremely difficult it can be, Jesus even says that the most advanced teachers still succumb to temptation at times.

The world can seem insurmountable in its immensity, its diversity of illusions, its deceptions. Gradually the mind HAS to be trained away from believing any of it. Has to learn to see through and past illusory things. Has to learn NOT to believe in what the body reports. And that takes time to reinforce the mind's attitude over and over and over and over again with affirmations and restatements and reframing.

"Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world."

Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, we have to be watchful for buying into the world. Over and over again we will keep slipping back down the slippery slope to hell, and have to keep pulling ourselves back out of the muck again and again and again until we can learn to fly enough that we stay out of it for good.

The problem we have mainly is we do not correctly recognize what anything is. Even if we're looking right at it.

In the separation, we stopped recognizing that God is God, that we are immortal, that separation is impossible, and that there is no ego. We started to believe that these things were not true, failing to acknowledge, accept, allow or be aware of them being true. We started to perceive something else as though it were true.

That means, we started to "recognize" that ego really exists, that separation is possible, that we are not immortal, and that we're sinful. These things started to seem like reality and truth to us. So when we look at them, we seem to "recognize" that there is truth in them, even though it is not there, because we're actually failing to recognize that these things are obviously not true.

So while we're asleep and trying to wake up, we're going from a state where we don't see, or correctly recognize, what is here, transitioning to a state where we get a much clearer view of things and can tell what is what.

As we do this, removing blocks to awareness and becoming much clearer about what something is and what it isn't (true vs false), things which we never used to recognize as something become more obvious.

One thing I've noticed for example is that various forms of sickness are starting to be recognized by me as the ego at work. I see egoic tendencies, victimhood, self destruction and unwillingness "within" the sickness. I also am seeing the sickness "as" something that has gone wrong, rather than the strange prior condition of awarding it reality or truth or acceptability.

Some people claim that as you wake up more, approaching true perception, you should become unable to see sickness. The fact is, when you are in false perception where people appear to be sick, you are NOT seeing sickness. You are not recognizing it as sickness. Sure you see some of the surface attributes to be able to say it is sickness, but you do not SEE it correctly because to you it seems like truth and reality and irreversibility and natural.

You in fact are seeing it as though it has truth and reality and something worth protecting in it. You don't in that state SEE the sickness, you are actually seeing something IN the sickness that is not there... distorting your perception of the sickness and turning it into reality.

As your perception becomes CORRECTED, you start to see things without those distortions. You step outside of the sickness. You see it from outside of itself instead of from the inside. You learn to *recognize* it for what it is, and not for what you thought it was. That's an increase in awareness and an increase in the clarity of perception. It has absolutely nothing to do with "not being able to see sickness", in fact it has everything to do with becoming ABLE to *correctly* see sickness, recognizing it as false, and not as truth.

This still correlates to the fact that you are becoming aware that sickness is not real, that it is fake, that it has no reality to it and is not the truth about a person. So you are still overlooking the ILLUSION that sickness is the truth. But the removal of the illusions ABOUT the sickness, reveals to you what the sickness IS, rather than what it isn't. What it IS, is something false, something unreal, an ego deception.

Most people who are sick DO NOT recognize the sickness for what it is, they instead experience an unconscious interpretation of it which renders it real and threatening and unchosen and filled with truth. That is not awareness of sickness, that is unconsciousness. And as you look upon someone who is sick, if their sickness appears to you not as it really is but as a tragedy or real or irreversible or set in stone or natural or understandable or it makes sense etc, then there is something wrong with your perception. "A sick body makes no sense."

Yes ultimately you will realize that all sickness is an illusion and eventually you would recognize that there literally is no sickness anywhere. Or at least, that there is no REAL sickness. All of the sickness will be recognized as make-believe and self-inflicted pretense which has no real effect on anything real. That does not mean you won't still perceive it in others while you are in a body. Having true perception is still having perception. It just means that you see the TRUTH of the situation, rather than seeing it falsely. Seeing sickness truthfully shows you that it IS false.

It's the same thing with regards to the real world. In clear perception, the world is RECOGNIZED AS FALSE. It does not mean the world becomes reality or truth. In fact, it is while you believe that the world is true and real that you are in FALSE perception, a state in which you've attempted to convert something which is inherently false, into something true.

This entire world is made-up and does not exist. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach - that there is NO WORLD HERE. This whole universe is fake. And when you have true perception, you see truthfully, and this will show you - it will strike you - that this world is in fact FALSE. There is an inherent falseness to it. An unbelievability. Like a vast sea of lies. When you *RECOGNIZE* it for what it IS, and not for what you were making of it, you will simultaneously see it clearly, and see that it is NOT God's creation.

In the Course, the "real world" or forgiven world therefore refers to how this world appears to us when we are seeing it through eyes of love and forgiveness ie CORRECTLY PERCEIVING it without adding to or denying it. It shows us the "truth about" this world, which is why Jesus uses the term "real world" - the reality of this world, is that it is not real. To see the "real world" is to see a glimpse of heaven (which is real), a reflection (face of Christ) in which you can compare and realize, that this world is in fact NOT real and is not part of God.

It's all about recognition. Do I recognize this thing for what it actually IS in the truest perspective, or do I think that it means something else? "I have given the world all the meaning that is has" literally tells us that in false perceptual states, we have tried to turn something fake into something true, something unreal into something real, and have convinced ourselves that we're living inside a real world. This is false. This means we're not perceiving correctly or clearly and do not RECOGNIZE this world for what it actually is. And so we are deluded and deceived.

As we become clearer about what is, we are also becoming clearer about what God is, instead of believing as the ego has that God is evil or dead or the opposite of what you want. Sickness starts to be seen for the blight that it is, and not for something worth keeping.

Jesus speaks in the course about his "inability to tolerate the suffering of others". This doesn't mean He freaks out and gets mad about people being sick. It means he recognizes all forms of suffering as UNNECESSARY and as expressions of false beliefs, coming from distorted perception, and having RECOGNIZED them for the 'guiltless mistakes' that they are, can easily discern and know that they can be corrected. And he can correct them. That's what miracles are for.

But if we do not even recognize sickness or suffering for what it IS, we will actually keep it and support it and fight with it and continue to suffer, because we don't see how easily it can be changed or why it is not what we thought it was. It's almost like learning a language or something... at first all the words seem confusing and we get lost and say the wrong things. But later we become fluent and are able to discern which words are correct. We start to recognize them. Another word for recognition is simply clarity. Awareness. Knowledge.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man (souls/sons) by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind (his own free-will creations).

The latter (the son’s ability to create) required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is freely given (God gave us freedom).

Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement (no separation)or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects (each aspect being a son of God with free will) are of the same order."

Also...

"In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the FREEDOM OF THE WILL. When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth."

When we have free will, and it’s really free (not under illusion) it creates like God creates, freely, independently. What we will is the same as what God would will. But it is still our free will which wills it. When we enter into illusions, the will becomes NOT free, because entering into separation is a denial of freedom and a denial of will. Therefore the ego does not have free will. The ego is the denial of freedom and will. The ego only has WISHFUL THINKING. And to wish is to not will at all. To have no will at all is to not will to live, which is the choice to die.

Because EACH SON has free will, each son INDEPENDENTLY gets the TOTAL FREEDOM to decide, whether or not to believe the ego and oppose God’s will, or to co-create with God. Blocking will means you are choosing to be against your own will. This creates the split ego mind, within which you have multiple conflicting wills. At the very least two (typically persona and shadow, or conscious and unconscious).

When your mind is split your will is split, and you will be in CONFLICT with yourself. At war with yourself. You will attempt to will one thing with a partial will, and another part of you will attempt to oppose it. Trying to oppose God’s will opposes your own will. This puts you into a tug of war between yourself and yourself. This cancels out the effects of your willing, because each time you will one thing, you also will to stop it and bring about an opposite. This puts a FREEZE on your will, making you POWERLESS, and incapable of willing anything at all. To use your free will against itself renders you impotent and UNWILLING. It also means you no longer will LIFE, and therefore make death as a statement of your unwillingness to live.

The ego has no will. It only has wishful thinking. Death is wishful thinking, because it is impossible to kill God’s son. The secret to salvation tells us we are doing this all to ourselves. That’s because we are the one WILLING against ourselves in a split mind. Willing against God’s will and against our own will produces an alien will which we fight against within ourselves.

When our will is split, we cannot perform miracles. When our will is WHOLE, we are SINGLE MINDED, with a single unified will which does not stop itself from expressing, and a whole mind is a miraculous mind. Miracles express from wholeness. Spit-minded people are anti-miraculous (anti christ). To be miraculous you must use your "whole heart", or whole will, not a partial will. Being "in two minds" (with two wills) means being in fear, and miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of fear. Whole mind has no limits to what it can create because when it wills, it does not oppose its own will, and therefore what it wills MUST be expressed and manifest.

Also since we all have our own FREE WILL, this does not mean we are necessarily contradicting each other. It does not mean we are willing against each other provided we all want the same thing. We are all willing the same thing. We all will to expand and create and share love and joy. It is ONLY when free will is used against ITSELF and against God, that we attack ourselves and go into a state of a split mind, where our will ceases to produce real effects.

This produces a private world of dreaming in which our will is divided and fragmented, along with our identity. We then seem to have a "separated will" which is attempting to implement the authority problem. It is an improper use of will. It is an attempt to will something that God would not will, a fiction or an idea of loss/lack/attack etc. Willing to "create death", is actually a will to create NOTHING, and so is an attempt not to will anything at all. This is why nothing real can be threatened - no opposing will can truly will anything.

Also because we have free will, this FAR MORE CLEARLY explains the workings of perception. In that, it is our task, each of us individually, to take full responsibility for what we are experiencing. It means as an individual son, *I* am responsible only for what *I* am doing to myself. It is not possible to do anything to other people against their will. It is not possible to be affected by anyone else’s will. Everyone’s will is equally powerful, which is why Jesus can’t force us to wake up. Whatever I am experiencing, I did it to myself.

Having free will means that I am responsible only for the INNER content of my mind, which is my state of self attack and conflict with myself, in which my own will is opposing itself. It also means I am responsible for my own mental and physical health. It also means therefore, because other souls have FREE WILL, the state of their mind and their body is NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. Nor does the state of their mind or body have ANY POWER to cause me to be UNABLE to choose absolute atonement and awakening for myself as ONE SON in the sonship. Jesus has already proven this. We are not holding him back. If other people were part of his mind "lagging behind" he would not have been able to wake up because we would be holding him in hell "against his will."

No-one has the power to stop you from returning to God. No-one has the power to choose for you. No-one has the power to force you to be awake. No-one has the power to force you to heal. No-one has the power to make you be "not sick" if you want to be sick, and all sickness is the choice of THE INDIVIDUAL FREE WILL to select sickness for themselves. Each individual Son with free will DOES select and create THEIR OWN BODY. Bodies are not created en-masse like some kind of production line by a single "son" - EACH SON materializes their own body and they are responsible for it.

Other people’s sickness is NOT in my mind. The only thing in my mind is my additional layer of projected sin that I ADD to their pre-existing condition. Taking that projected sin OFF of them, which wasn’t even ON them to begin with because ideas do not leave my own mind, WILL NOT heal them. All it will do is it will allow me to PERCEIVE CORRECTLY and clearly, recognizing that THEY STILL are insisting, by their own free will, that THEY want to make themselves suffer. They also have to be willing, idependantly, to want to receive help and healing, otherwise there is nothing we can do. This is why every part of the sonship has to become WILLING to return to sanity on their own.

The idea that there is only one son, or no son, or the son is god, or there are not multiple sons, or no-one has free will, or there is only one free will, or the entire content of my perception includes all other people’s un-freely-chosen suffering, or that other people’s sickness is my sickness, or that other people are inside my mind, or that I cannot perceive other people’s free will choices (even the choice to be sick or dead), is ALL BULLSHIT.... derived from a basic fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge that God gave FREE WILL to every single Son/Soul he created, and He created multiple equal sons each of them ABSOLUTELY FREE to choose on their own, AND therefore each is 100% responsible for their own self, mind, choices, consequences, suffering, death, or choice to accept atonement.

Without free will it is impossible to properly explain the functioning of perception or the choice to be sick or how the mind works or what the course means on wide variety of topics. And without acceptance of multiple free wills, everything will just get lumped together into one big soupy MUSH ... which is the equivalent of putting the sonship in a blender.

YOU have free will. YOU are responsible for what you create. YOU are responsible for what you choose. YOU are responsible for what happens to you. YOU are responsible for accepting the atonement for YOURSELF. YOU are responsible for making yourself sick or well. YOU are responsible for extending God’s will or choosing to oppose it. YOU, one of many sons of God with free will, are NOT responsible for the FREE WILL CHOICES of other free-willing Sons of God. And their free will choices have nothing to do with you, nor can they do anything TO you, nor can you do anything TO them against their will.

You are NOT responsible for other people being sick. You are NOT responsible for other people choosing fear. You are NOT responsible for other people staying asleep when you wake up. You are NOT responsible for making others sick or well. You are NOT responsible for putting suffering into the world as though it is part of your own mind, when in fact it put there either by other people’s free will or as a collective decision. You are NOT responsible for fixing other people’s freely chosen suffering. You are NOT responsible for anyone else in any way, OTHER THAN.... to offer a SERVICE to them, by offering them miracles, and becoming open to SHARING WITH THEM.

Since you have free you can give miracles because you temporarily have more, and can give miracles to those who temporarily have less, to fulfill a lack - a lack which another brother HAS, but you DO NOT have. Their lack is NOT your lack. Their lack is NOT part of your mind. God created many sons, many free wills, and MANY MINDS. You must forgive and awaken IN SPITE OF the free will choices of others.

Here are some more statements about our free will which clearly tell us that we have free will as given by God:

"But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love, and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound."

"Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share."

(Please note, when this part says you share God’s will, that DOES NOT mean that God takes over your freedom and you have no freedom to will. It means you AGREE with God’s will and extend His will which is the SAME as your will in its character or attitude. You have the same KIND of will that God has. God is free, and so are all of his children.)

If God created you perfect, and you cannot change because you are permanent, then what the heck are you doing trying to change yourself?

Ultimately, being able to accept the truth about you is all that is asked of you. And that means, surrendering everything else that you're trying to do to define yourself or be different from how God intended.

God is the one who created you, and He is the one who knows your 'natural', Real Self. And you cannot change that. I repeat, you cannot change that. It is permanent.

So really what we're doing is we are fighting with reality, a reality that we cannot change. And yet we keep trying to change it. And we believe we already changed it.

The only way we're going to be able to accept the truth, is to completely surrender everything else we're doing to avoid the truth, and that actually includes being a 'seeker', and attempting to 'grow', and trying to become something you are not already in truth.

So really, if you can't change the FIXED reality that God has put in place for you, you only really have two options. Either you fully accept it and just settle into it and give up trying to fight it (and be tremendously happy and at peace), or you fight against it (and be unhappy).

It would be sane of us to accept the truth of who we are. It is insane not to. Because to not accept it is an attempt to suggest reality/God can be changed, and this is impossible, and will never be accomplished. So to try to do that anyway, is completely futile and a ridiculous waste of effort.

But can we accept this? Can we completely just drop everything and accept what is true? Eventually at some point we're going to be to be willing to do this if we want to wake up to reality.

You may think there are things about yourself that are unacceptable. But think about that. What realm do those things live in? Do they live in the realm of reality and truth, in which you can ONLY be acceptable? Or do they live in a realm of unacceptability where there is only lies? So that means... everything about yourself that you cannot accept, is not true anyway. So its not true that you are unloveable. Its not true that you are flawed. Its not true you are imperfect.

And who would want to accept their imperfections? Imperfections are not real. Who would want to try to find peace by accepting separation from God, or death? You can't. But you can transcend these things with true acceptance, which means accepting the truth. And the truth is, you are immortal, and you've never changed.

So if you've never changed, then you are already as God would have you be (in your true self). So why not accept this already? This is why you ultimately need do nothing - provided you're not doing anything ELSE.

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 did not wake up this morning!)

"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. You can't be perceiving the world as real and be awake.)

"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.)

What's happening with all this projection that everyone is doing, is basically a mass dis-owning of Self and a mass-disowning of responsibility for each person's own experience.

We're all walking around constantly shoveling ourselves and our own stuff onto other people and onto the environment. We're trying to get rid of ourselves all over the place. It's like, we're taking our insides and we're saying to everyone else, here, you take care of this for me, I don't want it. We're saying that we don't want who we are and that we refuse to do anything to change it.

When this gets really strong it turns to gossip, skapegoating, blame, judgement, victimhood, feeling stuck and apathetic. We dis-empower ourselves this way, by giving away this responsibility for ourselves, allowing someone or something else to have 'the power' and the responsibility to decide for us who we are, what we are, what we experience and what our truth is.

We just plain don't want to own our own truth or be true to ourselves. We want to get all lost in everyone else's business, what everyone else is doing to everyone else, and what the whole world is doing to us. We need to take care of our own business and mind our own business. "Be passerby"!

When we're in the irresponsibility role, we are expecting everyone other than ourselves to own up to who we are, for us, and to deal with our upsets and problems for us. And yet at the same time, we don't really want them to do this, because we don't really want this stuff to be fixed. We want to keep believing we are guilty and sinful and yet at the same time demand that other people remove all the experience of that guilt - usually by them having to change. That's the ego's version of forgiveness - continue to suffer while claiming you don't want to. And that's how you be a victim.

So being a victim really means, you deliberately disowning yourself and responsibility for your inner truth and identity, and then shoving it onto someone else's plate and expecting them to change or deal with it for you, while refusing to allow any change to happen, so that you feel like they're not giving you what you need or want. And yet this is all because of your own irresponsibility. This is why taking back that power and responsibility literally makes it impossible to be a victim, because you're getting out of the entire passive-aggressive "I refuse to be me" stubborn resistance.

We're all sitting around complaining about things which we have the POWER TO CHANGE, as if we do not have the power to change, and waiting for someone else to come along and rescue us. You can put a lot of energy into worshipping some idol or teacher or resource hoping for them to be your savior. But at the same time as asserting that you need a savior to 'do it for you' you're also asserting that you refuse to do it yourself, which means you really will refuse to accept that person's help anyway. You'll end up having a clash with the teacher because you are saying you want mega help but really you don't want any. You instead want to hold onto sitting on the fence of your own life and staying stuck and hoping someone is going to be your hero.

You don't think you have the power precisely because you've given it away. And so you don't see your options of freedom because you think they are not available to you. Yet you are only disempowered by giving your power away in the first place and taking back that power/responsibility gives you the tools you need to make any corrections needed. You can get yourself unstuck. You have the power to do it. You have the ability to wake up. You just need the willingness to not be a victim and to OWN your life and your freedom again.

Funny to think you don't own your own life and you think someone else has control over you. This is your life. Own it. Live it.

You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.

There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.

Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.

Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.

What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.

Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.

Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.

So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.

I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.

We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.

And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.

What is more important?

To spend huge amounts of time studying and analyzing sickness to try to describe all the ways that it is behaving and all the possible causes and all the remedies that may or may not work, only to likely just apply a bandaid that barely conceals the damage and doesn't really improve the situation long-term...

or

To fricking heal the problem once and for all in its entirety right NOW?

How about being DONE with sickness instead of dwelling on it? How about an immediate healing miracle which SOLVES the problem without fuss of fanfare and without the need to constantly dwell on or tolerate or suffer from all the justifications for why this sickness has to remain?

God has the power to heal anything. And provision has been made for how we can accomplish this healing by working with Holy Spirit. And Holy Spirit can and will heal anything in an instant.

The ego loves for us to lament on how long a sickness has been around, for how long we've had to suffer with it, all the reasons why it can't be cured, all the explanation for what is happening, the laundry list of artificial causes, the big long story about how all of this suffering wasn't asked for in victimhood, all the depth and detail of medical history that everyone loves to dwell on etc.

The ego also loves the fact that the ego has made sure there are no real 'cures' in its world of suffering. The cure would be the undoing of the ego, the restoration of God's will and the complete healing and wholeness brought back into demonstration. The ego will not allude to or align with that. It will instead come up with ways to KEEP the suffering, maintain the sickness, not address the real problem, avoid cause (God), and patch it up with archaic, bizarre, blind 'medical treatments' which may or may not help, and often can have fatal side effects.

The ego would trade one sickness for another, it would have you accept a new problem as an alternative to the one you had, wagering that if you do so you will be better off. It has no cures. It has no hope for your continuation of life. It wants you dead.

God has another answer. God has miracles. God can heal. And God is not interested in any illusions that talk about how serious or difficult or long-lasting or incurable a sickness is. God simply heals, completely, now. God is permanent health. Divine health. And we are actually entitled to experience and demonstrate divine health 'in the body' in this world even if it's an ego illusory world. We CAN bring divine healing to our own body and that of others, here in this crazy dream, even if that is not the ultimate goal of awakening. God doesn't want us to suffer.

The only reason we have stupid contracts of suffering and 'scripts' in which we're supposed to learn certain lessons, is because we want to take our sweet time in suffering and going through experiences in order to slowly accept God. But God is available for complete acceptance right now. And God wants to heal completely right now. And God has made it possible, through the Holy Spirit, to heal all sickness right now, regardless of whether people are even anywhere remotely ready to wake up yet and regardless of whether they are riddled with sin.

God just wants to love. We're the ones who think we're supposed to suffer with valid reasons to do so. And we're quite capable of being extenders of God's healing power, even while we're in this strange world.

Isn't it time we stopped focusing on sickness and all the reasons for it and all the explanations of it and all the ways to attack it that don't really heal, and to instead spend at least as much time focusing on learning how to work with God to permanently erase this problem forever? What do you want? A life of torment or a life or joy and gratitude?

Doctors, dentists, hospitals, clinics, nurses, pharmacies, they're all substitutes for a disconnection from God and an unawareness of His divine intervention. We are severely out of touch with the Holy Spirit. We are severely disempowered. We need to get plugged back into the source of LIFE!

I asked Jesus some questions about "the script", what it is, how it works, what freedom we have, etc.

He pulled together information from all over the Course in ways I would have never imagined. Here are the key points.

1) Scripts, as sequences of events or arrangements to meet, set up in what seems to be "before" incarnation but which is somewhat in parallel to it, are better described as "templates". They are frameworks which present lessons which you may, or may not, learn from.

2) You ALWAYS have the freedom to choose WHEN you will take the curriculum. You can deny it, you can avoid it, you can prolong suffering, you can fail temporarily to learn a lesson, and then it will be presented at a later date. That means you are not 100% "locked in" to being "forced to wake up" against your will just because it's written into some kind of premeditated sequence of events.

3) YOUR MIND has to choose when it will awaken. Awakening cannot be forced upon it, and the script cannot MAKE the awakening happen, because you have to wake up FROM scripts. The scripts can only contain an exit point, a doorway, through which you must still willingly walk by free will.

4) The Holy Spirit's script is also referred to as the curriculum, and it is considered Holy. The curriculum means that the truth is OFFERED, just as love is always offered, but it is up to you when you will accept it. You can choose to delay accepting it. But sooner or later you will accept it, depending on how much tolerance for pain you have or how much willingness to elect to give.

5) In the Holy Spirit's curriculum, all events are planned by Him in general. This is also referred to as the "plan of atonement", which Jesus is in charge of, and which you are to become a PART of. This is reflected upon here: "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that 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."

6) The Holy Spirit came into the dream in a sense, with us, "this world has two makers" and reorganized what we made in order to GUARANTEE that we would eventually return to God. Thus events and life situations and people you meet ("those who are to meet will meet"), and the general themes of your life, and certain things you have chosen to "work on" in this life, are presented at the appropriate time when learning is optimally possible.

7) Challenges and what seems at first to be difficult situations or lessons, are only difficult due to what has NOT been learned yet, and present an opportunity to change what you believe, when seen correctly and accepted as helpful. When the lesson is not accepted or learned but resisted, now you are into the ego's script. What that means is, you are now choosing to interpret the world using the ego and plan or enforce selective attitudes about the world which influence your perception and adjust your experiences in isolated ways. Since the ego thought system generally leads towards death, participating in this way of being puts you "under tyrannical rule" and you now become sort of "subject to" the consequences of that decision. Not because you are forced to, but because you choose to.

8) Because those who are to meet will meet, the manual for teachers talks about 3 types of relationships, short term, mid-term, and long-term, depending on how much learning is possible, whereby the long-term ones are the ideal balance of teaching and learning for both involved, such that a great deal of progress can be made over a long time period without destroying each other.

9) Within the scope of the "template" of your life, there is room to maneuver. Because you have free will and can choose whether to learn or not, there MUST be some degree of freedom of mind not just to manipulate your perceptions or thoughts but also your actions, because your actions stem from your thoughts and beliefs. While "people who meet" may be scripted, and while certain properties of those people or why those people were chosen is scripted, to present an "opportunity", the fine details of how you interact and physically move and what you do in situations or whether you are willing to change, is up to you.

10) You are not locked into a rollercoaster ride which forces awakening upon you or enforces that you will learn a lesson or implements experience into your mind. Lessons are PRESENTED, but it is up to you how you USE them. We should not concern ourselves with being so locked into some kind of pre-recorded "movie of time" as to think there is no flexibility of outcome or that you "must succeed" in that sense. What makes you succeed is the Holy Spirit's infinite patience in presenting further lifetimes as needed until you are finished resisting the truth, by your free will.

11) You decide on what your script for your lifetime will be before you incarnate into it. You decide which family to choose, the type of body, your name, your astrological background, how your brain will function, any special bodily conditions you might be "born with" or manifest early, any scenarios which will arise, who you will meet and when, what lessons/trials you will be exposed to, and so on. Sometimes people's life lessons turn out to be too strong and the person is allowed to "die early" in order to "rest" between lifetimes. Love is compassionate not cruel. It's like we're all people with mental illness who are gradually going through a healing process and there is give and take and always a gentleness in terms of "mercy" from God about what you can tolerate.

12) There is some truth to the idea that God only gives you lessons you can handle, although this speaks more to the script you chose knowing what it would likely entail and also knowing the long-term outcome if you were to be successful at learning from it. Since you know, when not incarnate, the long-term goal of being with God, and can see sense in "whatever it takes to get there", you are WILLING to expose yourself to all manner of positive and negative situations AS NEEDED in order to awaken. What seems like short-term suffering can ultimately be a blessing in the long-term plan.

13) In the biggest possible picture, there never was a real separation or any real time. However our belief in it made it seem real to us, which is why we "need" these "scripts" to help us learn that it is not so. We wrote the need for the scripts, the Holy Spirit provided the curriculum for the correction. That means we wrote a script with the ego for what we wanted to be true, and Holy Spirit wrote a counter-script of lessons and learning which would lead us back to what is really true. The time you elect to LEARN His curriculum is up to you. No-one is forcing you to be awake and no-one is keeping you asleep.

14) Ultimately free will is only free when it is embracing freedom which means embracing God's Will. It is free in Heaven. It is free to willingly choose to agree with God's will and to extend it in joy and love. That is why it was given you, that you would share and increase it. When you will against yourself/God, you are trying to NOT will, which renders your will ineffectual, and stops your will. Thus your will seems to become powerless and you turn to wishful thinking which produces no effects. As you regain your power and your will becomes more whole, you become stronger in the truth and more miraculous, and more able to consciously will whatever you want to happen. Ultimately you can master this to the point where EVEN in this world, what you desire happens and what you do not desire does not happen. At that point, you do not need corrective scripts because you are not writing ego scripts.

15) While from a high vantage point it seems all of time was "written" at once, or all possible moments of time were expressed simultaneously, they were organized by the Holy Spirit into a linear sequence NOT as an ego creation but as part of His plan of atonement, in order to USE TIME for the purpose of learning, and when time's usefulness for leaning is done, it will be UNMADE. Our ego self perceives time as linear in an attempt to believe in appearances, but time is not inherently linear.

16) From a high vantage point, the time that you began dreaming and the time that time began and the time that you stop dreaming and the time that time ends, are all essentially seen as happening at once. Dreaming began and God answered it with the Holy Spirit who has already succeeded in undoing it all. We are guaranteed to return to God because God's Answer is perfect and cannot fail. That doesn't mean that "in time" our experience will be as if all of time's events or sequence is pre-written. There is some flexibility built-in. There are multiple "dimensions" to time, parallel timelines, and you can skip between slices of time depending on your willingness to awaken. Nor does it mean that within each slice of time there are only certain pre-scripted actions you can make. YOUR MIND HAS FREE WILL and it can choose to ignore the script if it wants to. That's why the time you take Holy Spirit's curriculum is voluntary. Ultimately, one way or another, from the highest perspective, "all paths lead to God", and Holy Spirit has ensured that they will.

17) Miracles are the only means at your disposal for controlling time. Also miracles entail a shift into vertical perception which positions you and the person you heal further along in time than you were, having skipped an interval. This tells you that since miracles happen within the world `in time`, that they are capable of manipulating time and thus essentially take you out of the script. Ultimately they lead to revelation and atonement, because they are the means of the atonement, and so miracles must be performed in order to receive and give and share the truth, to have it.

That's all for now.

Another ego trap with forgiveness is believing that you need to be at peace regardless of what's going on in life. While this might ultimately be the goal, meanwhile the things that happen in life are there because they are lessons.

They're not just happening at random. Each of us has a curriculum. That means, whatever point you are at right now in your spiritual path, which is extremely unique to you, and whatever you are experiencing now, there are certain things you are going to have to learn or discover in order to move forward.

And the way that you learn those things is that you have learning experiences, ie lessons. And usually these lessons are things that you seem to NOT WANT. And so a great big steaming SHIT comes along in your life and dumps itself on your foot and you just go about trying to shake it off, but it's really trying to help you wake up.

There is something involved in your interaction with the shit and how you deal with it and look at it and experience it, which is going to bring stuff up for you, trigger you, and cause you to have certain kinds of perceptions and thoughts and ideas. And you might not have had those if it were not for this stimuli. But before you just try to get rid of the shit for coming along to disturb you, realize that this is actually an opportunity to grow and heal and become more awake spiritually.

So you don't necessarily want to be in the business of making life SEEM to be like it doesn't have anything upsetting happening, or that it's just one big smooth ride, because that can be a form of denial, avoidance, and disassociation. And it can keep you stuck. Not saying you have to suffer willingly, but willingly is better than unwillingly, lol

Anyway... so ... forgiveness isn't about avoiding bad stuff. And it isn't just about transcending it and being at peace about it. The bad stuff is there FOR A REASON, because its a lesson in the curriculum, and you not only need it but have asked for it. And that's why it's come. Because you are ready for it. And now you need to learn a lesson from it. And if you don't learn it this time, it will come back again. You don't have a choice in that.

Be aware that the ego, especially the persona part of the ego, wants to get rid of all bad stuff and create an ILLUSION OF BLISS, which really plays into the idea that "ignorance is bliss", because in ignorance ie unconsciousness, you think you don't have any issues because you're in incredible denial. You don't want that. You don't really want a life of total ease and an easy ride, at least not until you genuinely have woken up all the way and don't have any curriculum left. Then it's truly plain sailing.

So 'doing forgiveness' should not be about making bad stuff go away, even though that's what most of us use it for most of the time. It's really to help you learn lessons and to undo what you have taught yourself already, which is mistaken. It is unlearning, which is how lessons are completed - the question is unlearned to reveal the answer. There was no problem until the answer became obscured by the separation, see.

Some important reminders and notes about why you are here and what your true calling is. I use this as a clarifying reminder to myself when I often forget...

Being the light of the world - your true calling - your true mission and purpose - the meaning of your life - what you really want to do in life:

You have been chosen to represent God

Be in the position of having awakened, and therefore are looking down on the world from a wiser higher place, and therefore see all others need help to awaken

The great crusade which Jesus calls us to embark on, as active workers, that awakening is not complete while one soul sleeps, and that lack of love in others is intolerable.

The crusade is the atonement, which is the long-term total plan for the complete awakening of ALL souls

You have a special function to play in the atonement which only you can play, which means not only you can awaken yourself, but also that you will be specifically guided what to do and where to go etc

Choosing to represent the truth and be in truth makes you a spiritual LEADER and not a follower, and therefore your role is to lead others not follow them, unless they are truly your teacher or guide

Teachers attract the students who are ready for their teaching, to impart the greater light they have to those who temporarily have less

Jesus will send you the people that he wants you to perform miracles for and you have the capability to do so, and exercising this ability is the expression of Him

The disciples were instructed to go out and be physicians and heal the sick, as well as healing themselves

Jesus asks us to DO something to correct the error, not just learn about it

Jesus asks us not to be content until the whole world has joined us in our awakened perception

It is an invitation to everyone to wake up and return to God, this is the curriculum - learning the truth, so teachers of the curriculum (teachers of God) teach the truth and help others awaken

Teaching is by example and demonstration and doesn’t just mean ‘passively being a light’ that has no power or effect

We’ve disowned ourselves, disassociated from who we are, given away our power, and projected responsibility for everything outside of ourselves as ego. We need to take that all back and reclaim who we really are. And that means helping everyone else to do so also, because if it applies to us it has to apply to them too since we are all One

Being loving means offering love which heals and sheds light on suffering and undoes ego and restores health and awakens minds and brings God’s sons back to Him, which we are to help in the process of

It is natural to want to help others when you are aware that you are love, when you are not absorbed with your own ego mind’s control, and are therefore free and available to serve - to serve God and our brothers, rather than the ego, because then your hands are empty (come unto God with empty hands) and that means "sign me up God!", I'm available.

Miracles intervene for holiness of ourselves and our brothers and are expressions of love to our brothers meaning we need to extend that love to them and help them.

You are the light of the world. You are its salvation.

Sometimes bad things seem to happen. And usually our reaction is to want to get rid of them, stop them, prevent them, fix them.

But we have spiritual lessons to learn. And usually a lesson means that something starts out appearing to be something unwanted and upsetting. It seems like something has gone wrong.

Especially if this wrongness involves someone close to you or someone you're in a special relationship with, or someone you feel protective of or attached to, you'll feel compelled to want to 'take away' the problem.

But whatever it is that's happening, even if it looks bad, typically it is part of a person's 'script', and it is meant to be happening. It is something that was chosen at some point. Because this thing is happening, many things are going to be learned. It may seem painful to learn them, and indeed unwanted. That's in fact the ego resisting awakening.

So bad things happen, people come along to attack and provoke you, things go wrong, and shit hits the fan. This stimuli provokes and triggers stuff in YOU that represents areas of your unconsciousness. Maybe a sense of guilt that you have not released causes you to feel guilty that the person is suffering, and then you try to fix them instead of deal with your guilt. Or maybe the person attacks you such that you feel you cannot love them, and yet, this is your challenge to learn to love them in spite of their attack, as part of your lessons in unconditional love.

Lessons are not usually very pleasant. And the ego has this propensity to try to create and maintain the illusion of a nice, tidy, 'nothing is going wrong' life. This isn't a life where you genuinely are invulnerable or genuinely are experiencing a smooth flow of beautiful divine guidance, but rather a state of 'ignorance' and unconsciousness and specialness where all challenges to the ego's status quo are avoided.

So we develop this reflex reaction of wanting to 'take away' someone's pain, solve someone's problem, fix the situation or restore it to what we think it's supposed to be - i.e. free of anything 'going wrong'. But maybe what we're actually doing, is taking away the person's lesson. And maybe that will keep them asleep. And maybe that's not helpful.

And so this may mean, learning YOUR lessons that are being triggered by the problem you see in someone else. If you are upset, that's your lesson too. Someone else's lesson may be triggering lessons for you. And they might've chosen to experience those problems JUST SO that you will have an opportunity to wake up, by facing your own lessons in response to it. There are people who come into this world with disabilities and so on to 'teach' others to be more loving, patient and understanding, and they can't teach that if their disability is taken away.

So we need to learn our own lessons and that means, learning acceptance, learning to let go, learning unconditional love, etc... that MIGHT include bringing healing to the person through those more aware states of consciousness. Maybe you're meant to learn YOUR lessons in reaction to the other person's apparent difficulty, SO THAT you become able to heal the other person. And maybe if you don't do that, and you focus on fixing them, you won't ACTUALLY be able to help them.

All is not as it seems on the surface.

A Course in Miracles might seem like a self-study where you do certain prescribed steps and have your own willingness and wake up all by yourself.

But, Holy Spirit has other ideas.

He is not only willing to help you, but is capable of helping you, in ways that are beyond what you can do for yourself. Including supernatural ways, ways of healing your mind, emotions and your body. Things which all by yourself you are not equipped to accomplish or even understand, but which are still possible in spite of your inability to comprehend it.

I think that as you become more willing and open and surrender more ego, instead of it being all bout what your ego does to become spiritual, it becomes more about what you're willing to accept and receive and allow, and this opens the flood gates for Holy Spirit/God to come in and help you.

Your development of trust in God allows you to become willing to operate in God's gifts, to extend those gifts, and to receive them for yourself and others.

Holy Spirit isn't a Holy Bystander, although His perception is uninvolved with the ego. He recognizes our beliefs and illusions and overlooks them and leads us into the light with True Empathy. But this also means, besides Him lifting you up into the light, that He can reach into your illusions and work on them with you. He can heal them, and all forms of separation, including death. Let's also remember that Jesus was raised from the dead BY the Holy Spirit.

Welcome Holy Spirit into you. Invite Him in. Encourage Him to enter by being willing to surrender, relax, let go, and trust to receive His helpful support and healing power.

I was having, or was going to have, a big release as part of a healing that I wanted to "get over with". However, upon being willing to start to release it, Holy Spirit came in and said "you don't have to suffer" and started to heal me, draining and disappearing those feelings as they were coming up.

Often I also now find that if I am upset and need to cry, at the instant that I become willing to cry and let it out, Holy Spirit steps in and suddenly starts to clear it for me. No tears come out, but the issue goes away. Holy Spirit asked, when I was wondering why the heck He kept doing this, "would you rather cry?"

You don't have to do this all yourself, and you don't have to suffer, and you don't have to put up with symptoms, and you don't have to even go through all of your unhealed pain all by yourself. What a relief!

"Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him."

This is very powerful and important. The consequences of your wrong decision, whatever it may be, is whatever came from your belief in separation. Self attack, denial, emotional pain, physical sickness, disability, mental illness, whatever. Holy Spirit CAN and WILL undo all of those 'symptoms of separation' - the alleged consequences of sin - the "real effects" which your belief in sin produced. IF you will let Him, and to let Him, you have to develop trust in Him and in allowing Him to operate in and through you.

You have help! Use it.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven."

"He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive."

Being forgiving isn't a state of "doing something", it's more like an attitude. You just have a forgiving attitude, ie you aren't condemning people, you don't judge, you don't attack. You welcome people regardless of what they seem to do.

When you stop being forgiving, you become "unforgiving", relentless, attacking, judgemental. When this has occurred, you've made an error and are attempting to find reasons why you cannot be forgiving, to justify the attack. This now requires some kind of "correction" so that you can ultimately return to the state of being forgiving all the time.

The correction for unforgiveness is of course forgiveness but being a state, it's the end result of whatever corrective, healing measures are needed to return there.

You need to find a way to restore your perception to truth in which you can see and recognize, there is no sin at all, sin isn't real, and there is nothing TO forgive. Then you're done with the correction, and have returned to BEING permanently forgiving.

"Forgiveness looks and waits and judges not" because it simply is a state of true perception, in which the truth is known to be true and nothing false is believed. Sin is not believed at all. In fact as Jesus says forgiveness and salvation and atonement are all words for the SAME THING. Forgiveness IS the atonement state.

What you do when you try to correct unforgiveness, is you're attempting to return to the atonement. To overlook the things you thought were true and real, and realize they are not. That effort "towards" awakening, is an effort to become more forgiving. You don't stop being forgiving, in attitude, just because there is nothing to forgive.

To forgive means to fore-give, to give ahead of time, so that through giving love you do not MAKE errors of judgement that have to then be cleaned up. If you make errors as a result of becoming unforgiving then now you have the task of having to "do forgiveness" or at least to do something, in order to try to get OUT of the unforgiving state into a forgiving state.

God IS forgiving, because otherwise we have to say he is unforgiving. But in this forgiveness, he KNOWS there is literally nothing TO forgive. Just as we're told that the Holy Spirit looks past error from the beginning so that errors are not made in the first place. The Holy Spirit is permanently forgiving as well. But being forgiving and "having something that has to be undone", are two different situations.

True forgiveness IS the atonement, it is the recognition that there is no sin, nothing has happened, and therefore "I need do nothing" because nothing has gone wrong. "Practicing" or "applying" forgiveness is more to do with the process of purification, in which you're attempting to become clearer about what is true and what is false, so that you can come to remember how to be forgiving and wake up to your permanently forgiving (non-attacking, non-judging) nature.

God's will is already done.

There is no separation between cause and effect. He has willed what you are, and you share His will with Him. You can therefore will to extend the Kingdom of God and to Create in His likeness.

However, the idea of a separate will is an ego idea. It's really the attempt to STOP the will of God, which means to not have a will at all. It is wishful thinking, because it can't be possible to truly have a separate will.

If you will with God, you will have Life. If you will against God, to have a different will, you will have death. Death is the absence of real will.

Also when you will against God, which is really a withdrawal from willingness, a refusal to will, you will go into the ego split mind in which there will appear to be "your will" and an external "alien will". You'll also believe the body has its own will along with everyone else. Multiple split wills.

Once cause and effect are separated out it's going to appear that everything external has its own will, and that it is willing against you, because you no longer see the connection between cause and effect. So you can't have your "own" will without simultaneously creating an "alien will" that is in opposition to your own. Therefore your separate will is the persona, and the alien will appears to be the shadow. And then everything "you" will separately will be thwarted by the shadow, and you'll be at war - a battle of wills.

As the Course says, there is a metaphysical curriculum of awakening with fundamental truths you need to come to. You cannot change that curriculum because it's the same for everyone (even outside of ACIM), but you can seem to delay learning the truth (the time you take it). You do that by seemingly having your own ego will which goes off busying itself and spinning its wheels and avoiding and denying, which you will then think is free will.

You are free to choose because God's love is not forceful and won't stop you from trying to be separate, but when you are without God's will you will have barely any will at all. That's why you can't perform miracles, which are supposed to be happening all the time. Without God's will miracles are impossible, and Life is impossible.

You will think you have a "life", and that it's your own life, which you control, or have autonomy over, with an authority separate from God, but that's an ego claim. Its a delusion, because in truth your will and God's will are shared, and will only exists when there IS a sharing of real will (God's Will). Will has to be extended, and the ego's will does not extend, it just projects.

Also the ego does not really ever will that you wake up or accept truth or be open to sharing with God or to receive a "cure" that undoes the ego.. It "wills" that you be dead, which is a giving up of the "will" to live. All attempts to have a will separate from God are attempts to relinquish free will and be a victim - the victim who appears to have no will power to actually take action or prevent death. And then the death of the body-identified person is allegedly the death of God's will. The end of Eternal Life.

In a similar vein to that you think you think, but you really only share the thoughts of the thought system you are aligned with, you "think you will", or wish you will, according to the thought system you belong to. Either you are willing "with" the ego, or you are willing with God. And the ego's "will" will be against God's will, because it's just a device for denial. Then whatever the ego wills, which is your death, will become what you're actually choosing and will experience. If you don't want that, you have to align with God's will and accept eternal life. You don't have any other options outside of which of the two thought systems you share in.

You can be of service to God, or of service to the ego. There is no other "separate" will that you have of your 'own' independent of both. Either you're in the "Life Will" or in the "Death Wish".

God's will not my will be done.

Should you change the world?

There are many parts of ACIM which SEEM to suggest you should not. Such as:

"Seek not to change the world, but seek to change your mind about the world."

Also Jesus tells us we need to correct the real cause of suffering in our mind, in our perception, in order to truly heal it.

Some say that this might possibly lead to a "side effect" of the body being healed, or it might not. Which is wishy-washy bullshit.

Let's break it down.

If you believe this world is reality, and as a world it sucks big time, and you hate it, and its insane, and you think it's "really insane" as in, it actually IS, then YOU have a problem in your mind because you're not seeing correctly. The world is an ILLUSION!

If the world is real to you, then you've mistaken illusions for the truth. You've given reality to illusions. And now when you see an illusion of a "bad world", you're going to react to it with despair, depression and hopelessness, only because you think it is REAL and not because of its form.

If you then seek to change the world to "look better" AS a real world, which is what happens when most people try to change the world, you're actually going to KEEP the belief you have that this world is reality. You will move the furniture around, maybe to some configuration you prefer temporarily, with tradeoffs, but it's not necessarily going to give you real lasting happiness. It will give you a temporary illusion of happiness which is dependent on the world, and it will change on you.

There is a different way to change the world. Perhaps we should say, to TRANSLATE or TRANSFORM the world.

When you withdraw your belief that this illusory world is reality, and you stop taking it seriously, and stop reacting to errors, sins and sickness as though they're real, you will be much happier. You will know there is not REALLY any reason to be upset, that the world is not REALLY bad, and it's not REALLY anything. This will alleviate all possible reasons for upset.

From that vantage point you will see the "forgiven world", which you will be OVERLOOKING, to Christ's face which is beyond form.

You will also be miraculous, and with the power of God, you WILL have access to be able to "change the world" in any way that is appropriate. Albeit that perhaps it would need to be a) inspired by love, b) in alignment with Jesus's plan of atonement/awakening, and c) for the good of all.

Just as Jesus performs intercessions/interventions by way of MIRACLES, so can you, and you may well bring about "changes" in the world as a result. You may well seem to make the world a happier place, not because its FORM is better, but because there is healing taking place. People are waking up to the truth, miracles are educating about God's reality, and belief is shifting away from illusions. That's a helpful way to change the world.

Thus it's not then so much about to staying IN the world and fixing it up and making it all pretty and real, but more to do with you converting it to an illusory yet more tolerable "happy dream", which smooths the way to awakening and eases suffering and gently helps you and others to return to God. This "use of the world" for awakening is a better purpose than to try to "use the world" to produce a "real world" that is considered better than the old one.

There's nothing wrong with you changing the illusion. Jesus did it many times. Every miracle does it. Miracles rearrange space and time. Jesus tells us its a device for the manipulation of time (and space)! Why not ease the nightmare and lift some burdens lovingly so that people can see EXAMPLES and DEMONSTRATIONS of right-minded thinking, the truth of God's kingdom, the POTENTIAL of awakening, and the FREEDOM that is everyone's right!

The purpose then isn't to change the world for the world's sake, but to change the world to help people wake up from the world and return to reality.

In the ego's physical world, the form and the function of something are fixed.

You can use a pair of scissors to cut paper, but you can't use a pair of scissors to alleviate your hunger. You can use a screwdriver to screw in a screw, but you can't use it to water your crops. You can use a toilet to flush some poop, but you can't use the toilet to cook your dinner (hopefully).

Physical objects, forms, have a fixed function. This is because the ego is a fixed device. It is something you made with a single FUNCTION, and that function is fixed. Its purpose is specific and limited and unchanging. It was made as a device to oppose God. It was made to "see" God from a completely opposite vantage point and perceive God as though God is false, and that therefore death is true.

It was designed to fulfill that function, and just like any other "tool" that you use, it is just another tool which has one function and one function only. You can't turn it into something else and you can't make it do things it was not designed to do. Because the ego is "this world", forms in this world are fixed in their function also, and can only be used according to their properties or functions.

Your only choice with the ego is whether you pick it up and USE it, or whether you put it down and stop using it. You cannot change it into the truth. You cannot bring it with you into Heaven. You can't transform it to make it more spiritual. You can't convince it that God's truth is true. You can't make it listen or change its ways. It is a fixed-function tool that only does one thing and never will do anything else.

When you are identified with this tool and think it is your SELF, you will attempt to change IT whenever you are attempting to change YOU, and it can't change. It will object and see this as an attack and a threat. It will produce an ego rebound, because it does not want to and cannot wake up, and it cannot see the truth or understand it or accept it. The part of you that is still USING it does not want and cannot accept the truth "through" it, and that part of you will see your attempts to awaken as an attempt to destroy yourself. i.e. to destroy your illusory "function".

The only real choice for "becoming more spiritual" is to drop the ego and stop using it, stop listening to it, stop identifying with it, stop trusting it, stop believing it, stop living through it, stop perceiving with it, and stop trying to make it be real. You cannot keep it. You have to let it go. To surrender everything that it tries to do. And that also means giving up ITS illusory spiritual path which is nothing more than exchanging one set of illusions for another.

To become more aware of the truth about you, you need to bring into question whether the ego you trust is really the truth, discern that it is false, recognize it as false, and decide to accept the real truth as it is without your ego filtering it. The ego plays no part in that, and it's purely your decision to realize that your false identity is not your true self, that you are more than you appear to be, that you are not anything the ego describes or judges, and that your true nature has not been changed by your use of the ego device.

Your awakening then is a shift in IDENTITY, given that who you thought you were is not really who you are, and is not the whole of who you are. You are more than you are aware of. You are more than the ego sees. You are more than your body. You are more than a separate person split off from everyone else and from the universe. And you are more than this universe. You are the Son of God - the singular total full expression of everything God is everywhere.

Lies do not become the truth. Fear does not become reality. Death does not replace life.

Why do 'lessons' show up in your life as negative, unwanted, like things are going wrong, or something bad is happening?

Whatever your current beliefs are, your idea of truth is what you think of as 100% true. If there is anything that happens that seems to agree with these beliefs, you see those things as truth. You welcome them, see them as an ally, experience them as wanted and desirable. They reinforce your belief and confirm or provide evidence that your belief is the truth.

Even if something bad happens, let's say that you have a belief that you are unworthy of love. You will create in your life an experience where someone is mistreating you perhaps. But at first you won't really be able to see that this person is doing that, instead you'll believe that they are treating you how you are supposed to be treated, because you agree that you are unworthy. In contrast, if someone comes along and loves you unconditionally, you will recoil and attack them, certain that they are lying to you, deceiving you, and must have some secret ulterior motive. Your belief in suffering does not and cannot understand a healing presence.

So like any thought system or belief, whatever agrees with your belief you will experience as welcome and true, and anything that seems to be against your belief you will experience like it is your worst enemy. You will see everything 'false' in them and will reject them. This has nothing to do with whether they are actually the Real Truth or not, and hinges entirely around what you believe the truth is.

So now because you have a false belief, there is something that you believe falsely and so you are in need of 'learning' what the real truth is. It wouldn't really be helpful to you to send you a situation or event or person who simply exactly mirrors your own false belief, because you would see that as highly agreeable, as proof that what you believe is true. You would welcome them and learn nothing from them.

In the interests of your spiritual growth and awakening, it serves you to, instead, be given events and situations and people who seem to represent a Real Truth, or who 'carry a potential' to teach you a Real Truth, so that you will be challenged. When they show up, however, you will initially believe they fall into your 'false' category, you'll experience them as though they're your enemy, or exactly what you don't want, or you didn't ask for this, or you hate it when this happens etc. You do not yet recognize the opportunity or the benefit that's hiding in the presence of this thing. You don't recognize it AS a bringer of truth, so you think it's just there to piss you off.

Each thing that shows up in your life, that seems to be what you don't want, is put there by arrangement to help you awaken. But that means that you're going to have to go through some kind of transformation of your perspective. Your idea of truth is going to have to be challenged. It is directly challenged by what you think of as intolerably false, showing up and being *experienced* by you as unwanted, because of what you currently believe you want. You will hate and reject it and wish it weren't happening and like it's unfair and everything sucks. But, this thing, whatever it is, is actually there as your savior, attempting to help you to awaken to a shift in allegiance, from what is Truly false, to what is Truly True.

So this thing will trigger off and push your buttons and disturb your sense of status quo. It will put a crow bar in your resistance to Truth and leverage it to try to open you up. And often this happens because the thing that comes along to bother you practically 'forces' you to have to change your perspective, in order to deal with that stimuli.

For example, perhaps someone close to you becomes sick and you absolutely can't stand the fact this is happening, and it keeps triggering you, and you get upset about it a lot. Obviously this is very upsetting as though some curse has come upon your life. BUT, over the course of time, you will find that, if you are working some program of purification, healing and honesty, that this thing is triggering you only because you've got some kind of false belief or unhealed pain stuck in your awareness that needs to change.

The stimuli triggers that pain and it keeps coming up, so if you keep trying to make it go away, or if you keep trying to fix the seeming cause of the trigger - the other person or event - you are actually avoiding learning the lesson. And you WILL have this resistance to some extent especially at the beginning. Nobody in their right mind who believes they know what the truth is, would accept and not reject something that appears to be completely false. It's just that we're very mistaken about what its actually true and false.

Over time, in this example, you might come to realize that in order to not be upset and triggered, YOU need to change something about yourself. You need healing, correction, light, and a higher truth. You need to, and are often forced to, confront your own inner mental condition and belief system and bring it into question. You might even have to get down on your knees and be pleading with God before you become willing to surrender your false view of reality. But eventually, it will transform you and you will come to realize a greater truth, and you will actually let go of your false belief, and you will open up to a higher level of functioning that you never thought you were even capable of. You will find an unconditional love that you never thought you were capable of. And this was what the challenge came to give to you.

It's not until this so-called 'problem' has finished transforming you, or has 'completed the mission' that it has to stimulate your errors and to get you to look at and transform your false ATTITUDE, that it will be 'done with'. It's actually there to help you wake up, but it definitely doesn't look like this at first. It can take some time. And if you ask Holy Spirit for guidance along the way He might tell you, this is a lesson. And it's not as though the answer to the lesson is being concealed from you or made to be especially hard to 'get'... and many times you'll find yourself saying "I just don't get it!" "what am I supposed to be learning here?!".... it's just that, you need to be transformed by the situation and the transformation isn't quite complete yet. And whatever it is supposed to provoke in you, or push out of you, or get you to question, or however it's meant to open your heart or deepen your unconditionality, it has to DO that and finish doing that before the lesson is learned.

So let's say, someone comes along into your life with an attacking angry attitude. Maybe they accuse you of stuff. They seem like your enemy. They hate you. This provokes and upset you a lot and you seem victimized. You may find it unacceptable to allow them to be this way. And you may find yourself angry and having reactions and being triggered, because you believe deep down some of what they're saying. And maybe it takes time for you to realize and heal those deep-down beliefs that you have. And maybe you'll find yourself admitting, I just can't love this person.. there is just no way I can forgive and love them, I am very limited in my love.

And then if you STICK WITH IT, and persevere with learning, you will actually become willing to DIG EVEN DEEPER to find even more love and patience and unconditionality, such that you thought perhaps you could never access. And so you 'learn' how to love and forgive this person, not necessarily for their benefit, but so that YOU learn to receive and express unconditional love in the face of what appears to be an attack. And this is a GIFT that is hard-won, and this is what the attacking person was trying to GIVE you, through their role play.

So then after you've got past all the victimhood and 'why me' crap, you come to realize, the person has helped you. The person actually forced you to grow and to become more forgiving or loving or whatever. You actually gained in strength, you grew in patience, your heart opened. And that is what you needed to LEARN from this lesson. And then you can be grateful that this person came along to provoke the shit out of you, because now, on a spiritual level, you can recognize that what appeared at first to be the exact opposite of your truth, has transformed your truth to where you can now SEE, that this person is actually welcome, lovable, acceptable, forgiven - i.e. you now see Real Truth where you once saw something false.

This is why shit happens. We only see it as shit because we don't yet realize how it is not only helping us to wake up, but it is also a gift and blessing, in the bigger picture, disguised as something unwanted. It's important not to try to get rid of your lessons, or other people's lessons, or 'bad stuff', if it's meant to be there to transform you. This is not to say you have to suffer, but IF you need to grow, sometimes you need a catalist to coerce you into that growth. Into awakening. And eventually you will be grateful for every 'bad thing' that ever happened. And you can even then be grateful for what we call 'the ego', for having supplied us with every opportunity for awakening. This is how the Holy Spirit USES everything for His purposes.

Eventually it is the end of victimhood when we learn everything about the Real Truth that we need to experience it constantly. Thank you God for that.

Lately for me what has become starkly evident and true of everyone, is the rather dark and twisted truth that everyone is self-destructive. Everyone is trying to die. Everyone is condemning themselves for a sin that never really happened, and the wages of sin is self-inflicted death. Everyone is being unfair to themselves, mis-representing themselves, attacking themselves and hurting themselves.

"...A dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."

"Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

EVERYONE!

It's a suicidal planet. I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone has the same degree of "deep self-hatred", but it is certainly rampant. The guilt that people have over the separation has driven them insane. We've collaborated on making an insane and stupid world where suffering seems normal and punishment is atonement.

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

"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

Let's just say it again. The whole world is MAD. And this is not merely an allegation or a speculation. It is EXTENSIVE. "This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."

"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt"

Even in biblical terms, if I recall, we're sort of told that each of us on earth has become a "sinner" ie believing in sin, and that we need to "repent" ie find our innocence again.

So what I see now is the fact that we've got a huge population of people who believe they have separated from God. The course calls us "the separated ones." We believe we've accomplished separation by attacking God, or that which is in truth not attackable. And because it is not possible, yet we believe it, we are insane, because now we believe something impossible is true. And this all began with an insane idea.

"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless."

"In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

We as immortal beings, accused ourselves of a sin we could never commit, made ourselves horrendously guilty for it, attacked ourselves, punished ourselves, entered an insane dreaming state in which we dream of being mortal, made up every form of suffering and sickness, and try to kill ourselves off to prove we are right. MADNESS!!!

Fortunately our entire state of insanity is entirely temporary, entirely unfounded, entirely untrue, and entirely correctable, without the slightest punishment called for. We are all just very mistaken people, who believe absolute bullshit lies that we've taught ourselves, and we need correction. We need help from outside of the hell we made to help us wake up to reality and recognize what is true.

"My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever."

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY. You therefore saw yourself AS IF you were WITHOUT it. By making another Kingdom WHICH YOU VALUED, you did NOT keep the Kingdom of God alone in your minds, and thus placed part of your mind OUTSIDE of it. What you have made has thus DIVIDED YOUR WILL and given you a sick mind that MUST be healed. Your vigilance AGAINST this sickness IS the way to heal it."

In order to perform healing miracles for others, you do not necessarily need to be what's thought of as a 'miracle worker', ie someone who has attained a high level of advancement.

The fact is, it is not you, in isolation, that can heal. Of yourself you can do nothing. You do not have a special healing power and you are not a healer.

The fact is, God is the healer. God is love and love heals. And it is also not necessary for you to be in perfect alignment with God's will in order for healing to occur.

If we were required to be enlightened in order to facilitate healing, nobody would be able to receive healing and there'd be no hope for the sick.

The fact is, Holy Spirit has been given to us as the answer to the ego and to undo every aspect of the entire ego illusion. He is capable of functioning to heal us FROM the dream, even when we're in the dream, and even when we're still dreaming. If he did not have this ability, we'd never wake up.

Nor are you required to be free from all sin or ego thoughts. Nor do you need to have a perfect relationship with Christ.

All that God needs in order for a healing to take place, is for you to have enough belief that it is TRUE that God can heal, that God will heal, that God HAS healed, that God wants to heal, and that God IS healing.

And all you then need is enough acceptance of this to step out of the way and to act as a channel, medium, conduit or bridge through which God's healing can flow. That can take the form of you simply being open to RECEIVING and BELIEVING God's providence of healing, which you then are infused with and radiate, or it may come in the form of you laying on your physical hands to someone else, or by you using words which are spoken in a God-aligned way.

Since God's nature is absolute, not relative, God doesn't do things by half measures. God is certain. God is consistent. God is completion and wholeness. So if there are aspects of incompleteness or waiting for the future or uncertainty, in how you approach someone (ie forms of fear), that will block God's flow.

But if you take on an 'absolute' attitude which has no question in it, no uncertainty in it, and it is resolute and firm and truth-filled, you now are forming a bridge for God to flow across. This can come in the form of words which you speak, and these words really don't matter. As you speak, words are energy conduits which allow Holy Spirit to transfer.

And as you speak, you speak TO the problem, directly, and you tell it what to do. You don't talk about the problem. You don't ask God about the problem. You don't ask God to do something about the problem. God has already provided healing. It is your job now to extend it, to share it. And you don't ask the problem to go. You don't request that it go. You don't sidestep around it. You get VERY DIRECT. God is very direct. Immediate. Direct in terms of you directly confronting the exact thing (e.g. pain, sickness), and immediate in terms of time (ie this will be fully healed NOW).

You must expect the result to be immediate and complete, not partial or off in the future. You must also have an expectation that healing definitely will occur, that you could bet your life on it. Certainty. That you will walk away having commanded it to heal and it WILL be healed. And you can't waver from that or go into doubt based on how things appear to be. That's losing faith.

For example, you put your hand on someone, maybe in the area of sickness, and you COMMAND IT TO GO. You tell it what you want it to do. "pain, leave right now, GO!" "tooth, be whole, right now" "brain, return to normal functioning right now" etc.. You have to be firm and assertive. This is how God is. God knows what is true. God doesn't waver. God doesn't listen to the ego's illusions that try to distract you. You have AUTHORITY over the ego.

This takes some practice. It's good to experiment.

1) Join with Holy Spirit/Jesus/God. Feel love.

2) Place hand on person

3) Believe and expect total healing, not taking no for an answer

4) Command it to leave. Repeat if necessary.

5) Allow Holy Spirit to flow through you. You don't need to do anything else.

You can do this whether you're awake or not because this is what God has set up to be possible. It does take some amount of certainty and belief and conviction in God's truth, so the more you have of that the better, but you don't need to be an ascended master to get some results.

"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."

In the separation from God, we attempted to make a world completely opposite to God, in every way possible. Where God expressed eternal life, we wanted death. Whether God was permanent, we wanted everything to change. Where God was immortal, we wanted everything to be attackable. Where God was innocent, we wanted everything to be sinful.

We projected out a world, made from the idea of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." This isn't merely a substitute for heaven, it is heaven's OPPOSITE. Everything about it is opposite. A world more like hell than heaven, where the immortal come to die and the existing come to cease existing.

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

Having made a world opposite to heaven, which is "the hell you made", planet Earth, we then populated it with bodies. The body has a very specific design to serve the purpose of trying to make this unreal world seem real. The body was made to deceive us, not just a little bit, but completely. It reports everything that's false (the whole world) as if it is true.

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

It takes illusions and presents them as if they are totally real. It sees things happening which are absolutely impossible in reality, and looks upon them as if they are really happening. It witnesses sins and attacks and wars and murders as if they are absolutely proven, with evidence to back it up as the bodies lay on the ground to show you their truth. And everything the body senses is reported as though absolute undeniable fact.

The body doesn't especially care whether to judge or not, it just judges all the time. It is locked into false perception. "These eyes made not to see will never see." The way the body sees the world, through physical and biological means, based on the "rejection of light" as photons bounce off illusory objects, is entirely designed to give credit to illusions. It is an illusion-detector, which having sensed illusions presents them to the mind as though they are totally real. And it can see nothing else.

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

The body is actually incapable of seeing actual reality, at all. "The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." If you think about that for a moment, the body is 180-degrees opposite to the truth, everything it reports is a lie, everything it sees or senses is 100% locked into being blinded by form, and it is absolutely incapable of being "awake" to any kind of real truth. It has its head shoved into a darkened box, permanently.

So then we place ourselves in these bodies and we peer out at a seeming world and the body shows us what's happening. It shows us things which cannot happen, states which are impossible, events which must be nowhere, and people seeming to walk around as if they live there. And not one single shred of this is true or real, or even really exists.

So when we use the body, when we listen to the body's input, when we take its sensory messages and decide what they mean, it is very very easy to be deceived. Not even just a little deceived, but 100% completely deceived. What the body shows you is absolutely TOTALLY OPPOSITE to what is true and real. The body cannot discern, and it never forgives. It is blind, and all it can see is an unreal world, masquerading as though reality.

It's the most bizarre thing, and this is why it's such a challenge for us to wake up. We actually need to find a way to recognize in the mind, that everything the body reports is false. We have to find a way to categorize every sensory input as not true, not real, and not happening. The body CANNOT tell the truth.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal.

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real."

This is SO strange to us. Basically we are immortal beings in heaven who temporarily are placing a part of our minds inside these body devices. The devices show a COMPLETELY BACKWARDS view. They turn reality upside down, they swap all opposites, they make everything that's impossible seem possible, and everything truly possible seem impossible. They hide all real meaning, shut down vision, make it impossible to see reality at all, and lock your entire focus onto the form of objects. As if the form that something takes IS its meaning. They are prisons for the mind, and their every perception is back to front.

Through the body's eyes, every single thing you see is fixated on its form, it shape, its physical behavior. As if you have COMPLETELY failed to forgive, have entered into the most extreme false perception, have had your mind strapped into virtual-reality goggles, and are forced to look at scenes of a world that doesn't even exist. It's like having your head totally buried in the sand. An extreme denial of reality. As if you judged the whole world from a perspective of separation and sin, accused it of being entirely devoid of light, and rendered it a living hell.

That's what the body is equipped to do, and that is all it can do. Its limited senses cannot be expanded. Its eyesight is incapable of seeing reality, ever. It cannot detect real light. It cannot even really think, it has no mind, and can make no decisions. It's like a lifeless automaton, a zombie, with no real life of its own, inert and mute and blind and incapable. The body was made like this on purpose to LIMIT those who are immortal and unlimited.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love ***will ALWAYS*** seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him.""

There is no way to transform the body into a detector of reality. There is no way to change its senses or how they work. There is no way to make it wake up. There is no way to get it to be aware of God. It exists solely as a device for separation and will always be a device for separation. In and of itself, it is just a piece of machinery designed to make hell seem real and completely ignore heaven. It is a "hell validator", utterly biased and completely incapable of questioning anything it senses. "To sense is not to know" - to sense, is to reject all real knowledge.

The only hope that we really have, is the fact that we are not the body, and our mind is free to decide what meaning to give to everything the body tells us. It is the mind that decides whether to believe what it is being shown by the senses. It is the mind that decides whether to give it reality or not. It is up to the mind to be the one to either recognize the body's inputs as true, or as false.

The body cannot determine this for us, because it's going to keep feeding us absolute BULLSHIT forever. We have to decide mentally what to do with everything the body claims, because the body is permanently anchored to the battlefield.

"Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions."

Think about that for a minute. Jesus, as mind, entirely dependent on God, able to see and experience God through spiritual vision, believing he was under no laws but God's, still temporarily utilized a "reality inverter" body, so that he could meet with other embodied people and help save them from their bodies.

And all this time, everything that Jesus saw THROUGH the body, registered to his mind as FALSE. Every single thing he looked at that was physical, his mind said "that is not true". Every sight, every body, every sickness, every situation or location, his mind recognized "that's an illusion, it's false". All sickness was recognized as unreal, all physical ailments as false, all damage as fake, he even recognized that dead bodies were not "really dead".

Can you imagine how profound that is to be seemingly in a world, not of it, and so OPPOSITE to its nature, feeling like it is not your home and you do not belong there at all, that you basically "disagree" with every single thing the body seems to report. Where not one thing you witness to is considered real or true. An entire world regarded as unreality and as false to your awareness. Where the body is used/repurposed ONLY so that you can interact with other embodied people, to use it against itself to undo itself and point away from bodies entirely.

That's where we are heading. Lifting our minds up out of believing what our bodies are telling us, out of hell, out of seeing the world as true or real, and into a state of totally dismissing the entire world as a false unreal world. That's actually forgiveness, because forgiveness recognizes illusions as illusions. The world IS an illusion of a world, and recognizing it for what it IS is to forgive it. And "a world forgiven cannot last" because "illusions recognized must disappear."

We are to simultaneously forgive the world, AND recognize it as FALSE, and NOT believe anything that seems to happen in it, and look upon it through forgiving eyes so that we are not tempted or deceived by any of it. To not believe ANYTHING the body reports, using its inputs ONLY to navigate the physical realm temporarily, knowing the entire place is an illusion. Firmly rooted in ANOTHER WORLD, in another reality, another kingdom, under God's laws only, completely denying the physical world and all it entails.

It is the body that seems to make forgiveness difficult. But only if the mind believes what the body is reporting. The mind does not have to go along with the body's reports. It's like, you have to learn how to receive reports from "the field", handed to you on pieces of paper, take the input and assess it, recognize that none of what it says is true, dismiss it, and then use it temporarily only for the purpose of getting others to leave the world with you.

The body is saying "there's a war out there". Your mind has to be saying "war is impossible, there is no war." So long as you use the body it will STILL report lies to the mind, and the mind is going to have to learn to be COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to how the body functions.

To use denial properly to deny the denial of the truth, which is the basis of miracles. To deny that the world is real or true. "The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision." And so we need to develop ANOTHER WAY TO SEE that CAN see reality and DOES recognize the truth and doesn't invert everything back to front.

"Beyond this world there is a world I want.

I choose to see that world instead of this,

For here is nothing that I really want."

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

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

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

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

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

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

We also have to remember a couple of key facts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What our minds really need is a paradigm shift. That means a really radical sweeping upgrade in terms of premise, context and outlook. Some kind of system-wide "shift" out of an entire field of form into some radically greater perspective.

It's not enough to be dwelling in the realm of problems and trying to solve them. We have to get our minds out of the entire belief in problems. That's a paradigm shift, a refusal to engage with the level of suffering and a desire to completely transcend it.

This is why Jesus tells us for example to not to try to find freedom in the body, or in the world. It doesn't exist there. Or to not seek for love outside yourself, but within.

We've been looking to solve problems and suffering at the level of the problems and the suffering, which at best makes illusions of solutions but doesn't stop it happening. If you want it to all stop completely you have to stop the entire system, to not play the game.

The same applies with death and sickness. Questioning whether such things even exist at all, instead of dwelling on how to solve them. It's the withdrawal of power from illusions that undoes them, just as forgiveness is an entire perspective above the battlefield that renders the whole system obsolete.

The ego for example counsels that a war is real, and that you should play the game of war, and that if you take a side you will win, or alternatively you will lose. What it doesn't tell you is that both sides of the war is a loss, because to exterminate anyone is to lose yourself, because you are one. It is not interested in oneness only in separation. If you play the game, you lose, regardless of the outcome. The only way to shift the entire paradigm is not to play at all.

All reactions to a suffering world that you've made real, which compel you to change it so that you don't seem to suffer, are faulty. They might seem to produce some changes and make the illusion more palatable, but it doesn't really wake you up. What wakes you up is questioning the entire premise of the thing and whether or not it's even possible.

Shifting from a premise that this world is real, to a premise that it is just an unreal dream with no real consequences, is a total paradigm shift. It's always about adopting a much broader and higher context which completely reframes everything. A whole new paradigm, a new thought system, a new perception, a new truth, which is so far reaching and deep that it completely redefines the meaning of everything, and puts everything in its proper perspective.

"Freud was more clear-sighted about this, because he knew a BAD thing when he perceived it, but he failed to recognize that a bad thing cannot exist. It is therefore wholly unnecessary to try to get out of it. As you very rightly observed yourself, the thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."

"Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning. And so the mind is DEDICATED to serve illusions."

"Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy. And, in the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon ALL illusion."

"Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws."

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They cannot go directly from perception to knowledge because they do not think it is their will to do so."

So forgiveness bridges the gap between FALSE perception and KNOWLEDGE, by producing a temporary intermediate state between the two which SYMBOLIZES knowledge closely enough to make the transition to it easier.

But if you think about it, forgiveness entails you giving meaning to everything you see, just as unforgiveness does. You project in order to perceive. So in effect, you have to "decide", somewhat randomly, that you're going to just choose to love the world. And by loving it, you push love onto it, and see that love in it. Not that it's really there. Any more than when you push hatred and guilt onto it it's seen in it but it's not really there.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell and always as you wish."

So it seems like this decision as to what you will perceive is really quite arbitrary. It's not really based on anything. It's almost like saying that you just wake up one day and decide that, for a change of pace, today you're going to love things instead of hate them. Like, the fact that you love things isn't based on what the thing is, but on what you are deciding to project.

So it's like you have to take the world, which is neutral, and just spontaneously decide you're going to love it, in spite of itself, just because you choose to do so. Not because it deserves it or is made of love or anything dependent on it. Just some internal decision that you're going to adopt a certain attitude towards yourself and everything you see.

Essentially this means that forgiveness is a kind of fiction or a lie, something that you're sort of making up as you go along. You're just choosing to be more loving, of your free will. You could just as easily choose to be hateful. Perhaps this is why Jesus also calls it a "happy fiction". Put in another way, a kind of "happy make-believe" or "a happy lie." A lie which seems to symbolize truth.

Sometimes that's what it feels like, trying to forgive stuff. It's like we're asked to just be loving just for the heck of it. Just randomly. Yesterday you were hating, today try being loving. Then tomorrow you can hate again. After all this is all about giving everything all the meaning it has. As Jesus says, the world has no meaning of its own and your mind must give it meaning.

It kind of feels to me somewhat "unfounded" to forgive anything, just on the basis that it's actually a CHOICE. It's something you have to choose to do. Just as you choose to suffer. You have to choose to be forgiving, choose to not attack, choose to not make guilty. Sort of, just for the fun of it.

Of course there's a higher purpose here in that a more forgiving attitude aligns your perception closer to God and his laws, which also brings more happiness, which you may hopefully prefer. But everyone is still free to choose what they want. I guess the moral of the story is that you are not forced to have to forgive, everyone is free to choose as they wish - always as they wish. And becoming forgiving is actually a deliberate act that you're going to have to just decide and commit to, just because you want to, or because you see it as something you prefer.

The idea of your persona is that it rejects everything you don't like, keeping only the good stuff.

If you get really good at using your persona, you will get really brutal at cutting out things which seem even remotely bad.

Eventually you'll be trying to be SO good and perfect, that there will be practically nothing left to relegate to your 'bad' category. Like you hear people saying, "nothing is ever good enough for them" - a sign of a lack of self acceptance.

And if that carries on, there will be nothing left to get rid of, you will cease to exist. Death.

So you can see, the persona, which seems all sweet and nice and special and important, glowing with a false innocence, is in fact the ego's wish to destroy you, piece by piece, by gradually stripping off more and more parts of you and relegating them to hell, in the pursuit of 'being a God'. And along the way it will complement you on how fantastic your 'good bits' are, even though your 'good bits' are soon to come under scrutiny.

The persona attacks everything that is contrary to what it wants to keep. And its eventual mission is the total removal of absolutely everything that could be conceived of as less than absolutely perfect. It thinks that by doing this, what you'll end up with is some kind of totally 'perfect self'. The perfect ego, a shining glory, the jewel in the crown.

It should be clear that the only ambition the ego really has is to get rid of you. The only purpose of the persona is to slice you up and separate you out and throw large chunks in the trash. What it keeps, it temporarily exalts like some kind of hero or savior or idol. But slowly it continues to find flaws in that idol, demanding even more vigorous 'purification' and sacrifice.

It says, well, if you give this up, and give that up, you'll be better off. It tells you you don't need all of what is, you only need the special good bits. But it doesn't tell you what happens if you take that to its ultimate goal. Keep going, and there will be nothing left of you. You'll live in a world where everything and everyone seems like your enemy, you are totally cut off and alone, depressed and frightened and weak, barely recognizing that you even exist, BUT .... drumroll... you'll have your perfect little fake self. Yay. And then you'll die alone.

So you can see... as you dabble even a little bit in being dishonest, inauthentic, not yourself, or trying to manipulate reality to get some kind of special value, special attention, special love... you're basically buying into a death trap. The temptation is you will indeed seem to get some special love, but.... it calls for a sacrifice. You've got to give up an arm and a leg for it. And then it's still not enough.

This is the promise the ego has for you. Go along with its plan for salvation, seem to achieve some kind of fake goal, or seem to find some kind of fake trophy, or seem to present yourself as some kind of ruler of the universe, and, in return, all of the rest of what you really are will be suppressed and attacked and gotten rid of.

Ultimately, the ego's perfectionism guarantees that NOTHING is acceptable. And sooner or later this will become apparent. Until you wake up and realize there has to be a better way.

You don't need a persona. You don't need an ego. You have God.

Usually we want to get rid of everything we do not like, everything that feels harmful, every fear, every upset, every ounce of grief or loss. We want to get rid of all our enemies and things that hurt.

But this is actually the ego in action. It wants to get rid of these things because there is a potential that these things might be used to wake you up.

So long as you're in the midst of a lesson, in which something seems to be against your will, you will have this sense of "I don't want this and it shouldn't be happening". This is the ego's reaction. It does not want you to use this opportunity for forgiveness. It does not want you to learn the lesson.

Not that the ego is arbitrarily against you. You made it and you asked it to do this for you. You wanted it to deflect you away from sources of healing, from anything that might trigger an awakening to truth. You wanted it to keep telling you that stuff isn't supposed to happen to you, and you wanted it to make you see things as if they are happening against your will. That way you could stay asleep.

But each time you try to 'get rid of' what you do not like, or be free of a lesson, or fix a problem, or make a bad person go away, or stop something from happening, you're really using ego denial. And you do this in the name of spirituality.

You think it is spiritual to have a life where there are no problems, where nothing is happening to you, where you have no enemies, where everything goes well, where people seem to just adore you, and where you aren't hurt or offended by anyone. I mean, as a goal that's great... That could be true of real spirituality, but the ego wants this goal WITHOUT awakening.

So that means, getting rid of all protagonists, all offenders, all enemies, and all threats. It tells you you shouldn't be afraid and that fear is a bad thing. It tells you not to be guilty. It even tells you you should be constantly happly or people-pleasing. These are all deceptive ways the ego gets you to NOT deal with your shit, and it forms a spiritualized ego.

When you are afraid, that's very good, because you are being confronted with the results of some belief that you have and it's coming into your awareness. This is a great opportunity. Instead of the fear hiding out in the back of your mind, it's being brought into awareness. You don't like it, for sure, but recognize it is an opportunity because now some normally hidden dark shit has come out into the open where you can take a look at it.

It's all about how you use things - whether you use it to deny your shit or use it to bring light to your shit and undo it. So you could take the fact you're scared as a great opportunity to look at WHY you are scared, rather than to just want the fear to go away. It's pretty normal to want the fear to go away, but it's not healthy. It is healthier to take a look at it with Holy Spirit and find out why you are afraid... What guilt is the fear based on? What's the deeper cause of it? Why do you want it? How's it serving you to keep you in the dark? Where is the so-called truth that surrounds the fear to make it seem justified? What is the real truth of this situation?

Its the same with feeling guilty, upset, angry, offended, whatever... Each time this stuff comes to your awareness it's a great opportunity to heal and undo. So don't try to hide this stuff away. Don't shove it back down or want to get rid of it or to avoid it. And don't blame people for triggering it off - they're trying to help you to look at the stuff you don't want to look at. You're better off dealing with it and then being done with it, rather than constantly hiding from it and feeling its torment in the back of your mind, only to keep resurfacing saying "please acknowledge me and recognize my message to help you grow, and please use me for awakening."

This is all great material. Great opportunities to make progress. It's hard work but it's worth it, and it's far better for you than to want to just keep making this stuff go away. You can be free of it permanently if you deal with it properly and heal it. Isn't that better?

Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.

You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.

You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?

As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.

If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.

The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.

So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.

Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.

And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?

The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.

You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.

So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.

The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.

The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.

The course speaks from a perspective of Oneness. That means quite literally that you and all other people are ONE person - one mind, one being. It means you SHARE a mind with everyone else. It should be immediately obvious how much that runs contrary to how most people perceive reality.

It doesn't mean you are a little bit joined and a little bit separate. It doesn't mean you can be sort of One but still retain a sense of separate self. It means you are 100%, totally, absolutely, unconditionally, completely the same as, completely equal with, and completely AS ONE with all other people.

In that view, there is actually a whole different ballgame being played which is vastly different to the ballgame of 'duality', which springs up in the ego and makes you perceive others as 'not you'. The only way for you to see yourself as 'separate me' is to distinguish that other people have differences that you do not have, and therefore which prove your inequality, and demonstrate you are not of One mind. It is a huge cover-up.

So in Oneness, the way that you look at a relationship between two people is very different to how you look at relationships with the ego. In Oneness, because you are One, joined, and sharing everything with the WHOLE sonship (not just one individual), everything that you seem to 'do' to other people, or how you view them or perceive them, applies to them, and to everyone else, and to yourself, all at once. There is then no escaping or being able to say, well, I can treat this part of the sonship one way, and I can treat this other part another way, and I can treat myself entirely a third way. In Oneness, everything is shared, there are no private thoughts, and we all access and express the same mind and Identity (Christ 'consciousness').

Another aspect of the Oneness of the Sonship is that, since everything always applies to everyone equally, anything you do applies to everyone and so you can only either separate from everyone simultaneously, or join with everyone simultaneously. If you could visualize that as a vertical ladder, or 'moving vertically' as some people say, to make true progress in awakening you must uncover the sonship's Oneness in 'layers'. So its like you take a blanket off of the entire sonship at once, to reveal a great degree of Oneness that applies to everyone. Or if you choose the ego and you cover things up, you cover up the entire sonship at once with that same blanket. Whatever you apply to one brother applies to all, including yourself.

Now, just because you start applying ACIM or a mindset of Onenss it doesn't mean your mind is fully committed to it right away. It is very conditioned in the ego's 'mind' and a way of perceiving that is very dualistic. Duality basically attempts to fragment the sonship by dividing it up into many parts. Then it says that different rules and values apply to different parts, and that not all parts are the same. This is an attack on Oneness. But we are very steeped in dualistic mindsets and ways of perceiving each other that are very separation-based. Most of the systems in the world are all founded on this idea of separate individuals (as per physical body boundaries). Acting in a body, as a body, leads us to develop a host of distortions and attitudes and perceptual models which are delusional and very blind to Oneness.

So as you start to 'expose' yourself to Oneness, or a thought system of non-duality like with Holy Spirit/ACIM, you gradually start to chisel away at those ways of perceiving and they gradually get 'corrected'. The mind is, effectively, 'healed', because it's belief in separation is a form of suffering. Duality is suffering. So the mind's perception has to be healed so that the way of perceiving dualisti ally can be transformed into a way of perceiving holistically - ie to perceive with Oneness and to see only Oneness.

That takes time. A lot of time. It's a big transformational process. It takes a lot of work and effort and willingness and healing to 'correct' all of the false perceptions and distorted ways of thinking that duality (ego) has assumed are totally normal for a long long time. So usually waking up to Oneness doesn't happen over night. But gradually, slowly, you start to SEE things more from a perspective of Oneness, and with that comes the ability to see things how Jesus sees them - and you realize that ACIM was written FROM a viewpoint of pure and perfect Oneness. Being able to see that makes everything just fall into place and make perfect sense, whereas seeing it through a filter of duality is ... very confusing.

Anyway... Rambling on a bit.. Oneness... as I do unto others I LITERALLY am doing unto myself. As I see others I see myself. I can't wake up and have a happy jolly experience unless I'm willing to allow that experience to include seeing everyone else WITH happiness and joy, and to recognize MYSELF in them. Or more to the point, recognizing that I don't HAVE a self of 'my own' because everyone SHARES IT.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"That the body cannot heal the mind but the mind can heal the body proves the mind must be stronger than the body. EVERY MIRACLE DEMONSTRATES THIS."

When your mind is sane, you know you are causal. You have no level confusion. The body comes OUT from you.

When your mind is insane, you project causality outside of yourself, which causes you to see yourself as an effect.

The levels are now reversed and perception is backwards.

Seeing yourself as an effect is the idea that you are being CAUSED from outside yourself, and that must mean you believe you are at the effect of those causes.

Seeing yourself as "affected" is an external attack (really self attack) and shows up as ALL forms of sickness in the body, including death. The mind that sees itself under siege cannot help but PICTURE itself as attacked, and this picturing shows up AS THE BODY.

When externalized causes are believed to define what you are, you begin to DEMONSTRATE that you are at the effect of others. And you now start to PROJECT an image of a body that is under attack.

This demonstration is an accusation and an attempt to condemn your brother as the "cause" of sin. If he is a sinner, and you are not, you might be innocent, but you ARE now AFFECTED.

This means you now believe you are BEING attacked by your brother, and you PROVE this by manifesting illness in your body. Then you claim, "brother at your hand I die." "Sick bodies are accusers"!

When this reversal of levels, this belief in magic, this projection of sin, and this displacement of causality, which is ALL THE SAME THING, is corrected, your mind becomes sane again.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Now that you see yourself as CAUSE and NOT at the effect of anything, you now position yourself as incapable of suffering, incapable of BEING AFFECTED, and incapable of being attacked. This invulnerability shines away the sickness which was held in place by insane level confusion, and THE BODY NOW HEALS.

The mind is responsible for every condition of the body. At all times. When mind has level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as illness. When the mind does not have level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as physical health.

This is the central teaching of the course, that you cannot be at the effect of others and when you recognize this you will ONLY CAUSE LIFE.

This is a course in life, healing and miracles. It is not a course in being sick or dead.

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be CHANGED."

"The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching out, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.

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

The separation HAS occurred.

Denying this is an improper use of the mind.

The separation is the BELIEF, that it is possible to separate from God. This BELIEF has produced what this belief WANTS to see, which is spacetime, a world of bodies and objects. This is "the separation."

This is not ACTUAL separation because we cannot separate from God. The separation, and separation from God, are two different things.

We HAVE believed in being separate and we are now living INSIDE of that belief. The tiny mad idea has turned into a universe.

To DENY that we have done this, which actually IS something we've done, because we've HAD the thought, AND believed it - two acts which have in fact occurred in the mind and are NOT fiction, is an improper use of denial.

The mind IS dreaming of spacetime. The mind IS making a world. It IS calling out for love and for help and needs correction. It's a mis-creation, in an attempt to "create destructively", but it is still something we're "doing" nevertheless. Denying this is pointless and denies the power of the mind.

We are told in fact to ACKNOWLEDGE that we have done this, SO THAT we can thus stop being in denial, and THEN having acknowledged what we'e made, moving toward atonement in the mind to 'fix' this mental state that's causing the world.

There is no point in denying the world that we made. In fact to do so is to deny the power in the mind that makes the world. If we deny what we mis-created we are denying HOW we mis-created. It takes IMMENSE power to make planets and galaxies.

Instead, as a pathway towards awakening, we are asked to find a different way to LOOK AT what we made, in a more forgiving light, so that we can change what it means to us and how we use it. Or toward what goal. Re-purposing it is the way of TRANSLATING our experience of it.

No amount of asseting "its not real, its a dream its an illusion, it's not happening" etc is going to actually undo it. We're asked to develop a different attitude about it and to find a way to see heaven reflected in it FIRST, as a necessary step toward a HAPPY DREAM, so that our mind can be ready to stop dreaming.

Attempting to jump all the way to "its nothing, its not real" is a spiritual bypass which is trying to jump to the end condition without doing the work, without healing in the world, without performing miracles, without finding the forgiven world or the real world. And it produces a lot of level confusion.

We have to deal with where we are at and how we're going to use where we're at for a higher purpose, rather than attempting to escape off to live on a cloud in ignorance of what our mind is experiencing here and what other minds are experiencing here. People are in great need of help - that's not fictional because minds HAVE become insane.

We DO have to find a way to love the world and forgive the world and to help heal others IN ORDER TO heal ourselves, BEFORE we can wake up to the truth that "there is no world". We DO have to become miracle workers, serving in the atonement plan, BEFORE we can accept atonement fully.

There are steps to be taken in time, BEFORE we can be ready to fully embrace eternity. There is a curriculum. There are lessons to learn. God's plan does not ential you bypassing the curriculum and not living your life.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins." - ACIM

Every single occurrence of you being angry at someone, blaming them, being afraid of them, believing they are doing something to you, being hurt by them, getting revenge, or whatever... every single interaction with people that is anything other than pure LOVE, is your attempt to GET RID OF YOUR OWN SINFULNESS.

You have no other reason to be doing this. It is purely an exercise in trying to deny that you believe you're sinful. That is enough to account for the ENTIRE spectrum of all ego-based relationships and interactions with others.

You really don't have issues with anyone else. You really don't have a problem that's got ANYTHING even REMOTELY to do with another person.

You have a problem with YOU.

YOU believe that you really sinned. That's all.

That's absolutely your only problem in the entire world. Your belief in your own sin is driving ALL of the other ego expressions, nightmares, attacks, reactions, upsets, fears, all suffering, and even death.

ALL of it. Just stemming from YOUR OWN belief that you are truly, honest-to-God SINFUL.

Therefore, you do not even really need any kind of corrections that attempt to address ANY of that other stuff. That other stuff is NOT the problem. It's all symptoms! It's all side-effects of your attempt to avoid your real problem.

Your ONLY problem in the entire world, in your entire life, is your self hate. And for that, you need to undo it with FORGIVENESS.

You ONLY need healing for your belief that sin is real, and that therefore YOU ARE SINFUL. This idea of sin is the idea that it is possible to ACTUALLY separate from God, and that you have done so. It is an attempt to make this idea REAL, and to own responsibility for achieving it.

This is the root of all evil. This is the cause of all sickness. This is the belief in death and that death is both justified and deserved.

If ALL you ever do from now on, is throw out ALL of your practices which attempt to bandaid your life, and every strategy that tries to deal with egoic relationships problems, and focus SOLELY on undoing YOUR belief that YOU are sinful, I do believe that is ALL that will be necessary to wake up.

The "sinful self" must go. And with it will go ALL of the effects that come from it - guilt, fear, punishment, suffering and death.

Just work on forgiving yourself. Just purely focus on owning up to your own self hate, and how you BELIEVE that you have committed "real sin". Undo that belief, accept the atonement. You did NOT really sin. You are innocent.

It's not even really about forgiving others or taking back projections or any of that. The big secret is your own DEATH WISH which comes from your OWN BELIEF THAT YOU ARE SINFUL. You have no other problems.

You think you are not worthy of God's love because you think you are sinful, and that God could not love you as a result. Well, there's good news. YOU DID NOT REALLY SIN because sin is not reality, and that means GOD DOES LOVE YOU and you are WORTHY of being loved. You are NOT worthy of dying.

Absolutely everything else will fall inline if you correct this. Everything else will take care of itself AUTOMATICALLY once that illusion of sin is removed.

What is self-attack and a belief in sin, other than suicide? It is your self crucifixion.

If judgement and forgiveness are opposites ("he who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive"), then judgement is the condition of being unforgiving.

Being unforgiving really means that you are looking at the appearance of illusions and are believing what you see. This means that we don't recognize that we're being faced with an illusion, and instead think that it is somehow the truth. We've fallen for the trickery, for how it 'appears', but are not overlooking appearances to see the truth.

This is the same thing as not seeing Christ in others, because you can only see Christ in others when you are overlooking the illusion. i.e. you have to see past appearances, and that means also seeing past the body, seeing past how things seem, and being very clear about the fact that people are actually Christ.

If they are Christ, they are immortal, powerful, have freedom of choice, cannot be victims, and cannot die. They are also the ones dreaming their dream. If we lose sight of that we fall for the illusion they're creating and take it to be real. Doing so is 'judgement'. We are 'judging' what we see, evaluating it, engaging with it, instead of overlooking it.

It doesn't just mean we are judging harshly, labelling people, pointing out flaws or condemning. Even if we believe for a moment that someone dying of cancer is 'real' and that the person isn't choosing it, that is judgement.

So what is a failure to forgive? How does judgement justify that failure? What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you are so forgiving that you see only innocence, truth, Christ, and do not for a second fall for any illusions. You know the truth, you know who is behind all this, and you can no longer believe the trickery - appearances.

When you fail to do that, you are attempting to explain to yourself why you stopped being forgiving. So you have to point out that it was 'because of' things that you are not responsible for. It was because of other people. I mean look at them?! And so we become tangled in appearances, forgetting to overlook appearances, because we are trying to make out that we were right to not forgive, and that the person actually 'is' or 'deserves' what you're seeing in them.

What we need to realize is that this entire world is an illusion, which means, someone somewhere is deliberately creating something for the sole purpose of pretending to be something else, for portraying that author as 'not the author', to try to convince him/herself that it's actually true, and to make-believe that this story is really occurring. It's nothing more than like when a child plays make-believe and pretends that stuff is happening.

This story is what is being shown to us all around us all the time, including our body. And it's our challenge to see through the make-believe, not take it seriously, know that it is not true or real, and be aware of who it is that is making all this seem to happen. It's only because we do not recognize the author of it (and therefore do not recognize ourselves) that we think it is real. And not recognizing Christ as Christ (as the dreamer of all this) means to fail to overlook the illusion and instead fall for it, which means we are judging it to be the truth - that it is truly awful, truly deadly, truly upsetting.

It's not true. The dream is just a dream. We need to wake up to realize who is dreaming all this.

The world is difficult to deal with, because it is completely opposite to reality.

"And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

"He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped.""In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

It would be challenging enough if this world were just a LITTLE bit unlike reality. You could maybe deal with it better if it at least resembled it in some obvious way. But physical form was designed to COMPLETELY deceive you.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

So instead what you are faced with, every day that you wake up, is a picture of a world which demonstrates utter impossibilities, complete violation of God's laws, constant threats to the existence of what was previously immortal, visual proof everywhere you look that death is real and attack is possible, and just a constant barrage of problems and things going wrong.

How anyone can deal with this on any level is incredible.

Fortunately sometimes "life" seems to throw you some bones and maybe there is a temporary reprieve in the suffering, or you can hole up in your house to create a false sense of security, or maybe just avoid all the bad stuff as much as possible. But this doesn't really make it go away or stop happening.

Then ACIM is saying to us, that not only is this entire world designed to represent an impossible, blasphemous opposite to God's nature, it is also your job to somehow laugh in the face of it. To overlook all its faults and inherent murderousness. To find a way to look at it such that, outright horrendous attack and evil are actually "not that". That somehow you're supposed to even recognize that your body's senses are lying to you, that there is not even one speck of the world that is doing anything other than tempt you into hell.

To say it's not easy to rise above it, is an understatement. Threats of death are happening all the time. And if it doesn't seem to be going to hell for you, it's going to hell for someone else. And then you're temporarily thankful that you're not the one getting it this time in a world of punishment.

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. "

Can we just, take a moment to acknowledge, how HARD it is for all of us, to try to rise above a world which is so vehemently anti-christ and anti-life? This is no easy feat. The truth may be simple but it is by far not simple at all to fly in the face of everything an entire world tells you is true. We're all doing the best we can and sometimes it can be very difficult.

Somehow there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a hope that we have to keep holding onto, a promise of redemption and salvation. A trust that is developed in the Holy Help. And a victory over death. We keep striving forward because we are so deeply attracted to God and want to be Home. And ultimately that is what will pull us back to heaven's reality, regardless of how much the world tries to pull us down. We who MADE it to pull us down, need merely recognize we no longer want to do that, and we are free.

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

JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAKE, DOES NOT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO SHARE IT WITH YOU

JUST BECAUSE YOU PERCEIVE CORRECTLY, DOES NOT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE STOP PERCEIVING INCORRECTLY

Moving into the LIGHT, does not necessarily bring others with you, until they are WILLING to join you.

God is 100% awake right now. There is no sickness or death or suffering in God. It is "true" that these things do not exist, that separation is impossible, and no-one can die.

HOWEVER

It SEEMS. ... in an illusory way.... that we can SEEM to separate from God, to go off into a nightmare, have a bad dream, IMAGINE it is really happening, confuse it with reality temporarily, and SEEM to suffer and die.

Any such suffering, sickness or dying, is not real, and every single person who has sickness or suffering is not REALLY suffering. They are just having a bad dream.

But let's look at this with some compassion. Those "people", even if those people are not really individuals, no matter who or what they are, even if they are split of bits of the Son's mind, there is still some kind of ILLUSORY EXPERIENCE of terrible things happening.

A nightmare. A bad dream. Stuff that seems horrible, but in truth, is not happening. Yet still SEEMS to be happening to those "to whom" it seems to be happening.

And while these people are having these FALSE EXPERIENCES, God is already 100% awake, 100% healed and whole, 100% knowing that sickness and death are not possible.

WHY DOES GOD NOT UNDO THOSE NIGHTMARES IMMEDIATELY?

WHY DOESN'T GOD's INFINITE POWER AND IMMORTALITY stop people from killing themselves in the dream?

WHY DOESN'T THE FACT THAT GOD's MIND IS TOTALLY AWAKE, "cause" all "people" to NOT BE ABLE To create dreams of suffering?

Putting aside the illusion of linear time for a moment, God does not do that ONLY because those people having the nightmares keep REFUSING TO RECEIVE THE HELP. They use ILLUSIONS of denial, to pretend that they do not want the help, and that they need to suffer.

Even though God is offering 100% eternal life right now, immortal spirit is attempting to PRETEND to be stuck in a mortal body, confused with what can be sick and suffer and die.

And while we're in this illusion, having this nightmare, I think most people would AGREE that these "nightmares" can seem pretty dam real TO the person who is having them. Like if someone was mentally ill, having a terrible distorted vision of a horrible monster trying to eat them, freaking out and running around screaming because they THINK they're being attacked, even if they are NOT.... what is the loving response?

The loving response is TO LOVE.... always... the same.... unconditional love OFFERED at all times, but not being FORCED onto the person. Why not? Why doesn't God just wake us up out of the nightmare right now "against our will". Because we have FREE WILL, or at least love does not do that because it sees no NEED to do that, because it knows nothing real is happening.

Since God is 100% aware right now, and we, here, in this forum, for the most part, ARE NOT 100% AWARE RIGHT NOW, what that means is..... even though it's ultimately not true that we are unaware, it SEEMS like we are. We are having a false nightmare, a dream, a fantasy experience. Which SEEMS real to us.

And some of us here are experiencing what we think is real suffering. Maybe someone had a stroke, or has terrible pains, or anxiety about food, or had a heart attack, or their kidneys aren't working, or they have some "rare disease". Or maybe someone close to them is sick and it keeps them up at night worrying.

These are all false experiences, unreal nightmares, BUT the person having them DOES NOT KNOW THAT at this point. The illusion is so convincing, that we seem to have this twisted sense of "reality"... where we perceive and think these things are "really happening". And that produces ALL of the suffering, fear, and torment in this fictional world.

And none of it is real. And no-one is really sick. And there is no suffering. BUT.. .. that's not what people are SEEMING to experience.

What would love do about this? How would love respond to someone with mental illness, who hallucinates problems, who psychosomatically puts sickness into their body and writhes in torment over the pain they feel? What would love's response be?

TO LOVE THEM. TO OFFER A MIRACLE OF HEALING.

They might not accept the healing. Just as we seem to sleep "against God's will"... something which is really IMPOSSIBLE, yet which we are PRETENDING is possible....the person might refuse to JOIN YOU in being 100% awake. They might keep pretending that denial is real and possible and can block love. They might still manifesting artificial make-believe terrible sickness. They might PERCEIVE differently than you perceive.

Just because you go into true perception, or even go beyond perception to TOTAL AWARENESS of everything real, does NOT MEAN that other people automatically go there as well.

This is why Jesus was able to walk around the earth in a MORE HEALED state than other people, and OFFER THEM healing. He was still able to PERCEIVE that these "people" - whatever they are - parts of his mind or whatever - these people were having nightmares. Some split-off part of mind was still twisting "reality" and SEEMING to experience a terrible state of suffering. And to that piece of mind, that person, that suffering seemed VERY REAL and horrible.

Even though love knows that suffering is NOT REALLY THERE and has no real consequence and minds cannot be sick etc.... that none of this even happened.... IT IS STILL LOVING to offer miracles of healing to those "parts" which seem to be in need. This is part of the atonement process. The plan of salvation. That we are BRING LOVE to ALL PARTS OF MIND.

As Jesus says, he offers us salvation and love right now, but if we are not ready to receive it, HE WILL WAIT.

In time, people CAN REFUSE LOVE. Or at least seem to. They can produce forms of sickness in the body EVEN THOUGH God does not contain any real sickness. They can make illusions of being sick, and have horrible nightmares about those sicknesses being real. It is LOVING to alleviate that suffering IF THEY ARE WILLING to RECEIVE IT, through your offering of a miracle.

Just because there is total awareness or total perception, and even if that shows you there is NO DEATH and sickness is an IMPOSSIBLE ILLUSION, in time.. there is STILL a "need" for healing. That's why the Holy Spirit is here. His function here is healing, and we are supposed to share that with him, to OFFER HEALING to everyone who still seems to suffer from self-made nightmares. It is the loving thing to do, to offer a miracle, EVEN IF it is refused, and in spite of the fact that people can CHOOSE NOT TO PERCEIVE AS YOU DO.

Additionally, just because your perception is true and whole and healed, it does not STOP you from seeing what these "other people" or "split off bits of mind" - from the one whole son - are doing to themselves. It's possible to have COMPASSION for them, to recognize they are MISTAKEN and to not believe their sickness is REAL... yet to STILL OFFER HEALING of *THEIR BELIEF* that sickness is justified. And if they continue to spend time refusing to learn the curriculum, which is their free will right, they may well refuse to undo that illusion of sickness and will STILL EXPERIENCE SUFFERING, even if God can never suffer.

So yes, there IS no real sickness. Yes, there ARE no separate people. Yes, there are not even any bodies TO heal. Yes, no-one really needs real healing because healing is an illusion. BUT WHILE WE ARE HERE.... inside this dream illusion, where people DO choose to make illusions of attack and sickness, IT IS our role to offer and bring healing through love, to perform miracles, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and to HELP "those" who seem to suffer. And they will thank you, because what they were experiencing before, even if it was an illusion, was WORSE to them than what they are experiencing now. How is that not KIND?

This is our function here. To offer love and truth to those who THINK they are really sick and suffering. To undo that suffering if they will ALLOW. To recognize they cannot be sick or suffer or die FOR THEM while they refuse to see it FOR THEMSELVES. Just because you wake up, does NOT mean "their sickness" disappears from THEIR EXPERIENCE. Otherwise, because God is awake NOW, it would be impossible for anyone to experience sickness. And truly they can't because sickness MUST therefore be AN ILLUSION, but people are still TEMPORARILY INSANE believing otherwise.

No-one needs saving, yet they do. In this dream, they do. There is healing to be performed. There are miracles to work. There are people who, if you walked up to them and asked, "would you like me to take away this cancerous growth", would say, "sure"... and you extend God's love in prayer and IT DISAPPEARS, and they are totally over the moon because they were suffering for years and thought they are going to have the NIGHTMARE of dying.

It's all mental illness, but love STILL HEALS IT. There is no real need to heal it, BUT LOVE DOES ANYWAY. Love just loves. While we dream, God wants us to awaken. While we refuse God's will, or try to, pretend to, God wills that we be happy and accept his will.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER, even if it is just a made-up dream of made-up suffering. You don't even NEED TO HAVE a nightmare dream. You can have a HAPPIER DREAM. A dream which is gentler and softer and precedes awakening in a smooth and non-jarring way. You do not need to be sick, or tolerate it, or try to transcend it in order to deny it. IT CAN BE REMOVED. No-one has to have dreams of death and suffering and sickness and pain, EVEN IF it is just a dream. This is not God's will.

It is God's will for you to EXPERIENCE PERMANENT HEALTH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, to no longer have that broken leg, or that missing arm, or that defective lung, or that cancer, or any of it. A broken body proves the mind is not healed, so these breaks MUST BE HEALED if the mind is to be healed. We do not need to find ways to "be at peace with it". We need to UNDO IT, in form, in the body, to prove and demonstrate the truth that we cannot be hurt against our will. No-one needs to be having a dream of limitations.

I received this inspired definition of what A Course in Miracles is today.

A Course in Miracles says it is a "required course", that you do not have any option on whether or not to take it, and that only the time that you take it is voluntary. It says there is a curriculum which you must follow which you do not have any say in defining, meaning there are no other curriculums.

This is a point of much controversy and misunderstanding. But Jesus is telling the truth.

The "Course", if you will, the actual Course that Jesus is referring to in the book "A Course in Miracles", is not a Course that exists AS the book, but the book is REFERRING to the Course.

The Course, the one curriculum, is referring to every metaphysical truth and every metaphysical step which must at some point be taken in order to return to God. This applies to everyone, everywhere, all the time. There are no exceptions or options. It doesn't matter who you are, what religion you belong to, what you believe, you do NOT have a say in determining what the metaphysics of existence is, how it operates, what the laws are, or how you are meant to function.

There IS only one truth. And from that One Truth, following the separation, extends all of the metaphysical levels and layers and facts, which are on an absolutely colossal scale in the trans-personal, trans-temporal mind of the One Son of God. The structural composition of the levels of mind, the stages of separation, the steps that you have to go through in order to fall asleep, the things you MUST experience if you take those steps, are all absolutely irrefutable FACTS. There is a "WAY", there is only ONE way, and it is this one way that Jesus has labelled "A Course in Miracles".

Stop right there before you associate the book form with what the Course is. Jesus, outside of the book, is referring to the metaphysical structure of reality and the illusion and everything that can possibly take place in it, the "true nature" of existence, and in His book titled "A Course in Miracles" He has chosen to NAME that experiential metaphysical structure "the curriculum." There is no room for bending the rules or breaking the laws of the curriculum.

As a result of choosing separation, certain things came into existence which have a certain structure, a certain behavior, a certain inter-relationship with each other, and it is all entirely based on metaphysical facts. Everything that seemed to happen after the separation happened according to completely clear-cut causes and effects. Basically, by choosing ego, you MUST experience very exact "effects", and it is only by reversing those exact effects that you can be free of the ego. You took 3 steps forward, you MUST take 3 steps back.

Therefore there IS only one real curriculum. Either you are moving away from God or toward God. Movements toward God are the curriculum. This applies to everyone in all walks of life regardless of whether they heard of "A Course in Miracles" or not. In a way, though, Jesus has associated the term with the curriculum, because at the beginning He says:

"This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required Course."

Therefore Jesus is really referring to the one universal curriculum, the one universal metaphysics, and the steps required in order to follow the curriculum, as "A Course in Miracles". Not the book per se. The metaphysical structure of the dream and all of its levels and layers and facts and side-effects is all what defines the fixed curriculum, and taking a "course" in that, is the "Course in Miracles".

It is called a Course in MIRACLES because if you take an actual step in following the curriculum, making actual metaphysical progress in awakening, no matter what belief system you are surrounding those steps with, you are performing miracles. Corrections of mind.

It must be true that you are ALWAYS inside of the curriculum, you are always taking the curriculum, and you are alway bound by its rules. However, the option you have is whether or not to LEARN, i.e. take the curriculum, and so you are free to choose WHEN to learn it, i.e. when to take the next steps toward God. You do not get to choose what those steps are because they are based on the metaphysics. You can continue to be in DENIAL of this truth, which is an attempt to not take the curriculum, but you cannot CHANGE this truth, and sooner or later you MUST take it.

The curriculum therefore exists outside of the "book" of the Course, and applies in ALL belief systems at all times. There is only one "real" path to God. There are corrections necessary in order to awaken to the one truth. Whatever so-called path you are using, even if you never heard of A Course in Miracles, it MUST contain at least some metaphysical truth IF it is going to WORK at all. If it is not in alignment with the metaphysical truth and if it does not advance you along the ONE curriculum, then it CANNOT work.

Also different belief systems and religions either make the metaphysical truth clear, or obscure it, to varying degrees. Some belief systems obscure more than others and may obscure heavily. For example, satanism most likely is going to be very effective at denying the curriculum and electing "not to take it yet". Similarly there are many other delaying maneuvers.

However, what we see as the BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", the FORMAT it takes, and the way it describes the metaphysical truth, is perhaps one of, if not THE, most effective, clear, inspired, ACCURATE, least obscuring, and maximally EFFICIENT formats on the planet today. It can save significant time, because it very closely aligns to the one curriculum, and very effectively teaches about what the metaphysical truth is.

The BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", is piggybacking, or describing, the "real course", which is the curriculum, which is experiential and applies to everyone at all times. The book itself is not necessarily "required" to be read or followed in order to awaken. HOWEVER, whatever FORM of a path you choose, whatever the belief system, whatever theology, it MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* correspond to the metaphysical truth taught in A Course in Miracles if it is going to WORK at all, and if it does not, it will NOT work and will only delay your awakening by producing more delusions.

You can wake up to the ONE TRUTH, through many many many paths. In fact, "all paths lead to God" is true because even the most obscure, highly delaying, extremely denying paths still have at least some amount of the curriculum applying to them, still present lessons, still offers the truth in some small way, and is still governed by the same ONE metaphysical system.

For example, Christianity's interpretation of the metaphysics is correct in some areas and a little off in others. It is correct that there is One God, and that Christ is God's One Son. It is also true that as Jesus (as Christ) said, He is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Not one of many. THE ONLY ONE. And it is also true that no-one can come to the father but by Him. HOWEVER, Christianity is mistaken in its claim that this means you are forever separate and non-equal with Christ, that other FORMS of paths to God are wrong, that the Christian religion is the only "way" to God, and that all other paths are evil. That's not true.

Christianity CAN be an effective path to awakening and to becoming equal with Christ, but in many many of its flavors and interpretations, it is riddled with a heavy weight of delusion, illusion, confusion, and deception, which masquerade as truth but actually are part of the delaying maneuvers which attempt to PUT OFF the true curriculum. The only way Christianity can WORK is when it is in correct alignment with the truth that has been described in the book "A Course in Miracles", and is following the ONE CURRICULUM which Jesus has basically named "A Course in Miracles" (beyond the book).

Effectively that means that anyone who takes the Christian path (or any other religion or system), CAN ONLY wake up to the truth IF they have actually either inadvertently or on purpose taken the One Curriculum, which IS actually A Course in Miracles. Remember that Jesus begins the Course with "This is a course in miracles. It is a required Course." He goes on to say this is the only curriculum and that you do not have an option about what the curriculum entails. That means, if you woke up "through" Christianity, you actually DID take A Course in Miracles - the metaphysical, experiential, spiritually corrective path back to God, which is present in EVERYONE's mind and MUST be followed in order to return to God.

In this respect, A Course in Miracles, the one true curriculum, IS the only way to God, it IS the way that Jesus is referring to that HE woke up to being Christ, it IS the way that Buddha woke up, it IS the way that any other ascended master woke up, and It MUST be the way that everyone wakes up.

All of the rest of the descriptions and forms and formats and supposed ILLUSIONS of separate paths that people seem to be taking, where they might claim "I am not doing A Course in Miracles", or that they don't believe in it, or that they aren't taking the One Curriculum, are heavily clad in ILLUSIONS that make it seem like they are not taking the One Curriculum, BUT THEY ARE.

*cue meme with "there is no escape" and evil laugh*

Either you are taking A Course in Miracles and learning the metaphysical truth and following the one curriculum and are waking up to God, which is THE ONLY WAY, which does not necessarily have to entail having anything to do with the book whatsoever,

OR

You are delaying the one curriculum, are attempting not to take the "Course", and are in denial.

THAT is the true nature of A Course in Miracles. It is not just a Course that you are only taking IF you are doing your forgiveness or IF you own the book of IF the book is in your hands with you studying it. It is ALWAYS the course, whether you like it or not, and you are always taking it, whether you like it or not!

It is not just a book. It is not just a bunch of text and a set of lessons and a manual. That's just one format. One expression of ACIM. It's one way of explaining what the Course is, one way of TEACHING what the Course is. The Course is the one metaphysical curriculum for awakening which applies to everyone at all times. There are many ways to teach it. The BOOK "A Course in Miracles" is Jesus's way of teaching it, and is a very accurate way. There are an unlimited number of ways of teaching it. Some will appear to be extremely close to the true nature of the one curriculum, and some will seem to be so far removed that you would not say it is the one curriculum at all. But there is no escaping the one curriculum.

This is the metaphysical nature of A Course in Miracles. And this is why it is REQUIRED, and this is why Jesus said it is required. He is not lying. You just have to get your definition of what the "Course" is correct so that it makes sense.

If Christians are making ANY headway towards God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Muslims are making ANY headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Hindu's are making headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. What Jesus has described AS A Course in Miracles is the one, the only, the profound metaphysical teaching, which is completely factual and 100% FIXED and cannot be changed and has no exceptions. That's what He has revealed to us and has attempted to outline and teach in the book. Whether you opt to use the book or not, you are still bound by the curriculum and you still cannot take any other curriculum that works without it being a curriculum in miracles.

While you have "false perception", your mind is going to be split. It is not merely separated FROM the truth, it is separated WITHIN itself, divided against itself. The ego is a state of self conflict and contradiction. And that means there is disassociation, or two parts, where one part seems to be "you" and the other part seems to be "not you". When you have false perception you are "in two minds."

It will SEEM as though you are "separate from" this world, as a separate perceiver or some kind of bystander who just observes it. What is outside the body (split) seems to be "not you" and what is inside it seems to be you. Yet BOTH of them are in your mind, which has used the body as a separation device to split you from YOURSELF. In this state, you will think that your "illusions" are ONLY to do with your illusions ABOUT the "world that is separate from you", which seems to be objectively real.

However, the purpose of this split is to disown the fact that the whole PLANET is coming from YOUR MIND, and what is "out there" is literally just another part of YOUR MIND that you've disowned. You are the one who MADE IT, it is PART OF your false perception. "The world is false perception". And you cannot truly get to the recognition/perception that both "inside the body" and "the world out there" are BOTH in you, until you can undo enough of the disassociation. The world "out there" is your unconscious mind. The world "in here" seems to be your conscious mind. The division has to be undone.

The sense that "you are not the world" is the ego, hiding in a dream, associating "self" and "what I want" with "you in the body" and associating "what I don't want" with what's outside. When you dream at night, you create entire environments with buildings and streets and people. And it is your mind making all of it. But at the same time, your mind invents a body for you to inhabit inside of this environment, and puts your awareness into it, and makes you unconscious of the dreaming that is making the environment. And so you then perceive AS IF, you are ONLY that which is in the body, looking out upon a world that you think YOU DID NOT MAKE. Even though your mind is making EVERYTHING in the scene.

It is the same in the waking world. Earth. You SEEM to experience that you did not make the world, that it is too big and complex for you to put there yourself, that you are limited to the inside of your little body, and that everything outside the body is "not of you". You seem to have no control over it, no power to directly manipulate it with your mind, and it seems to do things "on its own". BUT THAT IS PART OF DREAMING. And it is in fact YOU, who is putting ALL of the environment there, and making the houses and streets and people. But you are not aware that your larger mind is DOING that because you've DISASSOCIATED from it and think you are just this tiny little crapper stuck in a body peering out and "perceiving" a world that you didn't make. Which leads you to believe that since you have disowned it (the other half of yourself), GOD must have created it. Which is a lie.

WHEN YOU WAKE UP to the truth, and this disassociation and pretense and "hiding in the dream in a body" is overcome, you will come to recognize that YOU ARE DREAMING THE PLANET. That you are looking at a dream that is coming from your mind in its ENTIRETY, not just your little body or your little fenced off corner of the dream. And so now your mind is responsible for MAKING THE WORLD. And it is a dream world, because you are DREAMING IT. You are inventing it as you go along.

To recognize this is to be "awake in the dream", which really means, to be STILL DREAMING but aware that the dream is coming from your mind. It isn't the end of dreaming, nor does it represent the desire to STOP dreaming and be TRULY awake. It is a state of lucidity, but NOT a state of being TOTALLY AWAKE IN REALITY. And because the body is part of the dream, having it, using it, seeing it, keeping it, is all part of STILL dreaming.

Given you are dreaming of a UNIVERSE, to truly awaken from the dreaming state is to END the universe, to DISAPPEAR the body, to see the world VANISH, and FORGET THIS WORLD ENTIRELY, this whole planet and everything on it and beyond it. And to GO HOME TO HEAVEN. Heaven is the container of your "dreaming self" which is reality and is a PLACE and has not changed since you fell asleep.

And only upon waking up FROM dreaming, do you truly awaken into a state where there IS NO DREAM OF ANY KIND, no bodies, no planets, no animals, no plants, no stars or galaxies. Just pure light, love, immortality and eternal life. Pure spirit. What you REALLY ARE. Your real self in God. The Kingdom of God, which GOD created, and which is your real home.

Trying to "wake up" from this world can seem like a total denial and bypass.

We're told that the world, neutral in itself, is formed from ideas opposite to God's nature. Ideas of suffering and destruction, of sickness and death, of conflict and incompatibility.

So then if we are to move our minds out of this opposite state into God's nature, we in some way have to be "denying" the nature of the world.

Or in other words, we have to come to believe that the nature of the world is not the nature of God. But this can be a sticking point.

If we just say, the world is opposite to God, we're going to start dissociating, separating, trying to get away from it, escaping from it, we're going to attack it and pretend it's not there, which is an improper use of denial.

Jesus says Earth can reflect heaven or hell. What he wants us for us to find a way to make it reflect heaven. And that the world itself is neutral. He doesn't really want us "denying that it's there", he wants us to reintepret it.

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

Notice how he says true denial doesn't CONCEAL the thing. It's not about trying to not see it or to make it go away. It's about changing from what angle you see it, seeing it in a different light, giving it a different meaning or interpretation. It "corrects" HOW we see it, or from what vantage point, rather than WHETHER we see it. We're correcting the mind used to see WITH, which changes how we perceive the world.

There's a lot of high-level stuff in the course that sounds like it's denying the existence of the world. Indeed the world is nothing. But for our therapy we're not really supposed to deny its existence. We're meant to USE IT, for a different purpose. To see IN it, something we weren't seeing before.

For example we're told that we are not a body, we are free. This could make you think that you're meant to tell yourself bodies don't exist and it's not there. But it's really saying, while you still have a body, learn to be in it but not of it, to see it but not identify with it.

It's too easy to use the ego's basic device of "separation", as a spiritual tool, which produces the bypass. To try to make stuff go away. To try to get rid of things. That's actually murderous. To attack stuff with the course. To throw quotes at it. To try to avoid and hide from it. That's not really a healthy approach because it's using separation to try to destroy in the name of spirituality. Hurling a "there is no world" at the world BEFORE you really believe it is an attempt to kill it off.

Which reminds me of an early workbook lesson where Jesus says we're trying to "join with what we see" instead of separating from it. And another, where we're said that "God is in everything I see, because God is in my mind." Or "God is in that wastepaper basket". That isn't "denying" the basket or the world, as such, it's saying you can learn to see something inclusive, something MORE THAN just the form.

A higher vision is more inclusive, a lower vision is more exclusive. The body's eyes are exclusive and see ONLY form. Higher vision sees form AND more than form. It's not another of these either/or scenarios. You should be seeing BOTH, the world and the light beyond the world.

"(Christ vision) And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

We're not really striving for the world to "go away" at this point. That may happen at the very end when the veil lifts. But until then we have to get to the forgiven world. You can't see the world as forgiven if you're not seeing the world at all. So becoming blind to the world is obviously not the recommended path.

We're not trying to use the level of knowledge, heaven, to make the level of the world go away. We're not really supposed to be using level 1 to attack level 2. We're meant to be staying WITHIN level 2 and changing our mind about it, while we're still in it. Changing our subjective view of it, rather than trying to use level 1 as a weapon to discard it.

We need to see "in a different way." If it is possible to see peace IN this world, then seeing that peace doesn't require you to NOT see the world. And indeed you should be finding the happy dream, BEFORE you stop dreaming entirely.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

God created a perfect kingdom, in which we are created as perfect beings. We have perfect minds, we are perfectly innocent, we have perfect relationships, we are perfectly safe and happy, we are perfectly loving and sharing, we are immortal and can never suffer or have any problems, it's all good. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG!

But then there was this strange separation event where we had an idea of denying all this. So now we deny reality, we avoid it, we hide from it, we attack it, we don't want it, we try to be something else, we try to value opposite things, we try to make a world nothing like it to live in, we fake everything, we block out awareness of even our own self, we deny that God has created us, we bury our head in the sand and repeat mantras of death over and over to try to keep us away from God.

The situation we're in then does not call for us to try to make or create that which is perfect. We're not asked to hit ourselves over the head with affirmations trying to enforce or cause or make ourselves be more perfect. We're not asked to infuse ourselves with innocence or hammer sinlessness into ourselves or stretch ourselves out to be more inclusive. God has already done all this. God has already given a perfect system, a perfect environment, a perfect life with perfect relationships. WE ARE ALREADY ONE!

The issue is that we're blocking it all. We're saying we don't want it. So the solution is to remove the blocks and stop denying it. And that is all. Many approaches to dealing with the 'issue' is that we start trying to reinvent ourselves, we try to take our ego self into a more real place, we try to transform our sense of what we are. But we're not really asked to do that. God has already established a perfect life for us. We just need to uncover it.

So really it's much more about melting back into an acceptance of what is already true, letting go of things that are false, remembering who we really are, re-identifying with our real self that God already created perfect, opening up to the natural shared state of joined minds, stopping denying God's reality, and removing any blocks which are stopping us from being aware ... that everything in heaven is already perfect and doesn't need any fixing.

This is a very different approach of waking up from a dream, waking up TO a pre-existing ready-made perfect reality, rather than trying to 'convert' our fake world, fake self, fake reality, into something better. Our job is not really to re-create ourselves, to re-invent ourselves, or to cause ourselves to be innocent or perfect. That's God's job. God's will has already been done perfectly. We have to let him be the one that defines us and establishes our perfection and sets us up in a system where we have perfect relationships forever.

Our job is more to do with simply uncovering the truth, revealing what's already there, tuning into reality, accepting the truth/atonement, going back into the light, leaving the desert, becoming aware again of the perfect kingdom that God has created for us in which we live forever in total happiness and effortlessness. We're not builders of ourselves, nor are we really making a better version of ourselves. We're just letting go of those efforts and allowing what already is - to be. Awakening an ancient memory of heaven.

You don't have to become more of anything. God's done the work. You just need to reclaim your inheritance. This is why enlightenment is merely a recognition of what is already true, and is not a change at all. The only actual purpose of LEARNING, is to learn that you do not need to learn anything!

Key words: Uncover, reveal, remember, rediscover, accept, open up to, reintegrate, access, tap into, tune into, allow, re-identify, re-awaken, recognize, know, receive, unveil, return to, wake up to.

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."

"God's Law of Creation, in perfect form, does NOT involve the USE of truth to convince His sons OF truth. The EXTENSION of truth, which IS the Law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of WHAT TRUTH IS. This is your INHERITANCE, and requires no learning at all."

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home."

"Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth."

"All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else."

"Your task is NOT to seek for love, but merely to seek and FIND all of the barriers WITHIN YOURSELF that you have built AGAINST it."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

When something has an end. .. just that fact alone... makes it NOT ETERNAL. Because very simply, ETERNAL means WITHOUT END! God ONLY creates that which is eternal because HE is eternal and creates in his own likeness. He can't even CONCEIVE OF anything "ending" or being "not forever." You have eternal life, because God does.

Now if you look around you at this world you made, planet Earth. Look at it. Look for a while and notice that things end. Things come and go. There are seasons. There is birth and death. Things change. There is no sign of permanence anywhere. Not even the solid rocks last forever. Not even planets and stars. It all ends. So how can we sit here and claim that this is ETERNAL? That this is ETERNITY?

Think about this also. In the linear timescale of things, planet Earth came about LONG BEFORE human beings arrived on the planet. The Earth was here before a single soul set foot on it. IF God created it, the world's condition was set up BY GOD, PRIOR to the human race. Think about that for a moment. Because it means that if there was anything going wrong in the world BEFORE human kind came along, it was GOD'S DOING, nor ours.

So take a look at 4 billion years ago. No humans to be seen anywhere on the Earth. What was happening? Well, there were volcanos erupting, causing massive lava flows and killing off all kinds of creatures who were burnt and suffocated to death or destroyed by toxic fumes. There were massive floods the likes of which we haven't seen for millennia, wiping out entire continents of "living creatures", none of whom could do anything to stop it. There were horrendous storms during which all manner of things were zapped to death. There were asteroids impacting the earth and wiping out entire civilizations of animals, dinosaurs and the like. This all was happening before facebook, FYI.

So all that stuff is GOD's DESIGN, right? That was all HIS doing. HE created it. HE put it in place. HE manipulated the weather. He forces the tides to move. By an act of God he struck down an entire continent. If God made it, God SET IT UP, God set the wheels in motion, and it had NOTHING to do with humans.

So what does that mean, it means IF God did that, God is ***EXTREMELY CRUEL***, murderous, malicious, hateful, vengeful, careless, irresponsible, destructive and deadly. Is that REALLY what you think God is like? Is that REALLY how a loving, all powerful, eternal-life giving father acts? Is that REALLY the kind of environment that He would CREATE for his children to live in? Of course it's not. If he created it, he WOULD be *extremely cruel*.

And fortunately, God is NOT cruel. God is loving, kind, gentle, considerate, compassionate, protective, empowering, equal, perfect. He does not go around making death planets or hell words. He does not manufacture suffering. Nor does he calculate the ways that innocent creatures will be made only to be later destroyed. God is not like this. God is life-sustaining, loving, nurturing, holy, peaceful, benevolent.

How can ANYONE go through this Course and come out the other side believing that God made this planet? Are you in denial? I mean... are you just turning a huge blind eye to the things that happen here? And by blind eye I do not mean christ vision. I mean actual DENIAL. It makes NO SENSE to claim that God made a world where this kind of crap happens on a daily basis.

Did you know that over 130,000 human beings DIE every day? And if God made this world, is that not God's fault? YES. He made it possible. He must want it. That's what it means if He made the world. No exceptions. He is all in, and it's not human's fault. Can we really believe this and be sane? There should not be one SINGLE death in God's plan, in God's world. Not one. Yet alone 130,000 a day. I don't know why some people are so in denial of this. Why can't we admit that this world IS VERY CRUEL and because of its cruelty IT CANNOT BE LIKE GOD?

And that perhaps, just maybe... there is ANOTHER WORLD that God DID create which is TOTALLY PERFECT? Our heavenly true natural HOME, where we belong? And perhaps the Course is right when it says we are a STRANGER here in this alien, crumbling, tired old world, which has nothing but the STAMP OF DEATH on it?

"The laws of this world go against your nature"

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state"

When will we wake up and accept that this world is not our home? That we are a fish out of water here? Just visiting, in a dream nightmare. A world which thankfully IS NOT TRUE and will end. Because it's end IS guaranteed, just as it never was begun.

"HOW WILL THE WORLD END?

Can what has no beginning really end? The world will end in an illusion, as it began."

I am grateful for the world GOD created. I am grateful that it is NOT THIS ONE. Because if it was, fucking hell we're all screwed.

All our lives we've given the world meaning.

"I've given the world all the meaning that it has for me."

The world in and of ITSELF has NO meaning whatseover.

"The world is meaningless in itself."

"Because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth."

You thought the world was SOMETHING, and that therefore it MEANT something. That it had value, purpose, places to go things to see, people to meet, important stuff that had to be done, cities to build, achievements to attain, items to posses, idols to worship, civilizations to conquer.

But this is all fake. The world itself does not mean anything because it is actually nothing. It is an illusion of a world. It is an idea of nothing pretending to be something. An impossibility, pretending to be possible.

Nothing in the world makes any sense because the world is not made of sanity. It is a rebellion against sanity and against existence. Rebelling against existence means it does not exist and is an attempt not to exist.

By trying to go from being everything in God, to being nothing on your own, you are attempting to die. But even your death is nothing and meaningless. Death doesn't mean anything whatsoever because it isn't real and has no existence. It is nothing.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

This entire cosmos, all of the universe, every expansive galaxy, all the stars and the sun and moon and the earth, is all absolutely nothing whatseover.

And instead of recognizing this FACT, perhaps the ONLY FACT in the whole world, we instead have set about BELIEVING that the world is something, that it exists, has importance, has merit, is created, is alive, is doing something for a reason, can be lived in, is your home, and somewhere to spend your existence.

But all of this is nothing but a fantasy in a dream. We are walking around in dream bodies inside a dream world pretending to be dead.

"The body is a dream." "All your time is spent in dreaming." It can seem extremely difficult to entertain the idea that the world is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER. That it isn't even really there, and as such is some kind of psychological massive hallucination which WILL disappear when you wake up to sanity.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."

"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to offer." "The world holds nothing that I want."

It can't GIVE you anything because it IS nothing. This is why giving up the world and returning to God is to give up NOTHING WHATSOEVER, and to GAIN EVERYTHING.

Because in truth you have hidden yourself from everything and have tried to accomplish nothing. And you have been successful in that, because you HAVE DONE NOTHING AT ALL. This is why "there is no sin." You can't do what isn't possible in God.

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

The world is not there. Space and time are fake. Bodies don't exist. There is no human race. There is only the Kingdom of God and the Trinity, the souls he created, the angels and our creations, and the Holy Spirit, hanging out with God in an endless choir of celebration and thanks as we extend real creation and real existence.

"There is no world. This is the CENTRAL LESSON the course would attempt to teach."

If sickness is real, and given that God is the author of Reality, it would have to mean that God created the sickness. And since God is Reality, this would mean that God Himself IS the sickness.

The belief that sickness is real, is therefore actually a belief that God is sick and that God wants you to be sick. If the sickness is truth, ie reality, then God cannot be a loving God.

Love would not create sickness. Love would not want someone to be dead. To suggest that sickness is real, is to suggest it was created by Love, and that Love wants you to die. This is utterly ridiculous!

Sickness therefore CANNOT be reality. It simply cannot be real at all. It MUST be an illusion of sickness. ALL sickness must be an illusion. It may look like sickness, behave like sickness, be caused by things like sickness is, etc, but IT IS NOT REAL SICKNESS.

There cannot be real sickness. If reality is associated with sickness in any way, God would have to be sick.

The belief that sickness is real is the belief that an ILLUSION is actually real. It is the belief that illusions are real that IS sickness. Sickness is the belief that Reality is not reality, and therefore that illusions have taken the place of reality. It is the belief that God is not healthy, and therefore it is true and real that God must be dying or dead.

Sickness is therefore an attempt to kill God and His creation, to destroy His son, and to render God nothing. Anyone believing in sickness as something real, something serious, something to be afraid of, or something to struggle with, is believing that sickness is not an illusion, that God is dead, that sickness is the truth, and that it is God's will that you die. Again, UTTERLY RIDICULOUS!

So, let's all learn this and learn it well. Every single person or establishment or governing body or hospital or clinic or doctor or researcher or scientist or anyone in the public or anyone struggling in their home with sickness etc, ANYONE that claims that sickness is REALITY, they MUST be out of their mind! They are not sane and they are not telling the truth. This MUST be a false belief.

God cannot and does not create suffering. God is LOVING. And God is REALITY, and therefore only love is real. And since love would not create suffering in any way - love only creates love and health - ANY and EVERY form of sickness, suffering, lack, death, loss, pain and misery must be a complete illusion. It is NOT REALITY.

We need to wake up to this. We need to become clear about this and recognize this. And we need to stop accepting and listening to everyone who says that sickness and suffering are real. It is a lie. Even told by those who are sick or those who are jist onlookers. People who look at the sick and think others are sick but they themselves are not sick, ARE sick, because sickness is real to them.

People are doing the best they can to try to deal with the sickness, rarely finding a cure. There is a better way. Miracles are everyone's right!

Not believing in sickness means not believing that an illusion is real, which means being SANE. And sanity is the solution to all sickness, because all sickness is mental illness.

Who and what you are in REALITY cannot be sick. You are fucking immortal! You cannot be sick, you cannot die, you cannot change, you cannot be unwell or tired or lacking or depressed. You cannot be dead. You cannot be dying. And you cannot be suffering in any way. Anything that looks like it is contrary to that it MUST be an illusion. And if you believe it is not an illusion but a reality, then you are mistaken and you need correction by the Holy Spirit.

Your life can seem blissful and happy. It can seem like nothing will go wrong. And then something fucks up big-time. It comes out of nowhere to destroy your life. "Shit happens".

You will be quite shocked when this happens because you did not see it coming. You weren't aware that such a terrible event was being orchestrated to make you unhappy.

So then it happens and what seemed like a perfect life is dismantled and destroyed. This seems like a great loss and can be very painful.

You'll wonder why the heck your life was messed up in this way - who sent this horrible thing to attack your beautiful special relationships.

The thing is, you can live with this belief that your relationships are special and holy and perfect and that nothing is going wrong and it's all just wonderful, believing that you are fully aware of everything and that you see no plot against you.

But what you are not aware of, is precisely the problem. You have a mind which has been made partly unconscious. There is a whole portion of your mind which is buried behind walls of denial, and you are probably not even aware that it exists at all.

So your life seem idyllic and lovely, and if this were the truth, nothing would prevail against it. But then something prevails against it, and this is horrifying. Something is coming out of your unconscious awareness, coming into your conscious awareness, seemingly to attack and destroy you.

You will be shocked at how your perfect life was torn apart by this horrible event. It seems completely unfair and un-called-for. You didn't seem to have asked for it at all, and it definitely didn't seem to be your own choice or done by you. But it came from your mind, from the deep recesses of unawareness - from your own self attacking sin which has not been healed.

Initially you will see this eruption of hate and viciousness as an attack. Unwanted and something to be hated. But it is really something coming from your unconscious mind to re-mind you that your "special life" is not whole. It is inauthentic. It comprises the ego's illusion of bliss and love. This must be pointed out, and your unconscious self attack will be the thing to topple it.

Your own unconscious self attack comes back into your life as if out of hurt, to say, why did you do this to me? It was you who attacked this part of yourself, and this part of yourself is now hurting and guilty. It retaliates towards the remaining conscious self as if crying out for an explanation. You, having made your own self into a sinner, has come back to haunt you.

You will take these breaks in special reality as attacks and intrusions, come to destroy your peace of mind, come to take your loved ones away or destroy your happiness. But if seen in a different light they bring into question whether the life you were living was real.

Similar to miracles, these eruptions reveal that you're living in a bubble, thinking that you are everything when in fact you are only living a fictional life. They show you the depth of what you really think of yourself. They reveal what you don't want to look at, your secret sins and hidden hates. They challenge you to question whether what seemed special was really valuable to begin within. In its destruction, your specialness may no longer seem quite so important.

It is vital then that we learn to realize that we have this veneer of denial and specialness and false values and fake innocence glossing over our real self. We've blocked awareness of how we've attacked ourselves, which was the whole reason we incarnated to begin with. There is stuff we're doing to ourselves that we're not even aware of. We need to heal and reunite with the rest of ourselves so that we can be whole and undivided in how we treat ourselves.

And then we will come to a place of peace and acceptance, recognizing that what seemed to happen was just what needed to happen to wake you up to the truth.

Where do you find a sense of certainty? A sense of something you can trust? A sense of actuality or correctness? Where do you find a truth, that is so acceptable and so full and complete that you have no doubt?

I find that as I try to find answers in, and with, the ego, i.e. with my own mind and faculties, I cannot come up with a satisfying answer. I instead come up with a multitude of possible answers, all of which are different and none of which really give me a sense of .... yes, this is IT, I found it!. .. Or at least, if I think I found it, then later I'll realize it doesn't quite fit. So none of the answers work. None of them.

In fact, the more that I get into 'I need to figure this out', or 'maybe it's this - maybe it's that', .. the more I try and effort to investigate and find "the truth" in this way, the worse the situation seems to become. Confusion increases. I move away from a sense of certainty, peace, truth or acceptability. I move towards increasing UN-certainty.

Key insight: Trying to figure out and explain what's happening using my own separate ego mind/intelligence creates MORE confusion! I'm barking up the wrong tree!

So I dig and dig and get clever about what 'might' be "the answer", only to sense that this answer is flawed in some way, it doesn't quite explain things, and I just can't get a feeling of 'absolute certainty' around it. It seems like it *might be* true, it's *possibly* a description, it's *could be* what's happening etc... but never a sense of .... "this is".

And you know what, the more I try to do this the worse it gets and the more confused I become and the less I have peace.

So, the lesson here is, clearly... I have made the problem real, and now I am reacting to it by trying to explain or justify or intellectualize 'why' it is happening... rather than IF it is happening. And that means, I'm using the ego, I'm trusting my own self instead of God, I'm looking for answers in the ego world outside of me, I'm trying to find ego proof of the truth, and basically am constantly coming up empty handed.

It can become... exasperating, trying to find the truth where the truth IS NOT. The secret truth is: EVERY ego answer is NOT TRUE! The ego does not and cannot KNOW truth AT ALL!!! All it can do is speculate and guess and wonder and deduce and pretend it has the prowess to figure this all out on its own. And it will never be able to find the truth. The ego cannot wake up to reality!

So the question becomes, where I am going to get my sense of certainty from? Where is the real truth? Where is a truth or an answer or whatever that I can really believe .... yes... this is exactly IT. And I can tell you, it's very possible to come up with numerous ego explanations or rationalizations that all say... yes... this is exactly it, that this is an exact match to the situation and it really seems to be 'this'... only to find loopholes, inconsistencies, doubts, and then some 'other' possibility comes along. This is all because I'm searching within the realm of relativity, partiality, differences, a lack of wholeness and a world of lies.

So where will I find THE answer? What is THE answer? Where will I get that sense of... certainty, peace, joy, and KNOWING, that comes from the 'real truth'.... something I can really get behind and know, this IS it.

What is the real truth? God IS it, of course! God is WHERE the truth is. God is the certainty I seek. God is the answer that I can actually TRUST.... to trust that it will be consistent and unwavering and complete. There is no sense of consistent truth like that in the ego's world. No matter what the ego's explanations or meanings are, NONE of them are the whole truth. And none of them bring the feeling of... ahhhhh yes... that God brings.

But then, you have to realize this... God isn't an explainer, as such. God doesn't spend time diagnosing, or figuring out, or doing any of those activities that the ego mind does in attempting to find out what it thinks is happening. In fact, God doesn't even deal in the realm of 'maybe'. God HAS the answer already, whereas the ego is SEPARATE from the answer so has to go SEEK for it!

"Seek and do not find!" - ACIM

And the harder you seek the truth, the further you get from the TRUTH! Doh!!! I've been looking in the wrong place this whole time :-D

So ... God has really no interest in spending time trying to discern what illusions are doing or what to do about them to 'fix' unreal problems. God doesn't make problems real then OBSESS over trying to solve them, not realizing that believing they are a problem IS the problem.

So as I go to God, I see that God's 'way' is different from the ego's 'way'. God's way is more to do with.... a constant, direct, immediate correction and healing, which solves the problem, instead of all of the dwelling on basically 'keeping' the problem that the ego loves to indulge in while disguised as a problem solver. Hah.

So again... this is about learning to trust He who KNOWS, versus being lost in he who 'thinks' he knows.

And perhaps it's not until we can really let go of all efforts to 'explain real illusions', that we will turn to God in surrender and trust and allow Him, instead, to bring healing to the situation FOR us.

Thank you God.

Logically speaking, there can only ever be two states. There is "what is", and there is its opposite - "what is not". The separation from God was nothing other than an attempt to experience "what is not", which was an attempt to OPPOSE "what is" in every way possible. This led to the opposite of heaven, which was hell (spacetime/Earth).

At no point is there ever a third state or an in-between state or any other state. You are either in the original primary world of heaven, or you are in the dream of exile. The only way to get out of the dream is to leave the desert and go back to (wake up to) heaven. When you do this, the second state completely disappears. And "illusions leave no trace behind in their going."

There is a tendency to glorify what is essentially a pseudo state WITHIN the second state, that is the realm of the real world, of forgiveness and christ vision and the forgiven world. These are not a third state. They are STILL the second state, MIMICKING the first.

The first state is the realm of knowledge and oneness. The second state is the realm of perception and separation. WITHIN the second state of perception, there are degrees and variations. This makes it possible for perception to range a huge spectrum from dark to light, or from confusion to sanity. But this STILL does not mean that even the most spiritual perception ever LEAVES the second state.

"Perception is a separated state." "Those who perceive still need healing." "They have not given themselves over fully to atonement." "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

It does not matter how lofty you paint the picture. The real world, christ vision, true perception, salvation, loving the world, forgiving the world, it is all WITHIN the realm of perception, WITHIN the second state. "The world IS perception."

Until the second state is undone, and until the second state is unchosen, and until the second state is LEFT BEHIND AND FORGOTTEN, and until your mind returns SOLELY to the first state, you are not done accepting atonement. The goal of God and the return to the Kingdom is the only true goal. It is the completion of the reversal of the separation. It is the TOTAL ENDING OF THE OPPOSITE STATE.

Regardless of whether perception is able to project a SYMBOL of heaven onto this world, or whether christ vision bestows endless miracles upon it, or whether the forgiven world is sparkly and new and a symbol of God's perfection, IT STILL IS WITHIN THE SECOND STATE. AND IT IS NOT THE FIRST.

Do not lose sight of this. It's far too easy to be enamored with the lovely poetry of the forgiven or real world and lose sight of the BIG picture, which is that this world isn't even supposed to exist at all. "Even the real world will vanish from your sight." "The real world still is but a dream."

It boils down very simply. One original state of mind - total heaven the Kingdom of God. We opposed it and produced an opposite state of mind - total hell - the world we made, Earth etc. We attempt while here to transition our perception to MATCH or reflect that of the FIRST state, so that we can prepare for and be close to it. THEN in order to be IN it we LEAVE THIS WORLD.

"Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven."

"Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever."

Our role in this world, in this second state, is to become LIKE the first state, to extend heaven to earth and shine heaven's light into the darkness. To bring heaven's love to the world to forgive it. But the PURPOSE of this isn't to glorify the world OR to turn the world literally into heaven. IT CANNOT BE heaven because it is the SECOND STATE OF OPPOSITION still. But it can be made to be "similar", to reflect it symbolically.

Earth cannot BE heaven because is is NOT THE FIRST STATE, and it CANNOT EXIST in the first state. It is MADE OF opposition. It can at most reflect it, once removed from the first state. It is a second state, which becomes symbolically LIKE the first. And then you move ON from the second state and return to the first. And the second state disappears. That is all.

One state of logic, became two states of logic, and now we work to undo the second state of logic, so that we return to the first state of logic, which is all that really ever existed. Because love (heaven) has no opposite. This is why "there is no world", because heaven does not have a real opposite, and this world is an attempt to oppose it.

"The Holy Spirit has the task of UNDOING what the ego has made."

"What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? And would you see it?"

"Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy."

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"And after vision, who is there who could refuse what must come after?" "The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment"

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now."

The world is kind of like a "rendering" of a world, a picture or image. It's not really a place with actual bodies and objects. It's pictures of them. Three-dimensional animated pictures. These images are projected by the mind as it "draws" the world.

Since the body and other objects are just pictures, they can be changed by the thing which is projecting the pictures, which is the mind. The mind is unlimited in its power to do this.

Within the "scene" that the pictures produce, such as an environment or a room or place, it may SEEM as though, based just on the pictures alone, that there are certain laws in place. We call it the laws of physics, the seeming rules or behaviors or limited ways in which the pictures in the scene can interact with each other. The limited restrictions which WE as its unlimited authors have placed upon it.

And then we might be convinced by these laws and think of them as what is "running" the environment, governing what happens and what is possible. But these are secondary artificial laws. They are in fact just more images of laws. And they too are being projected and rendered by the mind. By the movie-maker.

What you therefore need to realize is that the world is just an effect and is not really a cause, and the causes or laws of operation within it are not really the laws that produce the world. They are not really what governs what shows up in the world. They only seem to describe some of the inner workings of the picture itself, but they don't define how the picture really gets there.

The mind is actually the dreamer of the world and is responsible for the making of the world. It is projecting the world out using its unlimited power. It is making the planet and the bodies that seem to inhabit it. It is responsible for all the image-making.

When you see the picture of a world and you are deceived by it, because it is in fact an ILLUSION of a world, you will fall for the belief that you are bound by its laws and forced to operate entirely within what it says is possible. But this is deception and is not true at all. You are the CAUSE of the world, not its effect, and it has no power over you.

As a miracle worker, with a miraculous powerful mind, you are actually able to change the world, the body, the objects, by electing what the dream will contain. By choosing what images you will project. You actually override and re-write and modify the dream images with your mind. You can therefore "steer" the dream in any direction you so please, completely ignorant of any laws that the pictures themselves might suggest would limit what's possible.

This means that you are actually OPERATING the dream from outside of the dream itself. You are able to modify it at will. You can take objects out of it, and put objects into it. It will appear to the eyes in the dream world that objects are just "miraculously" appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, in violation of the laws of physics. But the mind can do this.

It's sort of similar to in "The Matrix" movies where, when the agents are tracking down the rebels they make a sudden "adjustment" to the matrix, sort of from outside of the matrix, and it causes what appear to be sudden physical changes in the environment. What once was a door becomes a brick wall. Exits are suddenly closed off and so on. The "black cat" walking past twice, a sign of deja-vu, hints to them that someone has tampered with the matrix itself, as though hacking the world from the outside.

As our minds awaken and become aware that the world is our dream, that we are dreaming it, and therefore our mind is actually producing the PICTURES in the environment, we also then realize that we can put whatever pictures there that we want. We have total power OVER the dream world. Nothing in it can do anything without our consent and anything we decide to cause to happen must happen. This is why you are ruler of the universe.

You are like the hand of God. You are the operator outside of the dream playing with chess pieces, moving things around, shuffling the scenery using back-door access. You have access to the 'code' that writes the images. You can rewrite the planet. You can modify bodies. You can switch objects out. You can transform anything into anything, from the outside. You pull all the strings. You are the puppet master.

This is what you get to when you are being miracle-minded, because miracle-mindedness means you are aware that this is nothing but a dream your mind is producing. You get in touch with what many people avoid, which is the fact that you are VERY POWERFUL. The mind is extremely powerful and can produce entire worlds, so moving a mountain from one place to another is in fact "easy" for such a power.

Jesus demonstrated that he had his hands on the controls and was able to modify the dream from its SOURCE, once removed from the seeming laws of the world. He showed that the law of gravity didn't mean anything to someone who can switch the laws OFF. He showed that objects were not locked into certain forms because the mind that was PICTURING the forms was able to change what it wanted to see. He showed therefore also that what we call sickness and death could easily be reversed and modified by mind-power alone.

To those in the dream, who think that the dream is reality, and who think it has causal power over them, which causes them to believe they are bound by its illusory laws and limitations, such changes are perceived as "miraculous". Quite literally miracles - physical reality distorting/violating miracles. Adjustments to "the matrix" suddenly show up as what they would think of as "impossible" changes. Changes which violate the seeming laws of reality as this world knows it.

"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." What you are able to do TO this world, is a result of the recognition that you are not OF this world, OR in it. You are not really a part OF the dream. You are not a body. This is why learning that you are the DREAMER, that you are mind/spirit, is essentially in order to wake up FROM the dream and realize that you are the one making the world.

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it."

You bring and use the power of God from outside spacetime, the power of heaven. You can get behind the scenes of the physical bubble of illusory laws and break ALL the laws. Walking on water is nothing for such a power. Calming storms, raising the dead, walking through walls, making food appear out of nowhere, preventing wars, erasing wounds, absolutely anything you can imagine to modify the world's pictures you can do it. There is nothing that your holiness cannot do.

You are under no laws but God's. You are under the laws of heaven. You are the dreamer and maker of the world of images. Spacetime is entirely RUN BY YOU. You are the ruler of the universe. "You have the power to dominate everything you see merely by recognizing what you are." You have power OVER DEATH because you can literally rewrite the body.

You can even if you so will cause the body to be unattackable. You can override anything that does seem to attack it by simply producing another body. You are indestructible and you can make the images of your dream appear to symbolize this. You can therefore make the body incapable of being sick or dying because you can maintain it indefinitely with supernatural mind-power. You can force it to remain in a state of showing up as unharmed and undamaged, making it IMPOSSIBLE for sickness or death to change it.

The world itself does not really have ANY POWER to change you or the body, if you do not wish it. It does not have the power to make you sick or to kill you. If you so will, you can hold the body in a state of suspended animation and semi-permanent symbolic perfection for as long as you see fit. You can force it to maintain perfect health even if the world is attempting to sicken it, and nothing will happen to it. What can possibly change an IMAGE which is being constantly RE-PROJECTED by a projector? You can do nothing to it within the projection.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die." "The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

Realize then that the reason you are SO POWERFUL and SO MIRACULOUS and you have total power OVER everything in spacetime, is because you are not IN it. You are not part of a dream. You are not an EFFECT of dreaming. You are totally causal. God has given you total absolute power over everything. You are unlimited in your power because your power is shared with him and inherited from him. There is literally nothing you cannot do, and moving mountains is MINOR.

All this entails is the proper recognition that you are the cause of the world, and not the opposite. You are not affected BY it whatsoever because YOU are the one who is DOING it. You are putting the world there. Projection makes perception. Perception is a result not a cause. What you project can be changed, producing a different world. By being totally responsible for CAUSATION and not being in any way identified with the EFFECTS you have produced, including the body, you become freed-up to manipulate the dream as much as you wish.

Now, in the big picture of course the point of all this isn't that you just carry on dreaming and stay in the dream playing with your miraculous (not magical) power. The main purpose is to help everyone in the sonship to be restored TO this power so that everyone realizes THEY TOO are dreaming the world. And in this awakening FROM the backwards false perception of the world, they can be restored to sanity and to EMPOWERMENT, returning to their permanently miraculous nature. And when everyone becomes lucid to the fact of dreaming, the dream can be ended.

Meanwhile, in time, and in terms of where the world is at now, we can use this miraculous power to serve God's will and to help others. It can be used to alleviate suffering. It can be used as a demonstration to PROVE to the minds of those willing, that they are NOT bound by the laws of this world. That they are not an effect of the dream, but that it is possible to have power OVER everything they were ever a victim of. This is why "miracles are teaching devices", they are capable of showing people they are under no laws but God's and have the power to set themselves and others free from bondage.

The proper use of miracles in this world is therefore for purposes of helping everyone to wake up, alleviating unnecessary burdens, showing the power of God, teaching people what the real laws of God are, showing them that they are not stuck and limited and small, and producing sometimes spectacular demonstrations of what is really possible as sons of God.

When Jesus performed his miracles sometimes it was to teach a lesson in this regard, and sometimes to simply be compassionate and kind to help those who were in need, starving and lacking, in pain and misery. And sometimes that meant raising the dead and healing the sick. Sometimes it means overriding body states. Sometimes it meant projecting different bodies entirely. And sometimes it meant demonstrating that the mind had total power over the crucifixion and was utterly unaffected by what appeared to be physical destruction.

You have total power over this world because you are not OF this world or bound by it in any way. We are to become teachers of God and masters of the universe. We are unlimited in our power and freedom. And there is literally nothing our holiness cannot do here. You can wipe away all suffering and heal all sickness and correct all minds and forgive all sins. You have the AUTHORITY OF CHRIST with which to command anything, and nothing can prevail against you. You made this world, and now you must unmake it.

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

"It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition."

"YOU MADE THIS UP. It is a picture of what you think YOU are; of how you SEE yourself."

"Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within."

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

"It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your "seeing" was made. This is the function you have given your body's eyes. It is not seeing. It is image-making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

Are you ready to join the Great Crusade that Jesus speaks of in A Course in Miracles? I know that I feel I am gearing up to this.

Jesus has said to me, "help". He has said, "help others to wake up." When I've been distracted with other worldly pursuits that I think are 'why I am here', Jesus corrects me, "that's not why you came here." I also know... Jesus has a plan for the atonement, and he is in charge. Also the atonement means the complete and total correction of the entire Sonship, not just for you.

We are also meant to being in alignment with and extending of God, of service to everyone else. We can't be of service when we are occupied with our own agenda, which means... what are you going to do when all your other ego agendas and distractions are undone?

If there is a vocation, a 'career', that is possibly meaningful and truly helpful, it would be to extend miracles to our brothers and to help them to awaken. Isn't this the natural result of becoming healed yourself? It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. It is the privilege of the awakened to awaken.

Here are some pertinent ACIM quotes:

"Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it. The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded." (OrEd.Tx.1.106)

"As you share my inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and others, you must ..." must "... join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is Listen, learn and do: Listen to my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it." (OrEd.Tx.1.31)

"[The spiritual eye] pulls the will into Its service and impels the mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then realizes with increasing certainty that delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort." (OrEd.Tx.2.49)

"Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world." (OrEd.WkBk.SpTp241.7)

"[The world] is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result, not a cause." (OrEd.Tx.21.1)

"This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly." (OrEd.Tx.18.70)

"To each He gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill a part for only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his special function and fulfills the part assigned to him to make himself complete within a world where incompletion rules." (OrEd.Tx.25.46)

"Teaching is done in many ways: by formal means, by guidance, and above all by example." (OrEd.Tx.5.53)

--- Now I know there is a lot of controversy on this, saving the world and all that (which means saving everyone FROM the world). You CAN interpret all these quotes in quite a.... metaphorical way... that they all mean something else, or apply only in the mind or whatever. Go ahead with that if you want to.

For me, I'm realizing more and more that Jesus IS calling us to participate in an OUTWARD EXPRESSION of love, which extends to our brother not just in the form of us looking on from afar, but of ACTIVELY helping others to return to God.

After all, if we are to be LOVING, then our love should encourage others to awaken, it should liberate others from suffering, it should show the way, it should enlighten, it should bring truth, and it should help us to find our way back to God.

This is what the crusade is all about. We are all part of the Sonship and we are all in need of this love. Isn't it time to demonstrate love and truth?

REALITY: The entire unlimited expanse of God, and the interior contents of God which he hosts within his being. Everything within it is eternal, permanent, changeless, deathless and unlimited. It can only be KNOWN directly. This does NOT include ANYTHING that is lacking these immortal attributes. Anything impermanent, temporary, changing, attackable, mortal, is not a part of reality and is essentially impossible.

ILLUSION: The seeming OPPOSITE to reality. It is unreal, a dream of mortality, a fiction, untrue, false, a state of denial, and something you made up. Everything within this illusion is false and unreal. This includes all the forms of error, all sin, all sickness and death, all bodies, all planets and galaxies, all physical objects, all of perception - true and false alike, even the real world and the forgiven world.

FALSE PERCEPTION: A view that you have ABOUT something which is an illusion. Any illusion (body, planet, whatever) is NOT recognized for what it actually is. It is thought to be something IT IS NOT. It is a lie about a lie. A double negative. It's the belief that an illusion IS REAL, that false things ARE TRUE, and that the physical world IS GOD. This is what it means to be completely deceived and insane and in a state of sin.

TRUE PERCEPTION: A view that you have ABOUT something which is an illusion, but which entails RECOGNIZING the illusion for what it actually IS, and NOT for what it appears to be. It is illusions seen without deception. It is ACCURATE perception. It is a straight-on honest recognition that an illusory thing is a dream, and is not reality. It OVERLOOKS the illusion by seeing THROUGH its lies, is not deceived by it, and sees BEYOND IT to the light of reality.

THE FORGIVEN WORLD: This is the world of false perception, which is the world of sin, which includes bodies and flesh and bones and planets and galaxies and stars, but viewed from true perception. It is forgiven because ITS LIES are overlooked, its temptations do not work, and its DECEPTION is recognized as something false. It is a complete recognition that the world you made in false perception IS false, and that it IS an illusion, and IS NOT REALITY. This is seen with a LOVING perception, but nevertheless includes the awareness that earth is fundamentally unreal. "A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies."

THE REAL WORLD: The use of true perception sees PAST or through the forgiven world, OVERLOOKS it (does not see it), and sees beyond it and beyond the body. It looks upon the face of christ in heaven, and so is the use of perception to peer OUTSIDE of the illusory realm. It is therefore an ILLUSION ABOUT HEAVEN, and an image of heaven. It is symbolic of reality, but is not reality itself. It reflects heaven's nature but is once removed. And even the perception of the real world is a dream that will end.

ATONEMENT: Is the same thing as true perception and forgiveness. Atonement, true perception, forgiveness, salvation, etc are all the same thing. They are a SYMBOLIC state which represents heaven's laws and nature. It POINTS TO heaven and asks that you accept heaven's truth. Only heaven's truth is true, and NOTHING ELSE is true. Earth is false and is not true. It is vigilance for the kingdom, that ONLY GOD'S REALITY IS REAL.

HEAVEN: Another term for God's Kingdom or his one son/creation/sonship. It's the collection of souls that God established within his being IN reality. Thus they have all the attributes OF reality, including permanence and immortality. It is the reality that you find yourself waking up into, when you wake up FROM the illusory world of space and time. "Only heaven remains." "Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made (earth)."

EARTH: The false world you made in separating from and opposing reality. It is hosted within spacetime, which is a false belief. Earth depends entirely on both space and time for its three-dimensionality, its keeping its atoms from colliding with each other, and its seeming growth and decay. It is not reality because it has no permanence of any kind. "The time will come when all things visible will have an end." "As the world spins into the nothingness from which it came." Earth seen AS earth is false perception. Earth seen AS the forgiven world, is a recognition of its unreality. Either way earth is opposite to reality.

SPACE: The idea of the total opposite to God's omnipresent reality. God is everywhere and all of him is everywhere. Space was devised as an attack on God, to be opposite to this idea. It is the idea that nothing is whole, the whole is not anywhere, nowhere is whole, nothing is everywhere and everything is nowhere. It is the idea that God who is everything does not exist. And all energy, matter, quantum fields and whatever, depends on it entirely to seem to exist. It is an illusion, and once it goes, the whole physical universe goes with it.

TIME: The idea of a total opposite to God's eternal nature. Eternity tells you that everything always remains the same forever. That you have eternal permanence and can never be changed or decay or be sick or die. That you are always you. Time is the opposite of this. It's the notion that you are not what you were previously, what you used to be is lost, and what you are now is going to be changing into something else. It's the idea of the complete destruction of eternity and that everything must die. It is an attack on God's reality and when time ends everything that grows and changes will be gone forever.

WORLD: This one has some controversy but basically, a world is just some realm or existence, be it a real existence or an imaginary one. The real "world" which God created is his Kingdom of heaven which is the sonship, and nothing else. The world WE made is the illusory world of space and time which houses planets and galaxies and is completely OPPOSITE in its nature to God's world. There are only two worlds. There are not three worlds. There are only true because there are only two logic states - reality and unreality. God's true world is the only truly created world. Our made-up world is a temporary illusory world which God could never even conceive of creating.

The truth is, while you value something and believe there is truth in it, you will not want to let it go. You're convinced other stuff is less true and is not what you want, and that you should protect what you have faith in. That's a reasonable attitude. Although what you believe might ultimately be false, Holy Spirit is not here to tell you "you can't have that" or that "you shouldn't do that".

What is asked of us is simply to be a little bit willing to return to the Light of Truth. We don't have to have to be willing, ever, to have stuff ripped away before we are ready. Nor do we need to feel guilty when we are not ready or when we want to keep stuff. The truth is you WILL NOT let go of stuff when you are not ready because you can't let go without being genuinely willing and ready. Holy Spirit knows that and that it would be a complete waste of time to 'force' you.

At some point, if we are to wake up to truth, we need to be willing to entertain the possibility that what we think is true might not be - and that something we denied or thought wasn't true might well be the truth. We've denied God and we need to reverse that. But to reverse it we have to question where we've put our sense of value, and we've put it into many things that aren't really the truth.

So maybe we value music. Most people do. Or nice sunsets. Or videos of puppies and kittens. If you go do those things, in light of what the Course says, the ego will say "if you do this you're not doing the Course, so you are guilty". The ego positions itself as Holy Spirit's right-hand man as if bestowing the punishment that allegedly would come from Holy Spirit for your failure to comply. Holy Spirit did not appoint the ego to do this, and you're not guilty. Being mistaken doesn't mean you're guilty or deserving punishment.

At some point though you might be willing to get closer to God, and that will mean opening up to a greater truth. And once you expose yourself to the greater truth, you're not going to be ABLE to go backwards. It will also show you, in light, that what you thought was true or valuable, is really actually not AS valuable as the real truth. It's not as meaningful. ONLY when you are able to see through what you thought was important and recognize it for what it really is - an illusion, nothing of value, a decoy, or a ridiculous ego scenario, you will then be ready and willing to let go of it. Stepping into the truth IS letting go of it.

There is no force involved. There is no coercion. There is no pressure. There is no guilt for not being ready. WHEN you are truly ready, there won't be anyone standing there telling its about goddam time you sacrificed already. You will, and can, only let go of stuff, when you AGREE that the stuff you're letting go of is NOT of value to you, and that what you've chosen instead IS of value (God's truth). When you can see clearly in LIGHT, it is obvious what is true and what is false - what is valuable and what is valueless. Then there is no struggle and no fight. Nobody's ripping stuff from you, and you're not having to just go cold-turkey on stuff you still feel attached to before you're ready.

So yes you can keep all your stuff and your behaviors and your beliefs and all of it as long as you want. Guilt free. AND, even when you realize that this stuff is not truly worthy of the Son of God, that doesn't mean anyone's going to say "see told you so" or try to make you stop doing those things. You can still watch TV if you want, or walk the dog, or eat food. But the important difference then is that you do not NEED to and you don't believe it is reality.

At some point, when you are ready, you WILL look at every stone and turn it over and realize the gifts the ego was offering versus the gifts God is offering, and you will gladly choose God's gifts, and you will gladly and effortlessly let go of the ego's gifts. This includes all of the ego's laws. It includes all of the things you think you NEED and WANT, other than GOD alone, in order to survive and exist and be happy. That includes needing to eat food, drink liquid, sleep, breathe air, or be a body at all. You might still do these things for a while, but a MASTER does not need any dependence on anything besides God.

To summarize, there is no guilt or punishment coming for your 'sinful' behavior of enjoying chocolate cake or watching movies. But your dependence on these things as your source of truth might be keeping you away from something far more magnificent, and eventually you might decide to change your mind about what you want. And when you're ready to do that, Holy Spirit is right there ready to take the opportunity to gently guide you forwards to see for yourself what it is you've been denying.

Ultimately because you are denying God you are denying yourself/depriving yourself of everything God offers, which is an absolutely huge blessing that you've rejected. Why deny yourself such magnificence and joy? Jesus might at this point prod us - "ask yourself, do you want your little trinkets the ego has to offer, or do you want the love of God?" And since is it GOD that you stand to GAIN when you let go of things of lesser meaning, YOU CAN'T LOSE.

"At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present." - ACIM

Although it can seem like you can look at your body "right now" and see it "now", you might not realize that this is not actually "now" that you are seeing it. Rather, you are seeing how it was just a moment ago.

Even in terms of the body's sensory organs itself, it takes "time" for signals of sight to travel through space into the eyes, through the optic nerve, into the brain, into the mind, to perceive what is out there. You do not actually see the body as it is immediately now, you see how it just was a moment ago. The body is always in the past for you.

It is never possible to experience or see the body as it would be immediately in the exact present. Presence requires absolutely no space and no time. It is immediate and direct, with no gap and no delay. In such a present, it is not even possible to perceive. Perception happens in time and space and relies on separation. Only awareness can be present - an awareness of the presence of God.

While you can do a good job of approaching the present, you'll find that you have a lot of trouble actually being squarely in it. For example you can watch your breathing and try to always keep up with exactly how the breathing is acting right now, in the present. But you'll find that instead of always flowing along in the present moment precisely, your awareness will lag behind. You'll attempt to attach to or grab hold of what you're perceiving, and will stutter along from one grasp to another, as the mind tries to get a grip of what's coming. It's anticipating the future, or it's holding onto the past, and slightly missing the immediate present.

To put it another way, the present happens slightly sooner than your ability to perceive it. It is always quicker than the ego. It is always more immediate and transcends time and space. You will not be able to latch onto it or keep up with it without complete surrender to the Holy Instant.

The body does not exist in the present. It exists as a manifestation of delay and avoidance. It is always slightly in the past, or being anticipated in the future. Even though there is what seems to be an illusion of it existing "now" it is not really now. You never see it now. This is also why Jesus says that it is impossible to see a sinless body, because sinlessness is so immediate that it transcends time and space and the body itself.

The body IS the idea of sin, and it is always separate from the presence, because sin is always separate from the presence of God. The body will always be sin and made of sin. It cannot be truly holy. It can be used for a holier purpose but of itself, it is not made by love and cannot be inherently holy, because it is not wholeness. This is why, being sin, it MUST disappear, in order to enter the eternal presence of God. It is an illusion which must be given up and let go. Otherwise if the body were capable of perfection, it would truly substitute for God and we would never wake up.

The ego is very clever at creating illusions. It very cleverly makes it seem as though there IS no present. There's an entire section in the course about how the ego uses the past to "gloss over" the present and extend the past into the future so that there appears to be no present. Even if you are looking at this text right "now" and seeing it "now" it is NOT happening now. You're experiencing the past. This is why the workbook says "I see only the past" or "I see nothing as it is now". It's not possible TO see anything as it is now, other than God. The entire world is therefore in the past and so is already over.

We are never present in this world. This world and presence are incompatible.

We can reduce a lot of what the Course teaches seemingly down to simple statements such as "god is". But then when you try to extrapolate that back out to properly describe what we're experiencing, it doesn't work. Information has been lost. "God is oneness" or "there is no separation" is WAAAY too vague as a starting point.

If "God is", then when we try to explain what's happening in this world, or why I was woken up this morning at 7:30 by an alarm clock made of plastic and metal with electricity running through it, the "God is" teaching simply does not cut it. If we rely just on that, it's going to mean, God is an alarm clock.

All manner of false conclusions come from OVER SIMPLIFYING the metaphysics. This simplification is too basic to BASE an entire thought system on, or to structure an entire set of metaphysics on. It's all very well going one direction to make things more simple, but when we then turn around and use that simplified version to draw conclusions, it's just too basic. You won't end up with the same conclusions.

"God is" is an extremely high-level aspect of the truth, and conclusions drawn from these super-simplified ideas can be very much in error. God is not the one dreaming, and God did not create death or this world, which would be natural conclusions drawn from this. It's not accurate enough.

This is also why ideas of oneness and nonduality are severely prone to all kinds of false conclusions which STEM FROM the overly basic nature of these concepts. They simply do not properly or accurately describe God's nature and lead to so many "implications" that are false, that basing all kinds of conclusions on "there is only God" or "there is no self" or "there is one self" etc simply produces a huge amount of error.

The truth is supposed to be simple. But in terms of conceptualizing it, it's not simple, and without enough accuracy in the definition or what reality is or is not like, we just are going to find ourselves confused and mistaken. This is partly why the Course itself is SO HUGE and detailed, because there are so many nuances that CANNOT Be properly communicated using such simple terms. It's unfortunate but concepts, being of the ego, can become much more complex the closer you get to the truth, if you want them to be accurate. "God is" is nice, but it's too basic.

This overly basic reduction of the Course and the false conclusions which come from it, has unfortunately HAPPENED, and a huge percentage of the ACIM community has been somewhat misled into false teachings and false conclusions based on massively over-simplified concepts. There are countless statements in Jesus's words to demonstrate this.

As a result, we now have concepts of non-duality and having no self and the idea that the sonship is of the ego and that there are no souls and that there is only one person responsible for the dream and that you are responsible for other people's choices and so on, which are all false, which result from STARTING AT a way too basic concept or starting point.

Great teachers and poor teachers alike have fallen into this trap in a big way. There is huge portions of Jesus's teachings which have been misrepresented. Particularly in the areas of identity/responsibility, the performing of miracles, and overcoming death. The "natural conclusions" drawn from faulty logic has basically glossed over significant major teachings, and has turned A Course in Miracles into a sanitary and watered-down way to fix yourself and get out of here.

This is a Course in performing miracles, becoming very powerfully minded, reversing literal death, and being one of many sons of God who temporarily demonstrates perfect health in the dream while teaching and helping all brothers to wake up through miraculous demonstration.

This message has been largely destroyed by well-meaning but misguided teachings and poor reasoning. We need to almost start over with a much more accurate and all-encompassing view of the Course which does not omit things Jesus said, does not see contradictions where there are none, does not turn a blind eye to things that don't seem to make sense, and does not filter OUT the very heart and soul of the Course itself.

I asked Jesus last night fairly bluntly about death, whether a person's body can die without any problems in the mind, and whether a person can be fully awake/enlightened and still go through the death process.

His answer was short and sweet and cut to the chase:

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"Demonstrate death and you must believe in death."

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Just to make sure you grasp what this means, recognize the ACIM ideas that "to teach is to learn" and also "all teaching is demonstration" and "you will demonstrate what you believe is true" and "you are always demonstrating even while you sleep".

So that means, whatever you are expressing, whatever you are showing up "as", whatever state your body is in, whatever is coming through you, however you are using the body, whatever you are trying to communicate to others on all levels including the physical, whatever "message" you are giving through the state of your body which reflects the state of your mind, that is your DEMONSTRATION. Which means, it correlates exactly to what you BELIEVE IS TRUE.

This is proven out in this quote, which tells us that whatever you use the body to DEMONSTRATE, it will BECOME THAT, so if you use the body to demonstrate sickness or death, it becomes sick and dead, because you BELIEVE IN DEATH. The mind makes ALL DECISIONS about the body's condition, including whether it lives or dies:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body’s condition. "

So when you are believing in true health, you will demonstrate true health. When you believe in attack you will demonstrate attack. When you believe in sickness you will demonstrate a sickness. When you believe in death, you will demonstrate death!

What Jesus is saying is, in order to demonstrate death - "to die" as we like to refer to it, where the body goes through a death process, that is ONLY POSSIBLE when you BELIEVE that DEATH IS TRUE AND REAL. And it is because you believe in death being true, that you demonstrate that this is your truth.

It also means therefore, that if you DO NOT BELIEVE in death, YOUR BODY CANNOT DIE. Literally ****CANNOT****. Impossible for it to die, no matter what. If that is your 100% perfect belief in absolutely no attack, the body MUST become a symbol of immortality, to remain in perfect AGELESS HEALTH, as long as it is needed. Not even affected by weather or food or time.

Long story short..... DEATH CAN ONLY HAPPEN IF YOU BELIEVE IN IT!

And that also means... TO COMPLETE THE CURRICULUM AND FULLY WAKE UP, YOU MUST NOT BELIEVE IN DEATH, AND YOU MUST DEMONSTRATE IMMORTALITY.

So everyone is constantly demonstrating, teaching, communicating, what it is they believe the truth is, putting on a "show" which exhibits for everyone to see, exactly what it is you believe in.

Jesus also teaches simply that if you REALLY believe that something is true, you WILL be ABLE to demonstrate its truth. Not just a sort of powerless wishful thinking, but that if it is your actual experience that something is true, you will wholeheartedly be willing to demonstrate it to PROVE that you believe it. Nothing will hold you back from demonstrating it. Being fully convinced of its truth, it becomes REAL for you, and that gives you the POWER to demonstrate it.

"Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible and what has been learned can be recognized ONLY BY ITS RESULTS. Its generalisation is DEMONSTRATED as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles when you apply them to all situations. There is NO SITUATION (including sickness and death) to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to ALL situations you will gain the real world."

So what this boils down to is this simple fact.

If your body becomes sick, or if you die, YOU MUST HAVE CHOSEN IT, BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE IN DEATH.

There is no exception to this. If you "demonstrate death" for all to see, you are PROVING that death is something you believe in, and that is why you are TEACHING DEATH to everyone through your EXAMPLE. You're saying, look everyone, look at how death is real, look at how death is happening, look at how death is my truth, and LOOK AT HOW YOU DID THIS TO ME!

When you look at all the passages in the course which talk about "demonstration" this is clearly revealed, that when you demonstrate something it "applies" your belief to others. And therefore when you make your body sick, you are attacking others because you are demonstrating your belief that you have been "made sick" by someone other than yourself. And when you are attacking others, YOUR BODY will be attacked, and will become sick, to DEMONSTRATE that you are believing in attack. And this is nothing other than the attempt to PROVE that your brother must be a sinner because EFFECTS are showing up in you which he MUST have caused.

And even further, when you CEASE believing in death and sickness, you EXONERATE your brother, because you are no longer believing that he is the cause of your state of being, or the world. Jesus used His own resurrection - the re-materialization of a body which was NOT DEAD, proving He had NOT been killed by crucifixion, to DEMONSTRATE that death is not real. Here:

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."

He refers to misperception because in a prior paragraph he spoke of how the misperception of others was the justification for their attempted attack on his life. He resurrected to PROVE that they were EXONERATED, through physical demonstration, because of his BELIEF that there is no death, and therefore showed that they were no longer ACCUSED of having caused the death. Simply, by showing up as "not dead", it immediately cancelled and proved false any belief that anyone had killed him, thus rendering all onlookers INNOCENT. He thus TAUGHT THEIR INNOCENCE through this miracle demonstration, because miracles are teaching devices.

The demonstration of what you believe is important. It is all over the course. When we are making ourselves sick, we are accusing our brother of sin. And yes THIS DOES MEAN AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL. It is only at the physical level that you can see the RESULTS of miracles and the results of the mind's belief system. And this physical level is used as a COMMUNICATION device to make statements about WHAT IS TRUE OF BOTH YOU AND YOUR BROTHER. Your sickness attacks BOTH of you. Your death attacks BOTH of you. With death you are saying, "you killed me, and I killed you, and both of us are dead". This is spelled out in black and white, that "your sickness" is an attack on others and an attempt to accuse your brother of sin. Your body *MUST* be part of your awakening process and part of your view of yourself and part of what it is you believe in.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price if they can say, "Behold me, brother; at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors must be sins."

Here Jesus is not talking figuratively or metaphorically about death. He's talking plainly about a person's body dying as an attempt to accuse your brother of sin. Anyone who is sick, anyone who dies, is accusing the whole sonship, and the world, and God, of "causing it", and therefore claiming that we are all sinners. Sickness and death OF THE PHYSICAL BODY are WEAPONS OF ATTACK. The body is an IMAGE you are showing your brother to say hey, this is what I think of you, and this is what is true of us both. This is why the body is an integral part of your MIND and an integral part of your entire process of spiritual enlightenment. IT MUST SHOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE.

You can't it be that the body just sits there like a separate "thing" having absolutely no input from your mind and not reflecting your inner condition whatsoever, with you blissing out in some corner of your mind pretending to be awake while the body is still showing everyone that you believe death is real. You can't just be like, oh I'm not a body I am free, I'll just sit here and not be a body, while my body is sick and dies, and I don't care if its sick or dead cus it's an illusion. THAT'S DENIAL. THAT'S A LIE. THAT'S DISHONEST. THAT'S BULLSHIT!!!!!!!

I know that many people cannot accept this and many deny it. But Jesus in A Course in Miracles, and supported by everything He has said in his own words, is telling us to STOP BEING SICK and STOP DYING. That sickness and death are the total OPPOSITE of God's Will, and that we are to DEMONSTRATE AN UNWILLINGNESS TO DIE, in order to PROVE that we really truly believe that death is not real.

It is not enough to sit on a fence and say, ok, I don't believe in death. And to then die. That is a lie. It is dishonest to say you do not believe in sickness and to then demonstrate being sick. Or to claim you are not dying and to then die. Or to say it's not my mind that's dying, it's just my body, which is not me. That's an intellectualization because THE BODY CAN ONLY DIE IF YOU ATTACK IT. It is a lie. The mind IS believing in death and is making the body sick. A SANE MIND heals the body!

"Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. "

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, the mind HEALS THE BODY (making sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE) because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything."

If your mind is sane, YOUR BODY CANNOT DIE. If your body dies, YOUR MIND IS NOT SANE.

Whatever you demonstrate, whatever you express, whatever you show, it is coming from your inner condition as an outward picture. It is a demonstration of your thought system and what you REALLY believe. If you go through death, YOU DO BELIEVE IN DEATH. No exceptions. If you do NOT believe in death, YOU WILL NOT DEMONSTRATE IT.

You do not get to wake up from being a body in the dream and then go through death. You do not get to wake up from being a body and believe intellectually that you're not the body and to then have the body be sick and die. Where is the correlation of proof that your mind makes your body? Where is the consistent honesty? This is deception. You can't be demonstrating one thing and believing another.

Jesus is literally teaching us to OVERCOME DEATH. "You made sickness and death and can abolish both". This is not an OPTIONAL course teaching. This is not just some side-thread which you can elect whether to participate in. This is a CENTRAL TEACHING. It is inherent to healing. It is inherent to being right minded. It is inherent to miracles. It is inherent in all of the Course's metaphysics, and it is GOD's WILL that you not demonstrate death. Death is an attempt to kill God's Son, no matter what anyone claims about their supposed state of mind. Death is humanity's belief in hatred made manifest. Period.

Anyone who shows that they die in this world, is demonstrating and proving that they believe in death. That's all there is to it. It doesn't matter how much of a guru you are, how enlightened you seem to be, how many miracles you performed, how many yogic skills you have, how many followers you accumulated, how many people adore you, nothing. The proof is in the pudding. If you die, you did not overcome death.

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

It's plain and simple. All the arguments about "oh this is just a dream and death isn't real so it doesn't matter if you die"... it's a logical ERROR, it's level confusion. All the arguments about "well I don't have the power to stop my own death", is also bullshit. It is UNWILLINGNESS TO LIVE. All the arguments about "death is natural" - absolutely false. All the arguments about death is inevitable - absolutely false. All the arguments about "everything dies" or "everyone dies"... how SORRY IS THAT?

That 99.99% of the human race is FAILING TO BELIEVE IN LIFE. That 99.99% of the human race is suicidal. "A dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." And world where we come "to hate a while, whither and die".

This is not God's will.

It is God's will that you believe in life, you demonstrate that you believe in life, you ABOLISH DEATH, you undo ALL sickness, and you SHOW and PROVE that you cannot be killed, nothing can affect you in any way, and that the body can be overcome. You leave the dream through TRUTH, not through death. And truth brings light to illusions and disappears them.

This is the new frontier of A Course in Miracles. This is the true message Jesus is teaching. That you DO NOT NEED TO DIE and YOU SHOULD NOT DIE if you are to believe in everlasting life.

Again "demonstrate death and you must believe in death".

Death is what you are teaching. Death is what you believe in. If you are overpowered by disease and forces in the ego world, which you made, you have not undone your own self-attack. If your body is wracked with sickness, which are defenses you yourself put in place, and you have not removed those defenses, then you are still blocking God's Will.

No-one dies without their own consent. All death is suicide. Death is the opposite of God's Will.

"Sickness and death seemed to enter the mind of God's Son against His Will. 2 The "attack on God" made His Son think he was Fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"4 Many are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not understand what it means. 5 They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own Identity, and in this sense the wages of sin is death. 6 The sense is very literal; denial of life perceives its opposite, as all forms of denial replace what is with what is not. 7 No one can really do this, but that you can think you can and believe you have is beyond dispute."

"T-10.V.2. Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection, and you will believe that others and not yourself have done this to you."

"From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and innocence and to the Will of God Himself. Where can such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven. One thing is sure—God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin nor its results. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they live. They are not following it; they are opposing it.

81 And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body which they dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, offered to sin to feed upon and keep itself alive—a thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself. You who believe you have condemned the Son of God to this are arrogant."

If you REALLY believe in God's Will and that God is eternal life, you WILL DEMONSTRATE IT IN THIS WORLD by proving you cannot be affected by the world IN ANY WAY, not even death can happen to you, and you are IMMORTAL. If you are not doing that, it is because you do not believe it, it means you do not fully want to do God's Will, and MUST still have mental illness. If you die, you are NOT awake. Death is a symbol of sleep within sleep. It is the total opposite of progress, the total opposite of awakening, and the total opposite of truth.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free" is true ONLY IF you can PROVE IT, by being INCAPABLE of dying, not merely as a mind, but in any way that you show up. If you are in a body, you MUST SHOW IT by showing you CANNOT DIE PHYSICALLY EITHER.

Do you really think if Jesus showed up in the world, projecting a body from His mind, that anything in the world could make that body dead? That you could hurt it in any way or make it sick against Jesus's will? THAT would be arrogant, and that is the arrogance of the ego. "There is no death, the Son of God is free" WHEN HE FULLY BELIEVES IN THE END OF DEATH and has the balls to show it to the world.

It is very important in the development of trust, that we learn to make room for SPIRIT in our lives and hand over the responsibility for decision making to the Holy Spirit. This means ASKING the Holy Spirit WHAT TO DO. And this includes even in small matters which seem very specific. Just because the matters are small does not mean that you are not advanced.

We are asked to hand over all decision with increasing frequency, allowing him "to decide for God for me." Which means we have to talk to him and we have to listen to his response. We have to open up to trusting and being willing to RECEIVE GUIDANCE. And we have to learn to TRUST this guidance, seeing that it works, seeing that it is always for the best, seeing that it is never harmful, and seeing that it CAN BE trusted. Thus we develop trust.

By giving him all decision making it also absolves us of guilt, because then we are simply following his WISER advice. Part of this is because our attempts to judge anything correctly are heavily flawed and ego-driven because we can't see the big picture and we don't have access to all the variables. We are meant to relinquish judgement, which means we then can't know what anything means, or what to do, or where to go, or how to act. And thus we have to ASK FOR HELP. And our egos really do not want to give up control.

This is an absolute vital and required practice as part of doing this course. We must learn to trust the Holy Spirit in ALL THINGS, and turn to his advice ESPECIALLY in serious and difficult decisions, decisions about health, about life and death even, as well as what's for dinner and which way to go on a walk or which item to buy at the store. ALL THINGS, ALL decisions. Deep trust and handing over of ego autonomy and trusting in your own strength.

It is not only perfectly acceptable AND curriculum-aligned to seek for spiritual guidance, it is in fact what Jesus WANTS us to do. And that includes getting guidance from Jesus and the Holy Spirit, using it, AND sharing it with others to help them. It is a sign of spiritual maturity to do this because it means you're having true humility and are willing to serve God's will.

My wife was in the ICU for the second time, having been oxygen deprived, and was being declared more or less brain dead by the doctor, who told me to my face that she would never recover. She wasn't breathing well and he said we might as well let her die. I however did not trust this advice. The man seemed like the devil incarnate to me, certainly skilled in his profession but still an ego.

I instead sought the Holy Spirit and Jesus to decide for me and tell me what to do, knowing that I myself COULD NOT. I trusted their advice MORE than anyone. Their advice was to "resurrect her". And because of that, I made the decision that she would NOT be terminated and that we would wait.

In the next few days I did my praying and affirming and attempts to heal and so on, whether it helped or not I do not know. But a few days later, she began to wake up. The doctor at first accused me of lying when I told him she'd been trying to communicate. He was rather arrogant that he knew better and that it was impossible. He was completely convinced she would never recover.

But when they tried leaving off the sedation she suddenly came around and was talking. And a couple weeks later she was back at home to continue living. Had I listened to the advanced educated human ego advice of the chief doctor, she would've been put to death. Because Jesus told me what to do, and because I trusted it, she lived.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice period to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:

"What would you have me do?" Where would You have me go? What would You have me say, and to whom?"

"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. "

"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."

"When you have learned how to decide WITH God, ALL decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently, as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. "

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. "

You have your real self, which is your `higher self`, which God created. Then you have your ego self, your 'false self', which you made.

Interestingly, the ego which you made, seems to turn against you and tries to take away your identity. It tries to stop you from being your real self. It wants you to become the ego self.

The ego then is like a black hole, sucking the life out of you, covering up your real self, distracting you from remembering who you are, closing down your mind and awareness, stealing from you, possessing you, getting you to align with it, getting you to trust it and side with it and want it, and above all else, getting you to believe that you ARE it. The ego is attempting to remove your real self from existence, so that all that is left is the false ego self, to whom you have handed over all your power and life.

In ACIM, Jesus speaks with very clear awareness of the fact that there is YOU - your real self - and then there is "the ego" - your false self. He speaks of how the ego is trying to get you to believe that you are it, but that you are not it and cannot be it. He also warns of how you willingly give the ego all of its power by choosing to deny and reject who you really are.

So here we have this strange battle going on, where the ego is trying to absorb you into itself. And for most people, it's done a really good job of it. To such an extent, that most people believe they are ONLY their ego. They don't even suspect that they have a hidden 'true self'. They have no idea that they are not themselves, or that their real self is covered up by layer upon layer of ego bullshit.

The challenge you have, and the entire purpose of 'awakening', is to get you to wake up to the truth of this situation and to 'pull away' from your identification with the ego, remember who you really are, and become really really clear that you are NOT the ego. Every time you buy into or listen to or side with or use the ego, you are reinforcing the belief that you ARE the ego.

You are not the ego. You are not what happens to the ego. You are not the ego that becomes affected by stupid events and attackers and bad people. You are not the self that feels hurt. You are not the self that is guilty. You are not the self that suffers and dies. You are not the self that fears death and fears life. You are not the self that is all caught up in drama and the rollercoaster of life's events. You are not the self that can be affected or feels triggered off by things happening around them. YOU ARE NOT THAT SELF. THAT IS NOT YOU.

Your ego is the repository of all things ego, and your ego is not who you are. You do not NEED an ego in order to exist. You do not need anything the ego is attached to, believes in, values or thinks is real. You are not dependent on it. It is dependent upon you. But while you think you depend on it - for your life - because you think you ARE it - because you've listened to and chosen to believe the ego's bullshit cover-story - you will keep experiencing things AS IF you are it, and AS IF all these things are happening to YOU.

Nothing can happen to YOU, ever. Because YOU are not the ego, you are not guilt, you are not fear, you are not upset, you are not drama, you are not the body, you are not vulnerable, you are not attackable, you are not hurt, you are not suffering, you are not sick or diseased, you cannot die, and you cannot change. Not one iota.

So the real lie is this... who you really are, cannot be changed, and is a permanent identity that God has put in place, and there's nothing you can do about it. BUT... your mind is capable of DENYING this fact, and pretending otherwise, and when it presents otherwise it hallucinates ego. And once ego is in the picture there are all kinds of backwards distortions of how things look and who you think you are. And you start to lose sight of yourself. And you lose track of your completely unchangeable perfection and innocence, and start to ACTUALLY BELIEVE that ITS POSSIBLE that the 'life of the ego' is your life, that you CAN be hurt and suffer and die, and that this big ego nightmare is actually happening to YOU.

Like, hello.

There is only one curriculum. It is God's curriculum. It applies to EVERYONE, no matter how awake or asleep or in what walk or life or following what religion, even people who have never heard of A Course in Miracles. There is a difference between ACIM - the book, the course - and "the universal curriculum", which applies to everyone, book or not.

The curriculum is REQUIRED, in that there is only ONE truth, and every single soul has to find their way TO that one truth eventually. The truth is non-negotiable. "The time you take it is voluntary", and you can go closer and retreat and get lost and come back again etc but generally speaking "the truth" is the curriculum that you need to learn, ie the atonement, and either you learn it or you avoid it for a while, but *everyone* HAS to learn it. Because it's God's guarantee that you WILL wake up from dreaming.

God's ANSWER to the separation, which includes ALL PEOPLE, is the Holy Spirit, who he created AS the answer. Not just a bunch of information. Not just some "optional path". He is IN YOUR MIND as a spirit being, and he forms the Christ Mind, which ALL souls share. It is *IMPOSSIBLE* to be awakened and to exclude the Holy Spirit. The truth that you learn, true perception, IS HIS perception. You can only "learn it", by joining YOUR perception with HIS and aligning with His way of seeing. There is NO OTHER way, other than the ego's.

So essentially the Holy Spirit, sooner or later, is going to form a relationship with you, you are going to develop trust, you're going to open up to Him and work with Him. He is your TEACHER. Jesus also calls him "the only therapist", due to His position of knowing the truth. There is only one truth no matter who you are.

This applies to all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindu folk, you name it. The Holy Spirit is *unavoidable* in the curriculum process. Indeed Jesus says that you must learn to join your mind with His and SHARE His mind. You cannot avoid Jesus either. And that's probably something that might piss off some people following the FORM of other paths. That is why Jesus CORRECTLY and truthfully said, "I am the way the truth and the light and no one comes to the father but by me."

Additionally, though some will not like this fact either, being a miracle worker is a God-given right and *completely natural* for anyone who is joining with the Holy Spirit's thought system and waking up to the truth. Removal of blocks to awareness releases or rather stops interfering with miracles, and "miracle working" becomes your natural profession. As Jesus says also, once you accept the atonement you become PART OF the atonement plan and then you PROFESS HIM... ie express Him, because "atonement is the natural profession of the children of God." And that applies to ALL SOULS, no matter how ACIM-oriented you seem to be right now.

The fact is that as you approach the truth and merge with love etc, you WILL, MUST, CANNOT AVOID, becoming miraculous. It is your nature. God created you miraculously and you are miraculous forever. And so you WILL perform miracles as part of your function of healing on Earth. Anyone who "doesn't like" the idea of performing miracles FOR OTHERS (professing Jesus) is going to run into a roadblock at some point because miracles are NATURAL and *EVERYONE* is supposed to be doing them.

So long story short, the curriculum is not optional, nor is becoming intimate with Holy Spirit, nor is having a direct relationship with Jesus, nor is miracle working. This is why Jesus also says you MUST join the great crusade with Him as an active worker. It's not even something you would want NOT to do. It's a given. Part of the metaphysics. You become part of the atonement PLAN which goes far beyond yourself and helps others.

So all this stuff IS MANDATORY. You can, however, avoid it. You can be in denial of it. You can try to reject it. You can refuse to accept it. But it does not change the facts or the truth. At some point, everyone is going to return to God through the universal curriculum. They MIGHT not necessarily do it through the FORMAT of "A Course in Miracles", the book, with the lessons etc... they MIGHT come to it through what SEEM like "other paths", but no matter the appearance of the path, it is ALL part of God's curriculum for awakening, which MUST include the Holy Spirit, joining with ALL brothers including Jesus, and taking lessons to learn the SAME truth as everyone.

You think death is real, but you quickly forget that everything that ever 'died' is just part of a big DREAM you're having while you're asleep. This world is part of this dream and everything that happens in it is part of a dream.

All wars, all bodies, all old age, all sickness and disease, it's all just part of a giant dream. It's all happening inside a big bubble of unreality where nothing real happens at all.

There is a dream of death, there is imagined death, but there isn't any real death beyond it. Nothing permanent happens here. Nothing has any real effect on anything real. How can a dream affect reality? When bodies in this world 'die', that's still just a fictional event happening inside a giant dream. An imagined death is no death at all. That is why 'death' is reversible within the dream, because it's totally made-up and unreal, and resurrecting inside the dream is also unreal.

Outside of the dream, none of this happens. Outside the dream, you're still completely safe with God, just dreaming of exile and pretending that death is real. The you that is having the dream is completely unaffected by anything that happens inside the dream. You think you are affected as a 'figure' in the dream, while you're dreaming it, but this is just a nightmare that isn't real. The you that is outside the dream is immortal and is not inside the dream at all.

You are just asleep. As the course has said "...sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die." You as immortal spirit can have some sleep and dream about being in a world where people die and bodies suffer, but the entire thing is just a fantasy dream. It isn't real at all. It isn't really happening. And it has absolutely NO EFFECT on God or who you really are, outside the dream. All of the fallout and 'effects' of conflict in the dream, STAY in the dream. None of it touches or affects God or your Real Self whatsoever. God is absolutely unchanged by you being asleep and having a dream of something that isn't happening.

This is why you are immortal. What does it matter how many times fictional bodies die or live or suffer or have health or whatever. None of it is who you are really, none of it has any effect on your REALITY whatsoever, and none of it carries over when you fully awaken from sleeping. Where do dreams go when you awaken? They are recognized as having been just an unreal dream, they no longer exist, and nothing has happened. They didn't 'leak out' into reality and they don't have any side effects. They simply disappear.

You can play around with stuff inside the dream and you can become confused about what is appearing to happen, and you can think it is reality since you're out of touch with reality. You can think that serious stuff happens and that real people really die in horrible ways. You can think that making the body not die is important, and you can think that performing miracles is important. You can value healing over suffering. And you can value death over life. None of it is important at all, it's all an illusion. Everything inside the dream is not reality and anything happening in a DREAM has absolutely no real effects!

This is because the dream itself is just an effect. The dream is not a cause. You are the dreamer, dreaming it, and you are the only cause of it. The dream wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for you dreaming. It ALL comes from you. Every last bit of it. And that means there is NO part of it that comes from anywhere else, and there is NO part of it that has any power to 'cause' other dream-stuff to happen. If you didn't write it into the 'script' of the dream, it cannot happen in the dream! EVERY part of it is your dream and is the EFFECT of you dreaming. As an effect, everything that goes on in the dream is NOT a cause, and HAS NO EFFECT, and therefore CANNOT AFFECT YOUR REAL SELF.

One day you're going to stop dreaming and wake up to reality. And you're simply going to become aware of what REALLY exists, which is you as immortal spirit, being with an immortal God of love, forever. And you will know immediately, that there never has been any death, no wars, no sickness, no struggles or suffering, no problems, nothing. It was all just a really horrendous nightmare dream. And THANK GOD it was just a dream! All that's left is you hanging out with God in eternity, with eternal life, completely unchanged from the condition He created you in, absolutely safe from dreams of death, absolutely unaffected and unchanged. You will know - nothing that seemed to happen in the dream has happened at all. There are no real ghosts, there is no real war, there is no real suffering or sickness, there is no death, and there is no world! The whole world, wasn't real.

All that is left is God's Creation, which is all that really exists. What God Created lives and exists, and what He did not create does not exist.

Nothing real can be threatened. (Reality is unaffected by your dream)

Nothing unreal exists. (Dreams are DREAMS, they don't EXIST!)

Herein lies the peace of God. (God KNOWS there is only immortal reality, and that you are a part of it forever)

You're dreaming. You're dreaming of being inside a dream as a little body-identified self that is also a dream. This isn't reality. Nothing that happens here has any real consequences. It is all perfectly contained and not even really happening. The Kingdom of Heaven is perfectly protected from all illusions, and nothing can prevail against it.

You are safe with God and you always will be. This is why there is no need to be afraid - because there literally is nothing REAL to be afraid of. Everything you are afraid of DOES NOT EXIST and is just a dream/illusion. You need not be afraid because there is ONLY LOVE, and God has ensured your absolute safety in reality forever.

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not."

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

Let's draw a large circle and call it heaven.

Then inside of that circle, let's draw a smaller circle and call it earth.

You could say that the small circle overlaps with the big circle. In a sense, when you are in the small circle, you are in BOTH circles. As such, being in the smaller circle, or on Earth, it is possible to be aware of the fact that in truth you are ALSO inside the big circle. That you are always in heaven with God, even if you are dreaming of exile inside the small circle.

It's also possible while you are in the smaller circle, of focusing so much on the small circle to the exclusion of the big circle, that it can seem like ONLY the small circle exists. This is what being "blinded by perception of form" means, focusing on a limitation of smallness and not seeing the bigger picture. Focusing on the small circle and not seeing the big circle. Focusing on believing earth (small circle) is real, and not seeing the reality of the big circle at all.

But it is also possible for the small circle to be overlooked (forgiven) to such an extent that its boundaries become transparent and you become able to see the bigger circle behind it. As such, as you look toward the things in the small circle you will see the light of the big circle shining through underneath it. As though you are in two places at once. One foot on earth, and one in heaven.

Your perception takes on a temporarily parallel functioning, part physically focused on the small circle, and part spiritual-eye focused on the vision of the big circle. When seeing the big circle more clearly, the smaller circle is framed differently, and the things in the small circle become less important, less solid, less believable.

This smaller circle, when seen through, and when seen beyond, is regarded as the forgiven world, or real world. This includes the earth which is a small circle within the small circle. As mind becomes aware of its thinness and transparency, it simultaneously becomes increasingly aware of God, which is a very large circle beyond all small circles.

God is the big circle. This means the small circle is an illusion, because there can only be one circle. A separation is needed in order to imply that there is a second circle. Temporarily there seems to be two circles. But you cannot have two circles without opposition and conflict. With separation, the small circle is a dream of death, and without separation, there is no death because there is no small circle (no world).

At best, the small circle can be interpreted AS IF it is LIKE the big circle, as though reflecting heaven, and while the small circle persists you can seem to be in the small circle and mostly aware of the big circle at the same time. This makes the small circle seem less like an actual thing, and more like a faint illusion of a thing. It becomes less valued, and more overlooked. It seems more lovely, framed in the holy wholeness of the big circle, but is still a limited circle.

If you really want to go ALL the way to awareness of the big circle, you will have to transcend the small circle completely. You will have to go OUTSIDE the small circle, beyond its small reach, and beyond its limits. This isn't possible while remaining in any way inside the small circle, because the small circle doesn't cover all of the area that big circle covers. Also the small circle requires a belief in being separate in order to have a second circle. Without separation there is no small circle at all.

When you are ready to transcend the small circle and completely open up to the big circle, which is totally accepting atonement and ascending to heaven, you will transcend the small circle world and wake up in the big circle. At this point you will be completely aware of the fullness of the big circle, and there will be no small circles anywhere. In truth, only the big circle exists, and there is no small circle at all.

Notice here that Jesus says that you CAN use meditation as a way to go ALL the way to atonement. Without a holy relationship. But that a holy relationship is perhaps "more efficient" because it provides a learning environment in which both can benefit quickly.

"Nor is a lifetime of contemplation, and long periods of meditation aimed at DETACHMENT from the body necessary. ***All such attempts will ultimately succeed***, because of their purpose. But the ***means*** are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them LOOK TO THE FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.

Your way will be different. ***NOT in purpose***, but in means. ***A HOLY RELATIONSHIP IS A MEANS*** OF SAVING TIME. One instant spent TOGETHER restores the universe to BOTH of you."

So a holy relationship is a way to SAVE TIME, compared to other pathways to God, but it is not the only way, or a required way. You can get there solely through meditation/contemplation as well. You can get there in a cave, or you can get there in a crowd. It doesn't matter.

PURPOSE is what's important. "because of their purpose" ..... if meditation is used for the PURPOSE of reaching God then it will succeed. If a special relationship is used for a PURPOSE of reaching God (ie a holy relationship) it will succeed. If the WORLD or the BODY are used for a purpose of reaching God, they will succeed.

It's always about the repurposing of what the ego made, which covers not just relationships but also the world and the body and perception and time and space and illusions. The whole thing is a MEANS for getting you home. And all such approaches CAN work.

A Holy Relationship can save time because it can be kind of a crash course, an intensive, a cooperative mirroring scenario in which two people are striving for the same purpose/intention, and so can help each other and support each other. That can work more effectively than "going it alone". But going it alone also can work.

Everyone's path is different and a holy relationship is not REQUIRED as such. But IF you are having relationships (special ones), converting them into holy relationships will be beneficial for achieving the goal. And they are nothing more than a MEANS to an end, not an end in themselves.

Jesus also talks about how some people realize the truth on their death bed, alone. Some realize it through many other paths. Some realize it through doing the lessons and the course. All of it is valid. Every repurposing of ANY aspect of the world is a way to go home. Any re-use or reinterpretation of ANY aspect of "life" here is a way to go home, because it moves you closer to true perception. Relationships with our brothers etc is just one part of that, one example of that.

It may be true that in the atonement plan, some individuals have chosen/agreed to meet due to having the potential for a holy relationship. And it may be that many "pairs" (or more) may come together in the final stages of awakening to wake up together. Which is a beautiful thing. But not an exclusive thing, or a mandated thing. Anyone, no matter their relationships, can always return to God.

The requirements for ascension is only your sole responsibility to accept atonement for yourself. How you GET THERE, is up to you. Whether through relationship transformations or teaching or writing or meditation or strange yogic practices or religion or whatever. Many will get there without ever running into the term "holy relationship" or having a clue what one is. The curriculums are individualized.

Using your relationships as a hotbed for awakening and practicing forgiveness is always a good thing. But ultimately forgiveness is the forgiveness of THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, not just select people, or objects, or pets, or certain bodies, etc. Your entire perspective on this realm has to be transformed. Your entire relationship to the planet, to the galaxy, has to change. Your relationship to time and space has to change. Your mind has to become whole and the entire world has to become "the forgiven world" to you. That is beyond the scope of just your relationships with other people, although they are INCLUDED in it.

Whatever way works for you, whatever is in your curriculum, whatever path you've chosen or lessons you've agreed to undertake, and whatever form that happens in, be it through your intimate relationships or strangers or not even involving other people at all, it's all good and it's all moving you closer to God. Because the only thing stopping you from going home is your willingness to do so. And nothing can hold you in the dream against your will. There is no requirement for entry to heaven other than to get your mind straightened out so that you can accept the Kingdom without reservation.

"The test of everything on earth is simply this; "What is it for?" The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve."

The world was made for a purpose. It was deliberate, intentional, chosen. We wanted there to be an alternative to heaven. And its form and function were made to serve that purpose. Just as all sickness is intentionally used to serve a perceived need.

Purpose is based on "how you are using it" or "what it is for". What is the goal attached to it. What is the ambition. How is it being used to accomplish that goal. How does it serve you and God.

We started out with a purpose of separation and attack, and produced a world which seems to be a world where that purpose could be fulfilled. That it could serve or be used as a way to avoid being with God. A hell where God could enter not.

But since the PURPOSE of the world or what it MEANS or is USED FOR, is distinct from what the world IS (just a neutral illusion), it's possible to give it a different purpose and a different meaning or use.

The Holy Spirit uses the world in a totally different way to our original intentions. To bring you home to God, to wake you up, to get you to let go of your artificial meanings and the meanings you've given everything. He presents an alternative meaning and use of the world and the body, based in love.

So in forgiveness, we're giving the world a different meaning and purpose. We're re-interpreting it. We're re-purposing it and coming up with a different use for it. Instead of using it to keep you away from God, we're trying to use it in such a way that it doesn't serve as an obstacle, or as proof of sin, or as a way to keep you suffering.

In effect, we're trying to use what we made against itself, to undo it. We're cancelling it out by forgiving it, ie giving it a meaning from an opposite thought system, which runs contrary to the world's nature, so that the world is recognized sanely, setting you free from it. Because illusions recognized must disappear.

So when Jesus asks you to consider "what is it for?", he's trying to get you to look at how you're using it, or for what purpose, or what meaning you're inventing for it, and to question that choice, and choose again the Holy Spirit's alternative meaning and purpose and use of the world and the body.To "let me not use this as an obstacle to peace, but help me to use it to facilitate its coming."

The forgiven world is the same world with a different purpose. A world which came to damn, made in false perception, now being used to return you to salvation. A body which was made to separate, being used to bring help and healing. A life which was made to hide in darkness, being used to bring light to the world.

Purpose aligns with perception and belief, because when you change your mind about what you believe is true and want, you are changing the meaning of things. And now you project that meaning onto the world and see it.

So if you recognize and believe and accept God's meaning and truth, it will change the meaning you give to the world. And now you are perceiving closer to Christ Vision or Real Truth because you're looking at the world from a different vantage point or angle. Framing it differently.

Essentially, it's the same world, combined with a different attitude. A more holy attitude seems to render the world as though it is holy and harmless. Ancient hatreds turn into present loves. Serious suffering turns into effortless healing. Death turns into resurrection. And fear turns into happiness.

Another way of saying "what is it for?", is "what meaning do I want to give it?" Do I want to use this for attack and making sin real, or do I want to use it repurpose it to remind me of God's truth and method by which I might be saved from hell? Can I see it in another light? There must be a better way.

If I am presently using the world in such a way that it means attack and offense and threat and damage and suffering and hell, I can admit that I am using it in a certain way, thereby "doing this to myself".

And then I can change my mind and choose a different meaning. And then elect to tune into Holy Spirit's perspective of forgiveness and repurpose what I think happened to help me move towards peace instead.

----TL;DR: Changing your perception OF a sick body, isn't enough to change what you are projecting. You are projecting your body and the symptoms.----

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition. As you think so do you perceive."

Recognize that projection COMES FIRST, then perception happens SECOND.

"The world you see" (perceive) "is what you have put there to see" (what you projected first).

"The world you perceive" (second) "is witness to your state of mind" - your perception "witnesses", perceives, and reflects back to you, your state of mind, because your state of mind PROJECTED what it is that you are now PERCEIVING.

These are two different processes. The act of having a certain state of mind, which you then project FROM, puts stuff "out there", which you THEN perceive as a secondary process.

Even the body itself is a projection. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The body then PERCEIVES, AFTER having been projected.

Jesus talks about how this is a circular logic for us, a trap, whereby we believe what we want to see, we project it because we believe in it, we "make it appear" (manifest it), then we "perceive" ie let the body tell us what it is we projected.

Perception then, is distinct from projection. It is a secondary act. Without projecting, there would be nothing TO perceive.

So here's what you need to realize about perceptions of sickness.

The mind, in whatever state it is in, has beliefs in it, thoughts, which then project. These projections MANIFEST the body and many other forms and objects. The mind for example projects the body ITSELF.

If the mind has a belief in separation, it will project a body which shows up with signs and symptoms of sickness, because it is a PICTURE of your inward condition, and your inward condition is one of "I am under attack". So the body SHOWS it. it is a WITNESS ie corresponds to your state of mind. This is why "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." The body literally only shows up as the mind's manifestational projection. It's an image being projected by the mind.

Jesus speaks to this in his "special notes to helen"....

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. ... The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness.

I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood.

I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and THE MIND THAT MADE THE BODY CAN MAKE ANOTHER SINCE FORM ITSELF IS AN ILLUSION. They did not understand."

So here we can see, the MIND, MAKES the body. Your mind is projecting your body, and everything about it, right now. However it is showing up, witnesses to your mental content and your belief system. If it is showing up as sick, it is therefore directly correlated, it is PROOF, that your mind is not healed.

This also means, that when the mind IS healed, or close to, and it is still projecting a body, it MUST project a body which appears without signs or symptoms of sickness. This is because the body COMES FROM the mind, mind is its source, and a healthy mind WILL ONLY project a healthy-appearing body image.

Now. There is a problem here in how many people are interpreting the correction of perception.

Remember perception happens to look upon WHAT YOU PROJECTED, after you projected it. The body's eyes receive little photons of light to tell it, oh look, there's a body there. That's part of perception. The illusion that the very thing YOU PROJECTED, is now telling you what IT IS, completely forgetting that you put it there in the first place.

So now perception, is ONCE REMOVED from the direct expression or projection of the mind. Perception therefore is a secondary experience.

So now, let's say that you have projected a body with a broken leg. The broken leg was not caused by anything in the world. It was ONLY projected from the mind. The mind did not project a broken leg ONTO the body. The mind directly projected ONLY an image of a body with a broken leg. The body does not EXIST as a separate object, or a "thing", or something as an end in itself. If you do not project it, nothing shows up! If you do not project it, there is no body!

So now, that you projected an image of a body with a broken leg, you now will perceive. Perception can be in a state of correctness/clarity or in a state of false perception/distortion. Since your MIND has a belief in sickness in it, and has made a sick-appearing body image materialize, it also now believes sickness is real. Perception is now going to take place, and that same mind which PROJECTED the "sick body", is also going to see that same belief in sickness IN the body that was projected.

This means perception is now going to show you a hallucination of "sickness is real", "something is wrong", "sin and guilt" etc, as though it is *IN* the body. It is not in the body, it's in the mind. Thus the idea of sickness, which made the body to begin with, is now SECONDARILY projected ON TOP OF the body that you projected.

Then you will have various ego reactions to what you are misperceiving, and will start to seek a resolution. But your planned strategy here isn't typically anything to do with fixing your PROJECTION, it's always to do with fixing your PERCEPTION. And that means, something very obvious is about to happen.

If all you do, is fix your perception OF what you projected, you might be able to seem to "be at peace" with what is showing up. You might seem to become less upset or resistant or less fighting with, your broken leg. You'll tell yourself, if your perception OF the body is healed, you will be TOTALLY DONE. But this leaves you with a problem, and a state of denial.

Fact is, even if your so-called "perception" is perceiving your broken leg as "lovely and wonderful", oh how lovely that death looks.... your leg is STILL BROKEN. And that's a problem. Because now you are demonstrating that you can be hurt, you are attacking the entire world by claiming that something OTHER THAN YOU put the break there, you are holding this broken leg up for everyone to see to make them guilty and accuse them of sin, and you are attempting to demonstrate that God's Son can be killed.

It also means that since ALL sickness manifests as a DEFENSE against the truth, in the mind, which then projects a "defending body", which shows up as attacked, you CANNOT accept full and total peace while still maintaining that defense. It is impossible. The defense has to go, which means the belief in separation has to go, which MUST produce a projected body which shows up as HEALED.

Nothing happens to the body that was sick that you projected previously. It does not exist. You just RE-PROJECT A NEW ONE, every moment. Sickness in the body can only show up if the mind is defending against truth, and sickness can only show up in the body if the mind has GUILT. "Sickness is but another form of guilt". Therefore, if the mind does not have guilt and defenses, the body WILL ONLY show up as healed, as PROOF, that the mind is healed. The mind will PROJECT a healed-appearing body to testify to ITS inner condition.

So while that broken leg persists, you are in denial. You may be owning up to the fact that you have some control over your PERCEPTION. But you are not admitting that you have the power to PROJECT what you are even looking at.

This is a fundamental difference and there is a pretty big divide in the ACIM community based around this one distinction. Many people believe all they need to do is fix their perception OF the world, or what's showing up, and then they are done. In this belief system, it becomes justified that you can still have sickness show up and have a "healthy mind", that you can still DIE and be innocent, you can welcome death, you can keep your sickness and be totally happy, etc.

Yes, to a degree, as a preparatory step, you can come to be "relatively peaceful" about these things through changing your perception. What you are INDIRECTLY doing there, is that it's not actually your perception that you're fixing, is the content of your mind that PROJECTS the body in the first place. Attempting to change your perception is a second-hand roundabout way of trying to address the content in your mind, which is "showing you" a belief in sin and sickness "in" the broken leg. But at some point.... you're going to hit a wall.

The wall will simply be, that in order for you to really thoroughly change your perception so that you do not believe in sickness, and have no sickness in your mind, you're going to have to also ADMIT, that your mind is projecting the FORM OF SICKNESS *AS* the body, in the first place, regardless of your perception OF it.

So many people are onto this "change my mind about the world" kick, which changes perception OF the world. But they do not realize, at some point, if you are not going to perceive sickness, your mind has to be emptied of all belief in sickness, AND THIS MUST result in the PROJECTION changing. It has to. The mind can't retain some small amount of belief in separation and have *perception* be a state of peace.

If that broken leg is still showing up, but you are relatively "ok with it", you are IN DENIAL. That broken leg is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING UP AT ALL. A sick body is PROOF the mind HAS NOT been healed.

There is this second camp of ACIM folk then who see this, and acknowledge, that the mind projects the body. Jesus Himself said it in that quote above. The mind that projects the body can make another. And if the mind can project the ENTIRE BODY, then IT is 100% responsible for making the body show up with ANY sign of sickness or death. This is how no-one can die without his own consent! If your mind does not put it there, it cannot be.

So if you just stop at.... I'm going to just be okay with this sickness, I'm going to perceive this sickness differently, I'm going to perceive this BODY differently, I'm going to look at this body in a more loving way etc.... that's a step TOWARDS healing the mind's content. But if that body is still showing up as BROKEN, you are NOT DONE.

This is where there comes to be a lot of denial, because not only is it often difficult to see that you projected the sickness AS the body (it can happen really fast and then go unconscious), there is also a lot of FEAR about this idea that your mind is THAT POWERFUL, that it can not only make sickness and death happen to you BY your will, but that the mind can also reverse that. Yet Jesus teaches:

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both." ABOLISH means, to TOTALLY REMOVE. That means, the reversal of ALL forms and signs and symptoms of sickness in the body AND mind, and EVEN DEATH. It Literally means, the ability to reverse death, to raise the dead, and to completely restore life. It is the ability to REWIND SIN and UNDO ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES (effects) of your wrong decision.

Your mind is cause. Your body is your effect. The body is NOT CAUSED by the world in any way whatsoever. Ever. Your sickness is NOT PUT THERE by any cause outside of your mind, EVER. You are responsible for what you have chosen. And because you are, you can CHANGE YOUR MIND and it MUST CHANGE THE PROJECTION.

So yes it's one thing to work on changing your perception, but your perception has arisen from what you have projected. And that means, if you are GENUINELY undoing the sinful content in your mind, are taking full ownership of your power, are NOT believing that anything in the world has the power to affect you or your body, and are NOT attempting to demonstrate that the Son of God can be hurt and killed THROUGH the symbol of the body (the body can become a sign of immortality), then YOU WILL STOP PROJECTING SICKNESS AND DEATH.

You do not project it ONTO the body. You project it AS the body. No-one else put the body there. Your parents did not put the body there. Biology did not put the body there. Chemical reactions and physical interactions did not put the body there. The world, the dream, other people, did not put the body there. ONLY YOU DID.

So that means, if you're to go all the way with this.... this is where you get into MIRACLE WORKING. Because it means, you are willing to DEMONSTRATE, to live by example, that it is possible to reverse all sickness and death in yourself, AND IN OTHERS.

You first reverse it in yourself by accepting atonement. This allows you to receive miracles. Then you are able to express those miracles to and for others. If they are willing to accept it.

We are not supposed to be walking around with limbs hanging off and body parts failing and organs malfunctioning and eyesight going bad and developing a limp and a having cancers and diseases and various other forms of SIN.

Death is an attempt to demonstrate that the Son of God can be killed. Pain is an attempt to bind the son to the body to fixate him on and identify with being a real body. Sickness is an attempt to prove the Son can be hurt. Sickness is an attack on your brother. Sickness is the result of seeking outside of yourself, and demonstrates level confusion. None of this is God's will. It is a demonstration of the OPPOSITE OF GOD'S WILL for you.

No-one is supposed to be dying. Bodies are not supposed to be decaying and dying. There is NOT supposed to be 7 billion people planning their own death, who will very likely die in the next 100 years, putting 7 billion corpses in the ground, just because they did not want God's healing and love. That's their choice. It does not have to be yours.

If we are to demonstrate that we are immortal and invulnerable, we ARE supposed to demonstrate here, in the flesh, that the body cannot be hurt, BECAUSE, the body is ONLY coming from the mind, and therefore if you project a healthy body it will STAY HEALTHY at all times. And nothing can attack it. It is IMPOSSIBLE for it to be sick. NOR CAN IT DIE.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION."

Later, when it's done being useful, it is simply DISAPPEARED. Just as Jesus did:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. "

It was not a matter of it disappearing from his perception OF it. The body ITSELF disappeared because HE STOPPED PROJECTING IT.

THIS is our natural inheritance, this ability to work miracles, to reverse all sickness and death, to not only correct perception but to CORRECT PROJECTION. To UNDO everything we have PROJECTED. AND that ultimately includes your body, everyone else's body, all sickness, all death, all forms of separation, all objects, all planets, and this entire ILLUSORY UNIVERSE which is a PROJECTION coming from the mind.

So don't stop at "I will just change how I see the world." "Seek not to change the world, seek to change your mind about the world. Perception is a RESULT (effect of projecting) and not a cause (the body that shows up is not alive!). "And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless." ie... change your MIND, your body and the world MUST CHANGE to reflect the content of your mind. Without exception.

There are people who wake up in this world. There are people who are awake in the dream. There are people who have purified perception to such an extent that they seem to be seeing the real world or something close to it. They recognize that they were contributing sin to what is here, projecting it "onto" the body and world. But what they usually do not realize is, THEY are projecting the body and the world. And therefore, typically, they age, and they die. And then they reincarnate and make another body. Why? Because they did not get to the level where they woke up FROM dreaming, and FROM perceiving.

To wake up FROM the dream, you have to get in touch with the fact that you are the DREAMER of it, the one who is PROJECTING IT, and you are the one who is PUTTING ALL OF ITS OBJECTS OUT THERE. This puts you in touch with miracle working because now you are able to enact VERTICAL PERCEPTION, cause and effect are now vertical not linear, and you recognize the power of YOUR MIND to manifest absolutely anything in this dream, or change it, at will. Because you will realize, you have been DOING THAT all along. Your body was coming from YOUR MIND, and your mind only.

To wake up from the dream requires the undoing of dreaming, which overrides ALL perception, deals with separation at ITS CAUSE, and therefore DISAPPEARS THE DREAM UNIVERSE. That means, the disappearance of the physical universe, including precious "planet earth", which was never anything but a mental projection. All that is then left, is God's creation, which is Heaven.

"Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

In A Course in Miracles, we are taught in many ways that we are all one. By this we mean, that God created an entire family, a sonship, comprising many individual beings, who simultaneously are individual and one. Each Son of God is all the Sons of God, as the One Son. "One brother is all brothers."

This means we have a kind of collective consciousness or "hive mind". The Christ Mind is this shared mind, which each individual mind created by God is merged and identified with. This means that anything in one mind, is also in another. Any form of healing is experienced by everyone. And everything you give or do affects everyone.

It also means you are not really an isolated, separated off stranger, who stands alone and has private personal experiences. This is why there are no private thoughts. The body is the idea that you are disconnected from everyone. But relationship re-establishes that you share and are joined, with the whole sonship. In fact you ARE the whole sonship. Part of you is in EVERY child of God.

In truth then, it is not possible for you to do or think or feel anything without it in some way influencing or being shared by THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Every attitude you have affects everyone. Every thought is heard by all. We are all plugged into a giant psychological web, sort of like a holographic internet. And everyone has access all the time to everything.

When Jesus accomplished the resurrection and ascension, he DID IN fact accomplish it for and with ALL of us. We could not be excluded from it, and all of us are a part of it. The atonement IS about sharing and is a collective relationship between an individual and THE WHOLE.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability."

When Jesus resurrected and ascended, a "part of" all of us MUST have done this as well. The part of Jesus that is IN you, which IS you, accomplished this. Jesus had to basically plug into and accept the parts of him that are in all of us, shared with and one with us, knowing us AS himself, in order to accept atonement fully. Therefore his awakening did in fact wake all of us up, to some degree. He plugged us ALL back into God.

Each individual mind in the collective has its own will. So what does that mean when someone chooses to rise into the light? It means everyone else must be pulled upward at least a little, even if they themselves are pulling the whole sonship down. Some light MUST enter their minds, because the light in Jesus's mind is in ALL minds.

When Jesus accomplished this, we were ALL illuminated and enlightened to some degree, and some part of us knows this. And each time YOU heal or resurrect or think well of yourself and others, you ARE resurrecting the whole sonship. Part of you IS Jesus, and IS already awake in heaven. And as each person chooses the atonement, it is being chosen on behalf of everyone.

"You WERE in darkness until God's Will was done completely by ANY part of the Sonship. When it was, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give YOU, and YOUR problem in accepting it IS the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM the salvation of the world."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone. And you were with him then, as you are now."

"I ask for your forgiveness, for if YOU are guilty, so must I be. And if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were WITH me."

"A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you may not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not even aware."

"I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference TO what part or BY what part of the Sonship the healing is done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally. YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would share my healing with the world"

"I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct. That is what the Biblical statement "underneath are the Everlasting Arms" means. (Helen Schucman explanation: This means that He will backstop whenever human miracles will not suffice for atonement purposes. However, it is perfectly clear that when a person can atone by miracles, both giver and receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.)"Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME." The reason why YOU come before me is because I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case YOU fail temporarily."

"It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity which gives It life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God's Son."

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."

"No-one is healed alone. This is the joyous song salvation sings to all who hear its Voice."

"I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal."

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking."

Before the separation there were no problems. There was no sickness. No death. No war. No lack or suffering. No pain or fear. No guilt. No sin. Nothing. There was only joy and love and creation and peace and light and truth and celebration.

Recognize this then. ABSOLUTELY EVERY problem or difficulty in this world is symptomatic of what happens when you leave God. EVERYTHING.

Everything in this world is MADE OF "God’s absence". MADE OF IT. ***It IS the separation***. It is not something that was "tacked on" after separation, it is the separation ITSELF. The direct and unavoidable RESULT of trying to exist without love.

All sickness and all death are nothing more than an aspect of you being separate from God. These things did not happen for any other reason. There was NO CAUSE whatsoever other than the causality in Heaven, prior to the separation.

Problems, sickness, death, suffering, it is all a manifestation of "being without God". All needs that have arisen are there ONLY because we are LACKING GOD. Every form of sickness is the absence of God. All forms of death are the absence of Life, and God is life. Every war and every conflict is arising because of the absence of God.

To in any way suggest that your return to God/truth will entail the retention of ANY PROBLEM, any form of sickness, suffering, lack or death, or even this world itself, is absolute bullshit. ALL of this "stuff" IS THE SEPARATION. When there is no separation, there IS NONE OF THIS.

There is NO PROBLEM other than the separation from God. There IS nothing happening in this world that isn’t symptomatic of trying to be away from Him. EVERYTHING here is the RESULT, of pushing God away.

You do not have a problem paying bills. You do not have unfair sicknesses caused by improper diet. You do not have struggles with coworkers which is their fault. You do not have issues with people on facebook groups. The separation from God IS THE ONLY LACK YOU NEED CORRECT. You have a problem with GOD, not with this world. This world is the FORM of your problem with God. And there is **no problem** love cannot solve.

"Let me recognize my problems have been solved. If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you have no problems. Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other."

Every question that you have, every fear, every doubt, every problem, when you are EXPOSED to God, if you try to commune with God, none of those questions become answered. What happens instead, is all your questions DISAPPEAR. They simply vanish. Every question was a form of fear arising from the ABSENCE of God. When He shows up, the entire foundation for those questions no longer exists.

When you go to God, you are SOLVING every problem you have. When you join with God, His MERE PRESENCE is the SOLUTION to every issue in your life. Because every single issue in your life, no matter how it APPEARS, or how specific it seems to be, or how confined it seems to be, or how much it seems to be about specific people and not others, IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THAT.

Pushing God away introduces lack. Pushing God away introduces fear. Pushing God away makes you feel guilty and want to die. Pushing God away is the source of ALL ILLNESS. Pushing God away is the source of every war and every single death that has even taken place in this dream.

Every aspect of every nightmare is the result of the "darkness" that seems to come about when light is absent.

All financial problems are a lack of God. Every argument arises from a lack of God. All injuries are a lack of God. Every disease is a lack of God. All problems in your job are the lack of God. Everything you attack or judge is the result of the lack of God. There is not a single problem in this world that is anything other than a symptom of God being absent. Upon his "return" to your life, it simply all will disappear because it was all made of his absence. This is a metaphysical fact.

Loving with God = eternal life. Trying to exist without God = suffering and death.

You do not have any other problem other than not being with God. All you have done is you have pushed away the provision of every need you could possible have. You have rejected life. You’ve separated yourself from effortlessness and from being natural. You’ve tried to deny eternal life and immortality. You’ve attempted to suppress all power and creative potential. You ONLY have a shit life because you’ve shut God out.

There is no other problem to solve. And this problem ONLY HAS ONE SOLUTION. The ONLY solution to EVERY problem in the world, is love. God Himself. The restoration of your willingness and awareness of the presence of God in your life, in your mind, in your heart, in your being. LOVE SOLVES EVERYTHING. Not only does it solve everything, it is THE ONLY WAY to solve ANYTHING. There is NO OTHER ANSWER.

You cannot be happy without God. You cannot live without God. And in truth, you cannot be separate from God either. So all of these problems you have, cannot be real problems. They must be illusions of "being separate from God". A dream of "what might it be like without love". This dream fortunately is NOT THE SAME THING as "separation really happening". It’s just a great big IDEA. Wake up. God still loves you and that’s forever. And that’s all you need.

Forgiveness only seems to be needed, as a process, because you currently believe there are things that need to be forgiven.

In other words, you currently are experiencing unforgiveness, and therefore the world seems unforgiven and unforgiving. And therefore, you think that you need to forgive.

But this process of forgiveness, is supposed to take you from a state of unforgiveness - an unforgivingattitude, to a state of forgiveness - a forgiving attitude.

It's supposed to occur to you that the purpose of forgiving is to undo the perceived need to 'do forgiveness'. Because ultimately there is not anything that needs to be forgiven.

There is a forgiven world here. A world of innocence. A world with no guilt. But you don't perceive it because you have judged it as unforgiven and unforgivable, having judged yourself as such.

So it seems like you need to do some forgiveness. And as you do this forgiveness, what you're doing is re-accessing the awareness that whatever it was that you thought was unforgivable, is forgivable, and is in fact innocent. An ancient hatred has become a present love.

Whatever it was you thought was judged and hated, is innocent. Whatever it is you thought was really happening, is not happening and you don't even see it anymore.

So as you proceed with your forgiving, your practice, you should gradually come to realize, there is less and less to forgive, precisely because you're becoming aware of the real world. You're becoming aware that everything is forgivable and forgiven.

Forgiveness ultimately is not a process, but a state of awareness in which you see forgivingly, with a forgiving attitude, and this forgiving attitude does not show you things to forgive. It does not show you errors or mistakes. It only shows you innocence.

This attitude of being forgiving doesn't mean you are having to constantly forgive and forgive and do more work and counteract more crap that shows up. When you are in a forgiving attitude, you do not see crap. You do not see problems. You don't see enemies or things to forgive.

So its a bit of a paradox, that when you have a truly forgiving attitude, when you are in the Holy Spirit's mind, you see everything as forgiven already. You pro-actively fore-give, which means you give ahead of time, which means you extend love and you extend innocence and truth and therefore that is what you will perceive because that is your reality.

In your reality there isn't any 'thing' to forgive. All is forgiven.

So really, you think you need to do lots of forgiveness still. Yes, for a time. But only because you think forgiveness is needed. Only because you're not yet able to sustain a consistently forgiving attitude. Only because it hasn't yet dawned on you that everyone including you is completely innocent and calls only for love.

So as you work you way through this forgiveness 'process', this undoing, this purifying, you're really erasing the mistakes that you're making in your forgiveness, you're polishing up your attitude, you're getting ready to see with forgiving eyes. You're preparing to look upon the world with innocence in order to see only innocence.

This process is itself not forgiveness. This process is the way that you gradually wake up to forgiveness. It's a sorting out, of what is forgiveable and what is not forgivable. Eventually you will accept that everything is forgivable, and as such, will no longer seen anything as unforgiven.

A forgiving attitude shows you a forgiven world. A forgiving attitude doesn't give you lots of work to do trying to counteract illusions of judgement. A forgiving attitude is simply clarity. It's the clarity of truth, the clarity of awareness. A forgiving attitude shows your mind, clearly, that when you can see clearly and with truth, you are able to properly discern that THERE IS ONLY INNOCENCE.

All appearances of things not being innocent, only looks that way because you have blocks in your mind. All appearances that there is nasty dirty stuff and grievous enemies to overcome, is because of blocks in your mind. These things DO NOT REALLY EXIST.

You see them, you look upon them, precisely because your mind is distorted and is projecting images that aren't real. You see enemies because you are attacking your innocence. You see attack and threat and danger and victimhood because you don't realize that you can't be a victim. You see impossible things because you are not yet aware of how these things are impossible - you actually take them seriously and think they are possible.

So ultimately, this forgiveness process that we all undertake, it's really a transition away from "I need to forgive" towards "there is nothing to forgive". There is nothing to forgive because there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no attack, there is no harm. There is nothing to forgive because nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has happened. Holy Spirit sees this. You need to learn to see it too. And then you will be done with the 'effort' of forgiving, which ultimately is not a 'doing', but a 'being'.

It may seem that you have fallen from grace, have become corrupted, damaged and broken. It may seem you have become hurt or have hurt yourself, and now need healing. It may seem something is wrong with you, you have sinned and are guilty. It may seem you have reasons to be afraid.

In seeking healing, you might then look to try to change yourself, as though trying to turn yourself into a more spiritual person. You might strive to be more loving, or to grow and evolve.

But let's first remember an important fact. God created you perfect already. There is nothing you can do to add to or remove anything from your holy self. Your soul is divine and perfect and immortal and permanent. It never changes and needs no healing of any kind. That is who and what you are.

So with that fact in mind, it is no longer a matter of discovering how you "really were hurt" or "what sin you committed" that you're trying to undo. It can't be true that you WERE hurt or DID sin, if God created you permanently perfect.

So if you are permanently perfect, even entering into states of harm, suffering, unconsciousness, sickness or unhappiness, cannot actually CHANGE or UNDO your permanent perfection. These must be forms of denial, a disguise, a deception, something untrue. They can't even be real sicknesses or real sins or real unhappiness.

The question then is, if your self is perfect and permanently can never change or be changed, and has not stopped being innocent and holy and immortal, what is it that is keeping you from happiness, wholeness, health and holiness?

It can only be that you are blocking AWARENESS of a PRE-EXISTING condition of perception. It can only be that for some reason you are in denial about being immortal, are trying to be something else, are trying to make something untrue true or believe something is real that isn't.

Somehow behind your "problem", or your state of "needing healing", there is already a fully healed self. So what then is healing? It's really more to do with questioning the damage, or seeing through the illusion of not being perfect already, than trying to transform a "real problem".

And ultimately that means, as per atonement, which is forgiveness, and the ONLY means of salvation, ACCEPTANCE OF THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU is actually the key to awakening. We are to WAKE UP TO the fact that we are ALREADY OK.

This also ties into the secret of salvation, that if you would just stop TRYING to make true something that isn't, TRYING to prove you can be hurt, TRYING to die, you would simply bounce back to your perfect immortal self and be aware of living forever as an invulnerable eternal being.

We are to become AWARE OF our healed holy nature. We are to RE-ACCESS our immortality. It has been blocked, covered up, hidden, and seemingly lost track of, behind walls of denial and deception. And even things which seem like real problems or real damage, cannot be that. They must have a different purpose, to HIDE the truth that you are NOT damaged, NOT broken, and NOT sick.

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

Forgiveness, if thought of as a practically applied atonement principle, is the act of moving towards AWARENESS OF your pre-existing, already-established, unassailed inner perfection. IT is already THERE, waiting for you to acknowledge it and live from it. It doesn't need you to invent it or define it, only to accept it and allow it and be grateful that God created you flawlessly.

What is this movement "toward" the atonement? It is a waking up. It is a removal of blocks. It is an uncovering of truth. It is a willingness to accept God's reality rather than your own made-up illusions. It's a RECOGNITION of what is actually TRUE about you, versus the confusion of what SEEMS to be true but isn't.

It's a vertical movement, upwards towards the light in which you can SEE, away from the darkness in which you are confused about what is true. It's the way out of hell, into heaven. It's your rising, or resurrection, away from the state of death (unconsciousness) towards life (awareness of eternity).

Either you forgive and move upwards in awareness and freedom from darkness, or you move downwards into unforgiveness and grievance and suffering. Forgiveness is therefore the ONLY WAY out of hell, but IS a guaranteed way out of hell, and the only way that WORKS.

To forgive is to let go of what is not true and accept what is. To forgive is to relinquish false beliefs and embrace reality.

To forgive is to return to the love of God and let go of fear.

To forgive is to let go of who you thought you were, and resume being your real self.

The goal of the course is to "Know thyself." To simply BE still the same perfection that God created you to be. You are this ALREADY, you just don't want to accept it or own up to it yet. You have not yet "come out as Christ", preferring to play with littleness. You are God's perfect creation and always will be. Your real self is waiting for you.

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so?"

The truth is that there is nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with you, there is nothing wrong with anyone. All of creation which God created in and as heaven is still absolutely perfect, untouched, unchanged. The so-called separation from God has absolutely no effect on it.;

"So VERY long ago, for such a tiny interval of time that not one note in Heaven's song was missed."

The REALITY is, the TRUTH is, that we are all in fact, in our Christly spirit self, absolutely the same as we have always been. Nothing has happened to us, nothing has changed us, and we have not changed ourselves into something else. This has always been true, it is true now, and it will always be true.

So what's with all this suffering? What's with this world of bodies, of events and disasters, or wars and fighting, of pain and sickness? It must not be true. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing real has ever been threatened. This unreal world is not a threat to God's kingdom.

"Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

The truth is that this world is entirely an illusion. Everything that seems to happen here is false, untrue, a lie. Nothing the world believes is true. No events mean anything. The changes that seem to happen are empty and powerless. Nothing in the world does anything to you.

"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world does nothing to him."

"Nothing in the world can bring oppression"

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

Everything that this world depicts is not true, and is having no effect. The world has no power over what is real or what you are. Little specks of dust gather on the ground, pushed there by the wind and forces beyond their control, and they lie there motionless and easily displaced because they have no power to cause anything. A world of dust has no power because it is not of God.

The happy news is that, in fact, you have a self right now which is actually perfect and whole, it's totally devoid of sickness and pain, it has no disturbance or irritation or inflammation, it is utterly beyond all attack and damage, it has never been hurt and cannot be destroyed in any way. It can't even change slightly.

This is actually a fact. A hard fact. This self exists right now, perfect as ever. The ONLY thing that seems to be coming between 'you' and your awareness of this existing fact, this present truth, is that you are hiding from it. You are in denial. You are pretending it's not true and are covering your eyes.

"Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

Why is enlightenment a recognition? Because the truth already exists and is always perfect. All you have to do is be AWARE of it and ACCEPT it. You aren' putting it in place, you aren't fixing it, you aren't doing anything to it at all. You just need to look at it and realize it's there. Your real perfect unharmed immaculate self is sitting there right now waiting for "you" to identify with it.

"Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and His Wholeness as YOURS. For Christ is the Son of God, who lives in his Creator, and shines with His glory."

"At God's altar, Christ waits for the restoration of Himself in YOU."

So in truth, the truth that you are already Christ is very reassuring. It means you are safe in God, it means nothing in the world can hurt you, it means you can never die, it means you're not sick, it means you must always be happy, it means you are already at peace, it means nothing that happens in the world has any effect on you, and it means there's nothing to be afraid of.

"It is sin's unreality which makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received."

"And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief."

By accepting the REALITY of what you are, what you ACTUALLY are right now, hidden behind your layers of denial and blindness and unwillingness to admit to it, is a truth so safe and sure and certain that it is a deep RELIEF to accept it and recognize it. It's completely reassuring to realize that YOU ARE SAFE IN GOD. And you always have been, far from all suffering and all danger.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."

This is why forgiveness leads to happiness and a sense of peace. It is based on your immortality. It reminds you that nothing can happen to you, that you are protected by God, that your sinlessness is guaranteed, that you have never become guilty, and that you cannot change. It reminds you of your stability, your certainty, your centeredness. It restores to your awareness your true identity and lets you be true to yourself. And ultimately it leads to knowing thyself as God created you - which brings the happy revelation that THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more."

"YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit." Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

The realisation that you need do nothing, is really the realisation of ENLIGHTENMENT. It's something that suddenly becomes very clear to you, as you reach the final goal.

The truth is that in the separation from God, there was NOT a loss of perfection, and NOTHING real changed at all. The only thing that happened was we entered a state of denial, in which we blocked AWARENESS OF that perfection, and believed in the presence of imperfection.

"The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in COMMUNICATION."

That means that there really is still a perfect state, a perfect heaven, you are still exactly as God created you, nothing has really changed at all. But to our egoic insane minds, we believe that's not true, and we think we've become evil monsters.

So as you forgive and return to the state of enlightenment, in which you RECOGNIZE everything as is it is, you'll be suddenly realising that ... hey... oh shit. .. there's actually nothing wrong with me ..... nothing's actually gone wrong ..... I'm still perfect.

You'll look upon yourself and everyone and everything and it'll suddenly seem totally obvious that there is nothing wrong whatsoever, and all of the sense that anything was ever wrong was nothing but a dream. Some delusion that you had, some mistaken perception, some false belief, some fantasy or wishful thinking where you thought and hoped you could pull off the impossible.

Because the truth is that "underneath" what seems to be your corrupted state, your confusion and insanity, your ego and your false beliefs, there remains still a PERFECT state of heaven, your actual real self which is still 100% intact and perfect, and all of creation which has not been even remotely affected or changed.

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

So as you get to that final state and you wake up, it's not actually going to be a CHANGE at all. You're not going to suddenly change into something. Rather, you'll simply just suddenly recognize the TRUTH about you and everything, that everything real is absolutely UNCHANGED. There never was really anything wrong, there has never really been a disaster or tragedy, there's never really been a death or a sickness or a suffering. It was all a lie. Some nightmare that you had when you were nuts for a while.

So that then means that in your recognition that NOTHING IS WRONG AT ALL, it's the recognition that you do not "need to do anything", to fix anything, to make anything better, because everything IS ALREADY PERFECT. That's the true meaning of "I need do nothing". It's not really anything to do with doings or happenings or whether you're busy or being of service or not, it's to do with the recognition of the fact that everything real is completely perfect and unchanged. That there is no real need.

It still remains that there does appear to be a NEED for those who are NOT YET AWARE of their perfection, and who therefore believe in and dream of being mortal and corrupt and powerless and victims. THEY have an illusion of a need, and while they have that illusion they do need help. But what they need is help to realize that they do not have any needs, because there not broken. And to that end, you can DO THINGS to help them with that temporary sense of need, to move them towards the state where they realize also that "I need do nothing - because I'm already perfect."

This relates also to forgiveness because true forgiveness it the recognition that THERE IS NO SIN, and therefore nothing TO forgive. The recognition of no sin is the ability to see that there is no lack, nothing is broken, nothing has gone wrong, and so there is no need for any correction. No-one has done anything wrong in reality. Perfection is still perfect. There is only permanent innocence - a sinlessness guaranteed by God.

Long story short, there basically is nothing really wrong with anyone anywhere whatsoever. There is no separation, and no sin, but there is a BELIEF IN THEM, and that belief needs to be corrected in order to recognize that nothing ever really went wrong with God's creation. Or as God told me one time, "There's nothing wrong, it's all an illusion."

So we're not really, really actually sort of healing something that has "happened", we're trying to heal from the belief that something needs healing. We're not really trying to change the mind as such, we're trying to get the mind to change its belief that it HAS BEEN changed, and to therefore recognize that change is NOT POSSIBLE.

"This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as GOD created it. But YOU think that you HAVE changed it, as long as you learn through the ego. This DOES place you in a position of needing to learn a lesson which SEEMS contradictory: you must learn to change your mind ABOUT your mind. Only by this can you learn that it IS changeless."

Or to put it another way - hey, GOOD NEWS ... You and God and everyone are still absolutely perfect and unchanged RIGHT NOW and there's nothing that you need to do whatsoever to establish or correct its condition. God has already done the work of willing that it be perfect forever, and so it is. All you need to is ACCEPT IT, RECOGNIZE IT, KNOW IT, EXPERIENCE AWARENESS OF IT.

You're perfect right now, and you don't even know how perfect you are! lol

Here is Jesus mentioning this realisation that happens as you awaken, at the end goal...

"When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just ONE happy realization, -- "I need do nothing." Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time."

And further that as you reach THE END OF TIME and escape from time, you will realize that you need do nothing further for your salvation...

"And, if you recognize you NEED do nothing, you HAVE withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and ESCAPE from time. This is the way in which sin loses ALL attraction RIGHT NOW. For here is time denied, and past and future gone. Who need do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The simple change that must occur in order to wake up to reality, is a change in premise. If the premise is that this world (earth etc) is real, then everything that happens in the world is real, and is God's will. Because God is the author of reality.

So now everything you see in the world is real and cannot be undone, and cannot be forgiven, and sin is real and death is real and there is no escape from hell. Or more to the point, murder is no longer a sin but is God's blessing.

But if the premise changes from "this world is real" to "this world is a dream", ie is not real, then this changes the entire perspective on the world and what seems to happen in it. EVERYTHING in the world now must take on a new meaning in light of this information, because if the world is NOT real, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to it.

All events ultimately are therefore nowhere, the changes wrought are substanceless, nothing is really causing anything, there is no meaning in the world of itself, it is all just a dream, the whole planet is an illusion, nothing is really being hurt or attacked, all sickness is a lie, death is impossible, and there isn't even really a world here.

That is the simple change in vantage point which ACIM and any spiritual path entails. Ultimately it leads to the simple recognition that only God's reality is real, and this world is NOT God's reality. This world is a dream in which imaginary figures seem to come and go and try to destroy each other. Where lovely illusions come to soften the blow of death, and where everything turns into something it is not.

Either the world is real, or it isn't. If it is real, it cannot be changed or undone, or forgiven or overlooked. You are then required to love death and murder, to look on war as justified and attack as healing. All of hell seems to be heaven to you, as you use it to avoid God and to hide from sanity. If the world is real, God himself ordains its every property, all happenings are his doing, and there is nowhere else to go.

But fortunately the world is not God's doing, nor does it represent him, nor is it anything like him. Fortunately when your mind fully reframes the world as "this is just a dream", it changes the ENTIRE context of the WHOLE universe in which you think you live.

If it is just a dream, nothing here really matters, nothing is really any more difficult or easy than anything else, nothing really means anything more or less than anything else, all senses of separation and difference are illusions, the very form of objects is a fantasy disguise pretending that it is not the same as something else, and everything your body sees is not really there.

It ultimately and simply leads to the fact that there is no world. A world which is just a dream isn't really a world. It's an illusion of a world, held in a mind that is seeming to be asleep a while. When that mind awakens, it does not awaken to the world it was already dreaming of, it stops dreaming it entirely and awakens to God's reality of heaven.

There is really no world here because the world is not real. Anything you take seriously in the world is deception. Any time you buy into it you are falling for temptation. Any time you think someone is a body and refer to their body as their self, you do not see them. Bodies are illusions of life which are not even really alive, or really anything. Everything in a dream world is literally NOTHING pretending to be something.

All things in this world are impossible. It was made to be impossible. There is no permanent solution to anything. There is no escape from problems. There is an endless barrage of attack and strife. Death is waiting inevitably for every single thing that thinks it lives. And everything in the entire cosmos eventually destroys itself. There is no salvation here, no freedom, no real safety, and nothing to gain. It is a tired old world that was ready to rot as soon as you dreamed of living like a mortal.

In truth you are an immortal being in heaven who is simply asleep at the wheel, dreaming of being not mortal. Of being not yourself, being opposite to your God-given nature, pretending to be things you are not, believing false truths, and trying to GIVE reality to a world that isn't real. To a premise that isn't real. A premise that God is dead and you can make of yourself what you will. None of that is possible or true beacuse God means permanence.

There is no world, there is no sickness, there is no suffering, there is no pain, there is no death, there is no cancer, there is no heart disease, there is no war, there is no torture, there is no abuse, there is no attack, there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no difference, there are no races, there is no earth, there is no solar system, there are no galaxies, there is no sun, there is nothing here whatsoever.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.

This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.

So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.

Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.

The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.

However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.

Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.

And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.

Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.

As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.

The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.

This need not be.

The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.

The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.

You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

There is a mistake that many of us make when it comes to ACIM, where we seem to think we should change our minds about the world in order to find peace.

It seems like the Course is saying we shouldn't change the world, or the body, or our lives, and therefore we should only change our mind.

And this leads people to believe that the world, and the body, are going to continue being filled with war and conflict and disease, but that somehow we are going to find some kind of 'peace' or safe-haven within ourselves which allows us to not be upset about it.

But this really is an ego perspective. The ego has made the world be filled with war and disaster and disease. The ego has created the perspective that causes and power are outside of you beyond yourself. The ego has made it seem like it is natural for us to go around having the world do stuff to us, and that we just need to find a way to let it do stuff to us without it upsetting us. We are so used to the world being broken that we don't know what it could be like.

What we don't realize is that the only reason the world or our body seem to contain war and disease is precisely because we are at war with ourselves, and are attacking ourselves, and are using the projected dream of suffering against ourselves. And we are the ones who are putting it out there. We, with our powerful minds, are projecting a world of suffering.

So I think it's a gross mistake to say, well, if I just recoil from this harsh world and go into hiding and be a nice well-behaved Course student and keep to myself and be forgiving, then I will be able to *survive* better, which is really part of the ego's survival strategy.

We don't realize that all the stuff out there in the world, and all of the things wrong in the body, are ALL COMING FROM US.

So if we truly change, if we truly take back our power, if we truly access and accept the mind's CAUSAL POWER over everything, recognizing that we are the dreamer of this fricking dream, this allows us to STOP making a world of disease, to STOP creating sickness, to STOP war, and to stop making the world real.

We have made the world seem real through mistaken perceptions, and then we are reacting to those mistaken perceptions with an effort of being forgiving or trying to find peace, all the while keeping those perceptions of the world being real intact. So then we think, well, it seems like the Course is telling us to just focus on changing our mind and this won't have anything to do with the world.

Is sure as fuck will have something to do with the world because the world is coming from YOU. You are expressing the world. You are contributing to the world. As Jesus says in the urtext (edited out), your mind is powerful enough to create planets. Planets! And who do you think made this one? ;-)

So no. It's not our job to figure out how we can stay INSIDE an illusion of the world existing objectively on its own, in such a way that it has power and causality over us, while simultaneously trying to be at peace. It is not our job to learn to live with sickness. It is not our job to try to be okay with suffering and war and conflict.

How can anyone accept death, as though it is real and allowed and normal and natural? Death is a state of non-acceptance. It is the physical expression of not accepting the truth. You can't be IN it at the same time as accepting the truth. You can't be IN it at the same time as being all nice and peaceful and detached. Try it!

If you want true peace, you need to realize that you are POWERFUL, that you are not at the effect of a DREAM WORLD that is not only not even real, but is itself ONLY an effect and not a cause. There is NO CAUSE in this world at all, and you are the ONLY cause, so how exactly does that add up to tolerating sickness, allowing the body to continue to suffer?

If you are masterful you don't care what's going on in the dream, or in the body, or whether there's sickness, as such, because you know it's not real. And it's not affecting you. But as Jesus says, until every single brother has been woken up, your awakening is INCOMPLETE. We need to ALL wake up and all be causal and all come to agree that the world does not exist, and then it will literally disappear, because it does not have the power to stop us.

There is nothing you cannot do. There is nothing your power, shared with God, cannot accomplish. This is the only way that you can have freedom. Freedom means there are no limitations. This is the freedom that God has given you forever. Freedom from all limitations. Freedom from death. Freedom from sickness. Freedom even from a DREAM of death. Freedom from a world of death. Freedom in all ways at all levels.

Masterfully you could allow sickness to seem to remain in the body, but only in the knowing that you put it there, on purpose, and that it is only there because you say so, and you do not suffer from it because you have mastery over it, and you know it is not real. But that doesn't mean you will therefore just 'put up with' sickness remaining in the body, or that you can't do anything about it.

Many people who have woken up have experienced instantaneous healing of all sicknesses that their body exhibited before, things for which there was no known cure. Why do you need sickness? Why do you need to keep it around when you're done with buying into the ego completely? It cannot stay when it has no purpose. As Jesus says, sickness will disappear when the purpose for which you needed it no longer exists. What purpose can it serve other than to defend against the truth? And if you're not defending against the truth, how are you going to create or sustain sickness?

You are immortal.

Ego projections boil down to a very, very simple dynamic.

1) I decide what I want to see in someone.

2) I interact with what I now see in them as if I did not put it there.

The way I interact with what I see in others, is quite bizarre. It's really insane. I'm trying to accomplish two opposite goals at once.

1) I want other people to be what I say they are, by projecting my sin and guilt onto them, "convinced" that they really are that way.

2) I then demand that they stop being what I am seeing them being, and that they be the opposite, and that they are the one who has to choose differently. This is "forgiveness to destroy".

So right off the bat, this is a state of conflict. It's me who is seeing other people are doing "something wrong", and then it is me who is insisting that they change their behavior. So now I'm holding it against them when they don't change "for me". And they won't.

I'm literally demanding two separate outcomes simultaneously. I want people to be what I decide they are, and then I want them to not be what I've decided they are, simply because I'm in denial of being the one who has laid down the ground rules to begin with.

So I'm going around basically projecting shit onto people, deciding ok, you are doing this and that wrong and should be doing this and that instead. And then the rest of my "play" is to react to that accusation. It tends to go one of two ways.

1) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing so they are the ones who need to change, not me, and if they don't, I will victimize them. I will hold it against them.

2) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but in a hero savior role I will now swoop in and save them from "themselves", those sorry bastards, since they refuse to change themselves and seem 'helpless' and needy.

Each time I react to something being incorrect or unacceptable in another, who exactly is it who has made that person out to be wrong in this way? Are they inherently wrong in this way or have I actually decided to see them this way, and therefore it's my judgement of them? And now that I am responsible for what I'm seeing, having put it there to see, it's now my responsibility to admit that I'm interacting with my own projection.

As Jesus says in the course, generally speaking we will project our own sin outward and try to disown it (disassociate) and then we will attack what we've projected, accusing it of being sinful and bad, in order to create a sense of separation between it and ourselves, so that we can keep it away from our identity.

We will attack our own sin, thinking that we're attacking it in another person, believing that to do so causes them to receive the punishment and not us. Except it doesn't work because the sin never leaves our own mind (ideas leave not their source), it just seems external because we are in denial of it.

So it really all boils down to this. Whatever interaction I seem to be having with "the world", if I don't like it, it's because I'm the one who is deciding on what I am seeing "in" it, and am reacting to it as though it's really out there. And regardless of whether I am liking to do that or am feeling frustrated or upset or whatever about "what they are doing", I am the one who is making them out to be doing that to me. Because I want to. Because it gives me an opportunity to disown some sin.

ie, I love to suffer. I choose suffering on purpose and position myself as a victim on purpose, so that I can seem to be at the effect of the world, so that I can then explain that the world has caused me and therefore the world is the sinner, not me. I might suffer and be sick or afraid or upset as "effects" of what they supposedly did to me (even though I invented those effects in myself, by myself), but I secretly am getting away with murder by "using" the person as an outlet for projecting my own sin. Now they are the sinner and not me, and I'm suffering... poor me, but at least I am not the sinner any more.

So the ego's mantra is, I wish to suffer in order not to suffer. Or rather, I will see the world as attacking me and attack myself with it so that it seems that I'm not attacking myself with it.

We are to demonstrate that we cannot be hurt, or made sick, or caused to die, as a result of this world. And whenever these things seem to be happening, you can be assured that you've positioned yourself as a deliberate victim, in order to pretend that the world is responsible for what you are experiencing. You may be suffering, you may be sick, you may even end up dead, and it will conveniently seem as if the world made this happen against your will, but nothing could be further from the truth.

No-one dies without their own consent. And anyone who dies has secretly arranged to make it appears as if they did not choose it at all. Death is an attempt not to choose, by pretending that you have no choice, by pretending that others have taken all your power away from you, making you an "unwilling" victim, in a state of unwillingness, such that it appears death happens to you against your will. How convenient. It's a total lie.

Death is unwillingness to admit that you are pretending to die and are blaming everything on anyone other than yourself. This is why death is failure, and death is failing to wake up from the dream. Death is impossible for anyone but self-imposed victims. Death is not life. It is not success or graduation. It is the total opposite of life. It cannot happen without being severely against yourself and against the will of God. Therefore it cannot happen "peacefully" nor can it happen AT ALL unless you attack yourself.

Something which I've been finding very helpful lately, is to focus on "already" being as God created me.

It's a recognition, that what God created has already been established, has not changed, and therefore all I need to do is acknowledge and accept it.

This is quite different from trying to "become" it or to "seek" for it outside of myself, or away from what I already am.

There is a bit of a knack to this because our ego thinking is so used to moving away from Self, away from God, away from what already is.

Even all of our spiritual "searching" or trying to find oneself, is for the most part based on believing that we are not spiritual "yet", and so becoming spiritual is in the future, and so there are steps we need to take to get there.

Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all. It is a recognition of what is, of what is true, of what already exists.

It completely aligns with the atonement, which asserts that nothing has even happened. We didn't even START to really separate form God, we haven't gone anywhere, we haven't even begun to sin, our innocence is still totally intact, and we are STILL completely perfect as God created us.

For me getting in touch with this has been greatly amplified by acceptance that God created many Sons, that I am a Son of God, and that I have a soul. I've started to be more and more curious about my soul and thus my "true self", in its pristine state - absolutely perfect, lacking nothing, joyful, loving, powerful, peaceful, etc.

Sometimes when I am in the midst of ego confusion and I think shit, I've got to do all kinds of stuff to get out of this, if I then remember... wait a minute, I am already as God created me, I am still as God created me, inside of me there is already a perfect self which has nothing wrong with it. It cuts through the entire ego bullshit like a knife. Simply because, if the end goal is ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED, then all this bullshit about "something is wrong" is shown to be completely pointless, meaningless, futile and ridiculous.

It's like, holy shit, I AM ALREADY PERFECT. I am already the way God created me. My soul is already in heaven. My real self is already completely awakened.

And that can be a bit of a mind fuck as well because here I am believing that awakening is a long process, it takes time, I have stuff to undo, there is forgiveness to be done, healing that isn't finished, etc... and yet, IT IS ALREADY COMPLETE because it never even really started.

It almost seems like, we've come to believe that being perfectly awakened is 'hard' or rare or difficult, when in fact, the totally hilarious thing is... we ALREADY ARE.

Underneath all the bullshit that says "you are not awake", you are aware. Underneath all the bullshit that says "you are not perfect", you are already totally perfect.

You have this 'higher self', this soul or spirit, which is already immortal, it's already innocent, it's already in perfect health, it's already accepted eternal life, it's already in heaven with God, it's already holy, it's already free of all sin and guilt and fear and death, and it needs to "do nothing" because it is already absolutely divine. Like... it's already a done deal!

So it's never a question of, well, I might not wake up or there's lots to do or I haven't finished yet, bla bla bla... it's it hilarious that the END GOAL is already DONE? Because all of this stuff that seemed to happen to undo our divine state, has not actually happened at all!

So our awakened self is ALREADY HERE. Your higher self is ALREADY "with you". Your immortal spirit is ALREADY perfectly in a state of grace forever. You CANNOT die and have never died. And all this other "stuff" is an illusion.

So here you find yourself seemingly "in time", with a whole bucketload of stuff that you think you need to "do" in order to "become spiritual" when in fact, inside of you, you are already ABSOLUTELY IMMACULATE and totally as God intended and have not changed at all. And that perfect self is just seemingly hidden from view behind all these layers of ego nonsense. All the ego nonsenses does is claim that you are not what you already are.

You can already talk to your ascended-master self. You can already tap into your perfect soul. You already are FINISHED. You are already with God. You are already in heaven. Isn't that hilarious? The only "job" that we seem to have is UNDOING the false beliefs that this isn't true, that we have work to do, that there is stuff to forgive and heal, that something went wrong, that we're off the rails and can't get home, that we don't deserve to be what we actually already are, lol. ... just all these cover-ups for the underlying ALREADY ESTABLISHED TRUTH.

I am as God created me, NOW, ALREADY, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. The "end goal" is IN THE PAST. It has ALWAYS BEEN. So all this other stuff, it's all a lie. You are already guaranteed to be with God because YOU ARE. Literally. Right now. Behind all the nonsense and FAKE unconsciousness, you are already done, already finished "waking up".

YOU NEVER REALLY SLEPT!

Did you know God is very, very, very powerful?

Did you know that you inherited that power and are also very powerful? God is the source of all power, and is all-powerful, but he also shares his power with you, so that you too have power.

"The power to work miracles belongs to you."

Without God, you would have no power at all. But with God, you have all power.

"To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power."

"The power of God and not of you engenders miracles."

This in no way means that you have no power to work miracles. It means you have ALL of GOD's power to work miracles.

This also means that miracles, of the supernatural kind, actually do involve a use of a POWER.

There are far too many people doing ACIM who either do not realize or refuse to be open to the idea that miracles require a utilisation of POWER.

This isn't just some weak force or some willingness or a bit of help from above. It's actually a real power, a very very strong power. The power of God.

God is also love, which is why love is also power, and since love and forgiveness are related, being forgiving is also powerful.

We live in a very, very disempowered state right now, which is why it seems that we not only do not have any power but cannot access it and don't even know it's there to use. We think that we're going to remain just as un-powerful when we wake up or get closer to reality. It's not true. To be a miracle worker you must be able to use the power of God, and it really is VERY POWERFUL.

"You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you."

If you have never experienced this power in this life, you may not have a clue what I'm talking about. I've experienced it a few times. It's a power so strong, so certain, so absolute, that it feels like it could accomplish literally anything. It could move mountains, it could change bodies in an instant, it could raise the dead with effortlessness and ease. It has such strength and, if you like "force" in it, that it's like some kind of 1000-foot tall giant compared to a little ant.

"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."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power."

Jesus isn't kidding here. There is a power, a real capability, an immense supernatural strength, far far far beyond anything you've ever encountered in this world, that is literally unlimited and absolute. It is not relative power, or partial power, or a high wattage of power, or even an extreme power. It is total unlimited absolute unmoveable permanent power that is so strong it can create entire universes.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

You USED your power to make space and time and all the galaxies and planets and all bodies and all events here. Not through some "laws of physics" bullshit or some "evolution" bullshit. POWER OF GOD. Immense psychological ability.

"He, too, MUST begin to think of himself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel"

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force."

Just FYI, we're not weak little frail little nuggets wiggling around on a little planet. We're super immensely powerful beings. The power of God is in us. How do you think Moses parted an ocean, and how did Jesus raise the dead and calm storms and materialise food and so on? It was through utilisation of a power that's so strong and capable that there is NOTHING it cannot do.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

This is not a course in sitting on fences and observing and doing nothing and having no power to do anything. It is a course in EMPOWERMENT and you getting your power back so that you can act and carry out God's will!

"My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save." ... "In the presence of my holiness, which I share with God Himself, all idols vanish."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator."

"Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you"

"The power of God IS limitless."

"It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"Alone they are nothing. But in their joining is the Power of God." "Then let the power of God work in you and through you, that His Will and yours may be done."

"God's Teacher, and His lesson will support your strength. It is only your weakness that will depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of the power of God in you."

"I am not weak but strong." "I am not afraid but all powerful."

"There is now no limit on his power, because it is the Power of God."

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say who can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive? "

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

"The power of God, and all His Love, without limit, will support you, as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love."

"The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of the magnitude of His dear Son."

"And He will do so, for the power of God in Him AND YOU is joined in REAL relationship, so holy and so strong, that it can overcome even this, WITHOUT fear."

"All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception of man's ability to USURP the power of God."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the will to SHARE it, because the decision itself IS the decision to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation."

"If you knew Who walks beside you on THIS way, which YOU have chosen, fear would be impossible."

Who am I?

What you are, is immortal spirit. You are capable of experiencing, because you have awareness, and you perceive reality. You share the Will of God.

The ego is an illusion. It is not capable of experiencing, it has no awareness of its own, it does not perceive and has no will of its own.

The ego is nothing more than a device, a tool, a machine, which if you choose, you can pick up and USE.

Since the ego is the opposite of who you are, it is impossible for you to use it while you are being yourself. To use it, you must block awareness of your true self.

Once you decide to associate yourself with the ego, it's like picking up a pair of dark-tinted sunglasses. As you put them on and perceive through them, they show you a dark world.

Yet, there you are, as innocent, shining, immortal spirit, wearing a pair of shades. With the glasses on, you can no longer see your illuminating brilliance because the dark glasses seem to filter your perception.

While wearing the ego, you will contribute your experiential awareness, your will and your power, and "bring it to life". You will extend yourself through it.

However, because it is a mechanism for distortion, you will experience a shift in perception from truth to lies, a darkening of your awareness, a loss of your real identity, and a shutting out of God.

In this state it will seem as though the ego is now who you are. Seeing through it, whatever it is designed to see, will become your perception. If it believes in being sinful, you will see yourself as sinful. If it believes in a guilty self that must die, you will believe that about yourself.

Your sense of Self - identity - is brought with you as you wear the ego, and your USE of it appears to modify your sense of self. Your take on an identity unlike your real identity and believe it is you.

Your belief in what the ego shows you causes you to forget who you are, you no longer recognize yourself or the truth, and you now perceive the truth of your very own real self as your enemy.

When the truth comes along to remind you of the fact that you can just drop the ego glasses and return to full awareness, you will resist it. You have chosen to take on the ego's perceptive mechanism, and believe that what it perceives is true reality.

You will see darkness in the truth which is not there, because the ego glasses show you a dark version of the world. And you will reject it and want to get away from it, because it will look frightening.

You will see it as saying that the ego self does not really exist, and you - aligned with the ego - will interpret this to mean that YOU do not exist. And you will defend against that by producing sickness.

Being in the ego you will defend the ego because you think that the ego is your self. You will side with it, protect it, reinforce it, and not want to let it go. You think that doing so is letting your self go. You are not really interested in protecting the ego, only in protecting your SELF, but you think that you and it are the same.

If you are believing you are the ego self, you will believe you're a sinful guilty self. That this is true of you. It's not, but while you are identified with the ego you'll agree with it.

ALL you need to do is to learn what is the difference between your REAL identity and the identity you have when you're wearing the ego filter. This is the difference between God's truth and the ego's truth.

The ego isn't anything. If you were to realize you are not it, and accept what you really are, taking off those sunglasses, you would easily and instantly see yourself correctly and know it to be true. The ego would have no defense against this.

It has no will of its own, no power of its own, no purpose of its own and no life of its own. It is borrowing yours for as long as you choose to keep using it. As soon as you drop it, it is a lifeless machine that is not even functioning. It definitely is not experiencing anything, because the ability to experience is coming from your immortal spirit.

This is why you need to learn to withdraw belief that everything about the ego is TRUTH, or REAL, because while you believe that, you will see your sense of Self as being tied to it. You'll believe that its perception is your perception. You'll see how it sees, and your identity will be its identity. And that will produce tremendous resistance to awakening. Not because YOU are resistant, but because your USE of it makes you confused.

Also when you've tied yourself to the ego thought system, if you start to try to become spiritual WITHOUT letting go of the ego, and WITHOUT undoing the belief that what IT sees is reality, you will produce a "spiritual ego". You will spiritualize the illusions the ego sees, will give them special value, and will polarize your experience.

You'll then believe that you're becoming more yourself or more spiritual, but if you're not letting go of USING and identifying with the ego, all you're doing is changing the ego from one state to another, it is NOT really becoming spiritual, and you are just spinning your wheels.

The ego cannot EVER become spiritual because it doesn't even have a life of its own. It does not exist as anything other than an illusory device for changing perception. That's all it does, like a pair of sunglasses. It is lifeless. No will, no life, no power, nothing.

YOU are the one who gives those properties TO it and tries to MAKE IT be your reality. Your MAKING of the ego is what seems to animate it and transform yourself into it. It has no power over what you are and is completely meaningless without you.

So you need to get past the spiritualization of the dream and the ego, which will show up ANYWHERE in your experience where you're both holding onto some ego and trying to be spiritual at the same time.

The ONLY true way to become spiritual is through the letting go, surrendering, relinquishing, and stoping using of the ego entirely. That is true awakening FROM it, not with it. It cannot awaken because it is not anything. A pair of sunglasses cannot wake up. But the person wearing the sunglasses can take them off and see the light of truth.

So really it all boils down to this. Just discerning who you are. Are you the real truth as God created it, OR, do you really believe that you ARE this ego identity which has no real life and is an idea of death? You cannot change your ego self into your spiritual self, but you can surrender your USE of the ego.

Using the ego is merely an act of not being true, not being honest, not being real, and not being who you are. It is dishonesty. It is denial. It is unconsciousness.

Nothing about the ego can STOP you from waking up. The sunglasses aren't glued to your head. YOU are entirely in the driver's seat, you are the one who is putting the filter over your vision, and you are the one who is trying to PUT power and will and life and reality INTO the ego. You are the one who is trying to MAKE IT your Self.

So you're doing it to yourself. And once you take the ego off your identity and stop BELIEVING that you are IT, by stopping believing that you are everything that is ITS truth (sinful, guilty, fearful, separate etc), that's all that's needed to return to the awareness of your true identity as God's Son.

What has happened to you while you wore sunglasses? Nothing. You just looked cool for a while. You take them off, you're still you. Nothing happened.

Our opinions don't mean anything at all. They are absolutely worthless. It doesn't matter what your truth is or what my truth is or what anyone's truth is. It's all bullshit. An opinion is the delusional voice of the ego.

In attempting to express what we think is right or true, we actually are covering up the truth. We are replacing the truth with a viewpoint of what we want the truth to be. These expressions of "my truth", which come across as "this is what the truth is", are actually censorship of real truth.

Then there are those who say that everyone's truth is different or unique and to have your own truth. That's insanity. And then there are those who say no-one knows or can know the truth - not quite true - you CAN know the truth, it's just that hardly anyone is willing and we've become expert at obscuring it.

More and more I see that the truth - as God - simply 'is'. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change or define what it is. It can either be accepted, or denied, but nothing else.

We don't get to decide what God is. We don't get to decide what reality is. We don't get to decide what is true or false. We don't get to decide who we are. We don't get to decide where we came from or what our characteristics are. We don't get to decide God's will for Him. And we don't get to change God in any way. We also don't really get to be separate from God or have our own separate existence or "my life" that I've taken possession and control over.

"There is no life outside of Heaven" - ACIM

"I am as God Created me." - ACIM

"Only the truth is true." - ACIM

Fortunately for us, the gift that God has given us is so perfect and amazing that we couldn't really want for anything else, and nothing else is better for us. It is an absolute blessing and an act of grace. We should be overjoyed to accept what He has deemed us worthy of.

The truth is fixed. It is permanent. It doesn't change. God doesn't change. And no matter what anyone's opinion is, no matter what my opinion is, it's not going to change the truth.

It is actually insane to insist that I or anyone knows what the truth is IF it is not actually aligned with what the truth is. It is, however, sane to know the truth when it is clear and correct and in full acceptance of what the truth actually is.

The more that I allow Jesus and Holy Spirit to express through me, with less censorship and less desire to change what they say, the more "raw" their message becomes. The more completely blunt and unhidden and direct and factual it becomes. I see myself wanting to cover things up and not say some things and not be so brutally honest but they urge me to stop saving face and let the raw truth out.

I expect Jesus to have some kind of persona or way of softening the blow, but He is just like.... in your face! This is what the truth is, boom... take it or leave it. Totally exposed and out in the open with nothing to hide and no attempt to cover anything up.

If something is true and we try to avoid it or deny it or reject it or cover it up or disbelieve it or try to make something else true in order to claim it is false, we're being nothing but arrogant and we have an authority problem.

It's not going to matter whatsoever whether someone claims to know the true version of ACIM or any other teaching, or not. The truth is true. It can only be what it is and it can only be experienced "as-is". The truth itself will be the true measure of who is correct or not - you could call that "judgement day" in a symbolic kind of way. The truth knows what the truth is. The rest of us just get to accept it or attempt to block it and pretend we know better.

But this at least means that the truth is accessible, and you can accept it, and if you are willing to accept it you can align with it and it can be shared with God. Truth is sharing. But you can't have an isolated truth of your own. Isolation is not sharing and puts you into a private world where your own opinion seems to mean something. Your opinion doesn't mean anything at all.

God knows.

God just is, like it or not.

God has given His Creation. He has created us. He has shared everything with us. He has defined what we are forever. The course says something like - think not that you can improve upon Heaven, you cannot add anything to the truth that is more valuable than what it already contains.

We literally therefore must SURRENDER to the truth, lay down everything we want to believe that opposes or blocks or changes it, and simply allow it, accept it.

Related to this, when A Course in Miracles begins it says "This is A Course in Miracles, it is a REQUIRED COURSE." Do you think Jesus is being factual, literal, and absolutely truthful? It is a required course because it is part of God's plan for awakening, and what God says goes. It is inescapable. We have a curriculum for awakening and we must take it and we will take it. It is God's will. you can't avoid it. You can't pretend there is some other completely separate path that doesn't include the curriculum somehow.

The metaphysics of the truth as laid out in the Course is completely true. There are steps in awakening. There are things you have to admit to. You have to learn to admit to the real truth - not a truth that one book says or another argues with. The experiential factual real LIVING truth. You can deny it all you want but you cannot change it or define it. Other pathways may also lead to God but only if they include the same factual real truth.

This is why the "only" path to God is really A Course in Miracles, or to put it another way, it's not the form of the Course but.. "the course" is the "divine curriculum" which is "required" no matter what form your path takes or what materials you use or what books or what teachers. All paths - all forms of paths - lead to God, but some obscure it more than others. You cannot wake up without taking the one curriculum, either directly or inadvertently. And you can be an ACIM student and avoid the curriculum for a long time. ;;-)

This leads me to a different but related point.

I was asking Jesus about how I can possibly accept that someone is sick. If acceptance of the truth is so important, surely I would be better off not resisting the fact that someone is sick? Surely I would be more at peace if I stop fighting with the sickness? Can it be possible that I can come to a complete acceptance of and allowance of that sickness?

Jesus said no. How can I accept something that is false? Jesus speaks of His inability to tolerate the absence of truth in himself or others, and asks us to join Him in the great crusade to correct error in everyone. "As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you." - ACIM

I cannot accept someone being sick because the sickness isn't real. I can't simultaneously believe that it is real and be at peace. I can accept that they really DO NOT have sickness. I can accept that they are NOT sick. I can accept that they are One with the truth, in truth. But the sickness, the illusion of sickness, it is intolerable IF it is real. Fortunately it is not real, and that is what can be accepted. But then ... Love compels a desire to perform miracles.

"How can I help?"

God did create me. The truth about me is that I am still in the condition He originally created me, having not really changed at all.

God is everywhere in Heaven/Reality. Having created me as His Son in His Image, I am also everywhere. For this to be possible we must SHARE existence, we must overlap. You can think of this like sharing one space, where two beings permeate and occupy the entire space, together.

Since God created many beings, many beings who are everywhere, many beings thus overlap and share existence with God and with each other. Everyone shares in and has full access to everyone's being. Everyone exists WHERE everyone else exists.

The separation idea was nothing other than an attempt to stop sharing existence with others. And since the state of sharing was one of overlap and communion (common-union), this meant the attempt to "withdraw" from or to "isolate" away from the existence that others were sharing in.

In the separation, you took a small fragment of your everywhere-self, and tried to draw a fence around it. The aim was to keep everyone else including God outside of the circle, and to maintain a place inside the circle where they could not share existence with you. The result of this was the sensation that, within the circle, you are "alone", there is ONLY YOU there, and you are now "separated off" from where the others are existing.

This is the idea of the separated self. It is a portion of self which has attempted to not share, which wants special selfish rights, which wants ownership of a small segment of existence, and wants to be different and unlike the rest. To have something that is only for itself, rather than to share with others. And so finds itself having an illusory experience of existing in a place, in a space, where the space it occupies is not occupied by others (spacetime). Where it is alone and distinct within its own walls, where no-one else exists. "Only me" seems to exist there.

And this has resulted in being isolated and confined, imprisoned, inside a wall of flesh, which is the idea of sin, which is the body. The body symbolizes the separation and is a separation device, keeping the rest of you and creation out, and isolating you within.

From "inside" your body, you then have an experience that you are "the only one" who is inhabiting it. That you are in there alone. That your brothers do not share the insides with you, and that God is not in you either. And so now you are alone and lonely, as if exiled from Heaven, and as if you are now "a separate self" who no longer is communing with the rest. The body defends against the entire universe, so that you can pretend to exist in a "space" where God is not. Spacetime's entire purpose is to facilitate this illusion of separation.

The walls around the mind, which take on the form of a body, are nothing but thoughts and ideas of separation and sin. They are attempts to make manifest "blocks" which separate you from the whole and keep the whole out of your inner self. It is also an attempt to split you off from the rest of your Christ Self, which is everywhere "except" inside your body. Everything outside of you is the rest of your self, which you have separated from, using the body walls. The body itself, as the symbol of separation, "comes between", you and the rest of you, and between you and brothers/God.

These walls, the separation itself, the gap, and the body, which is a symbol of the ego, forms an alternative illusion of an identity. This identity, the body-identity, seems to substitute for, and block, and split, your real identity. The more you try to prove you are not sharing with the universe, the more you will "foster separation and induce illness." The body will then become sick in an attempt to strengthen the idea of separation and imprisonment even further. The final protest is the killing of the body in death, where the mind is attempting to completely sever the small portion of mind, in the body, from the rest of existence entirely. Death is the attempt to destroy the Son of God.

Now, when you are being yourself as God created you, you are unlimited. You are being yourself. When you go into the ego separation idea, you start to deny and reject yourself, and so are no longer being yourself. You instead are now trying to be something you are not. And this "something you are not" takes the form of the body. "The body is the idea of what you THINK you are". The ego illusion, which now seems to be "a self you made" when you came into the dream, is a secondary self that pretends to stand-in for your real self. The more the ego is emphasized, the more this artificial "not myself" self-image body-image is focused on. And so now you have "made up a self", an ego, which you think is all of you, is your identity, and causes you to be unaware of your REAL SELF.

The result then is that the more you try NOT to be yourself as God created you, the more you become ego, body identified, and sick. And the result of this is twofold. 1) The ego seems to increase thus "strengthening" the ILLUSION that you "have a separate self", and 2) you become LESS of yourself and thus reduce down and limit yourself more and more until there is death. Therefore, death is not really the idea that you are "being a separate self". Death is the idea that you are trying NOT TO EXIST AT ALL. To not HAVE a self of any kind. It is the total denial of yourself and the attempt to destroy God's son.

Therefore, when you awaken, you are not awakening to the loss of yourself. You are returning to HAVING a self, BEING your self, KNOWING THYSELF, and returning to an awareness that you are STILL as God created you in Heaven. You expand your sense of self/identity, you be authentically true to your God-given nature, you heal the separation of the split mind, and you stop trying to be something you are not. The separation ITSELF is undone, and thus the body which was IN THE GAP is closed up and removed, and thus the false self disappears REVEALING who you really are.

It is only the artificial body walls and images that disappear. It is only the ILLUSION of becoming "something you are not" or "who you think you are" that disappears. It is only the denial, self attack, blocks to awareness, and artificial senses of identity that are removed and undone and let go. NOT YOUR SELF. Your identification shifts to spirit identification. You remember your soul.

You lift these things away so that you can see who and what YOU really are, as a child of God, a soul. Awakening is the return to the awareness of God's presence, AND YOUR PRESENCE, as a spiritual being. The true self. Your real self. The self that DOES EXIST. The self that GOD GAVE YOU. Your God-given eternally living soul, which no illusion can ever take from you. And which does not die NOR disappear when you wake up - totally the opposite in fact. Fear not that awakening means the death of you, it means the LIFE OF YOU.

You do not awaken to "no self". No self is the idea of DEATH. You awaken to HAVING a FULL SELF. As your FULL self, you are everywhere, sharing everything with God and with all your brothers in Heaven forever. ONLY the ego "dies". ONLY the ego disappears. The WALLS that fenced you in and made you alone, are lifted away. You are reunited with the Sonship. You return to oneness and sharing. And you allow yourself to SHARE YOUR SELF with other selves again. You expose yourself, you become visible, and you commune with God. You let God in, you share space with Him and His creations, and return to communing with the creations of light.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self fullness."

"The Kingdom of God includes all his children, and their creations."

There are two thought systems, and each has its own way of thinking. Each has its own logic and reason.

The ego’s system, which is also the physical world ("the world is false perception"), is based on separation. It completely rejects any kind of sharing. It’s reasoning follows a simple rule, which is at the root of consciousness:

This... is separate from that. Therefore, this is not that.

This is how the entire physicality of the world is mapped. An apple is not an orange. You are either at home or at the mall but never both at once. My body is not your body. I am not you.

Most of the world believes in the world, believes that the way that physical objects are separate is "natural and normal", and learns to think along these lines.

We then think of another as "not myself". We think of one object as separate from another object. We think if we give something we have to physically lose it. We think we are in one location and not another.

Our entire "way of thinking" adapts to the illusory world of false perception and thinks along ego lines. Separate this, separate that. Either this, or that. Not both. Nothing is shared. Everything is kept apart.

Its main thought construct is "either this or that". For example, if you put the apple in the left bucket, the apple is not in the right bucket. Either the apple is in the left bucket, or the right bucket.

This seems natural as a way of thinking because it seems to map to how the world is physically arranged. Objects seem to "prove" that this is how things are, so we think in the same way. We reason logically, based on evidence and physical experience, that "the apple can’t be in both buckets at once."

The thought system of God, is COMPLETELY opposite to this. It BREAKS all of the egos laws, both physically and in terms of reasoning. God’s system is NOT broken out based on separation. It isn’t rooted in something being "not" something else. And there are no differences to keep things apart.

When you want to wake up, to develop spiritually or to approach God, your mind has to actually learn to stop thinking like a physical object, and think like spirit. This is not easy because it’s so completely alien to how the world is set up.

For example, Jesus talks about how if you give away an idea, you keep the idea, and now both you and the other have the idea. And now the idea is strengthened. To the ego this is a violation of its laws.

The ego would say, it is not possible for one thing to be in two places at once. And that it is not possible for two people to have the same thing at the same time. It wants sacrifice. It wants lack. It wants finite limited resources. It wants exclusive ownership.

The ego can’t comprehend the idea of sharing. True sharing doesn’t mean compromise, or that each person gets half. True sharing means two individuals have everything at the same time. This is utterly nonsense to how the ego-minded thinker thinks.

The ego would say, It is utterly impossible for one thing to be two things and still be one thing. But God would say, that’s completely natural and entirely possible. God thus creates many children of God who are each other. Effectively, one son of God, an apple, is in both buckets at once. He is in his own bucket, and in the bucket of his brother. But the ego says this is impossible.

Becoming able to think in terms of sharing, or what is very often called "oneness", you have to drop notions of separation. To comprehend how you and your brother are one, and yet still brothers, you can’t think about it in terms of how the ego thinks about it.

The ego will conclude, either there is one son of God, or many sons of God, not both. To suggest both is true simultaneously seems like utter nonsense. But God’s laws break the ego’s laws. And God’s logic and laws of reason pay no attention to the limitations the ego imposes.

Thinking like and with God is nothing like thinking with the ego. The suggestion that you ARE your brother, and the two of you are joined, transcends the ego’s idea of separation. But until you "love your neighbor as yourself", your mind is not truly in a state of love, or recognizing who you are.

Part of you is in your brother. Your mind is also part of their mind. "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This in no way means that, when the two brothers become "one", there are no longer two brothers. The twoness doesn’t go away. Ego says it has to. God says the ego makes no sense. The two are brothers precicely because they are two in number. And just because they are BOTH each other, doesn’t mean they are not also themselves. This makes TOTAL sense in terms of how GOD thinks.

When you think about anything to do with God’s Kingdom, creation, sons, sonship, christ, souls, holy spirit, creations, etc... anything pre-separation.... you CANNOT think of it with the ego’s way of thinking. Because God’s system of thought is NOT spacetime. It is not broken out into separate things that share nothing with each other. It isn’t a system of lack or difference or exclusive compartmentalization.

EVERYONE who thinks about these topics using earth-bound separation-based ego reasoning, comes to FALSE conclusions about what ACIM is saying.

We can’t even really understand how it’s possible that you are one with your brother, or how God has more than one son in reality, or how we share minds, or how joined minds are healed, etc.... if you can’t also get your head around how to think TOTALLY OUTSIDE of the ego’s box.

The Golden rule states that what is true of one is true of another. There is one truth applicable equally to everyone. This is because god’s nature is singular and is shared by everyone. This then means that if something is true of your brother it must also be true of you. But the ego will say no, it’s no possible for you and your brother to be IDENTICAL... you have to be different.

Since the Golden Rule is God’s law, ego’s thought system breaks God’s law. It is an attempt to ignore the rule of equality of truth, which results in "the truth is different for everyone" - the first law of chaos. And chaos - total disorder - arises from there. And the ego calls this disorder - nature. Physical nature. As if it is completely natural. Yet it could not be more unnatural.

So if you want to understand the higher truth that ACIM is trying to teach, the dynamics of holy relationship, the sharing of minds, how miracles work, the relationship you have as brothers, the laws of God that you are under, and all the other things which are OUTSIDE of the ego’s way of thinking... you CANNOT USE the ego’s way of thinking to think about them. If you do, you will come to false conclusions, absolutely guaranteed. Because ego thought REJECTS the fundamental basis for God’s thinking, which is that everything is shared.

Sharing vs separation, is the two thought systems. And they DO NOT think alike. And they do not reason alike. And they do not conclude alike. There are TWO WAYS of thinking. One is false, and one is true. This higher way of thinking is everything written in the course talking about anything above "false perception", ego, body, or physical states.

Everything of true perception, christ, God, Sonship, heaven, healing, miracles etc.... is NOT OF THIS WORLD. And you cannot think about it correctly by thinking in the way that this world thinks about itself. You have to learn a NEW way to think, to reason, to perform logic, and to draw conclusions. And it has to break the laws of what you have always thought makes SENSE. The world does NOT make sense because it is a system of insanity and separation. So it’s "sense" is actually nonsense. And what you think is nonsense about God, is true.

I went back and slowly re-read the entire "miracle principles" from a very early urtext version, plus some other sections.

The impression I have of miracles now is different and more cohesive. Whatever our understanding of them is, they must incorporate every single thing Jesus says about them, including the ability to literally move mountains, to heal the sick and raise the dead, and also to correct perception. Here are some key points and new clarity on the subject.

1) Miracles are best understood in a vertical direction. They come down from above and lift upwards, or restore life and reality. "Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven." "performed by those who have more (above) for those who have less (below)". They extend or radiate down into the world from God. They also go out sideways between brothers because brothers are ultimately IN heaven.

2) Every aspect of the "descent" into egotism, separation, degrading reality, becoming insane, unwillingness, unconsciousness, etc which is all an attempt to introduce separation between brother's minds (to split the sonship or divide the Kingdom), to interfere with mind-to-mind communication, is the exact opposite of miracles. Projection is opposite to miracles. Magic is opposite to miracles. Miracles inherently correct level confusion, heal projections, undo magic (which includes sickness), and restores awareness of the truth.

3) Every movement towards restoring communication, reintegrating reality, bringing wholeness to your mind AND your brother's mind, uniting you with your brother, healing relationships, removing separations, all effects resulting from separation and sin (including sickness, illness, suffering, death), and cancelling out the "consequences" of sin, are accomplished by miracles. "Miracles unite you directly with your brother". "The purpose of miracles is to restore reality". "Miracles make brothers one in God" etc. The ultimate aim of miracles is to induce revelation and direct communion with God. This however does not exclude miracles that manipulate forms or move mountains, because mountains are actually also thought-forms in the MIND and are actually BELIEFS which mind can manipulate. "The world IS perception" (in the mind).

4) Miracles originate in the mind of Christ. They require the absence of fear, and an awareness of Christ's presence. Jesus inspires them. While they come FROM the Christ mind, you can be in varying degrees of "miracle mindedness" depending on whether your mind is functioning and responding in an ego-driven way or a love-based way. "Miracles are seen in light" "Miracles reflect an inner awareness of Christ." They are therefore typically requiring quite an advanced state of mind, BUT they also can be performed even by "beginners" who are able to temporarily put fear aside and shift into VERTICAL perception away from the horizontal belief system, which allows them to bring forth a miracle which helps develop "conviction in the ability" by seeing physical appearances change. The ability to make this shift isn't necessarily an act of your own purification but a USE OF the parts of your mind that have already been purified.

5) There are two aspects - miracle-mindedness/readiness, and miracle-working. To be miracle-minded is based on the STATE of your mind. But a mind based on love is not unexpressive or static. It is a mind that extends, gives in order to have, shares, increases, creates. Being miracle-minded/ready emphasizes that you are "ready, willing, and able" to "perform" or "do" miracles. The "action" aspect of miracles should be under Christ control (Jesus) due to the atonement plan and should be "involuntary". You are not supposed to consciously control that part of it yourself, but you ARE responsible for becoming "ready, willing and able".

6) "Miracles are thought-creations". Our mind goes through varying degrees of power to CREATE or project, depending on how much ego there is. We become more able to express creatively as we wake up. The mind can shine INTO and BLESS other minds due to having both been created by the "same spark" of God - being of like kind. Miracles not only unite you with your brother, they also increase your own strength by giving love, and also strengthen your brother. They in a sense "repair" the sense of separation between both of you, increase the level of communication, and therefore UNDO the manifestations of the separation idea (forms of sickness etc). Miracles are tightly associated with CREATION, and therefore are capable of creating. They combine "thought-creation" with belief, in order to produce results, which includes changes to *appearances* - meaning all forms, in a law-defying way (including moving mountains).

7) Miracles are not shifts in perception as such. However they can produce a shift in the perception OF OTHERS. Miracles are inter-personal ACTS. They are something you DO to EXPRESS the state of love that you are. They are an "application" of your holiness, and thus create in the same way that God applies himself to create. Because they can "correct" misperceptions in yourself AND others, they can heal your brother and yourself. They bestow grace and blessing on others. Miracles can correct perception and shift it, but when you yourself "correct thinking" and "change perception" that act itself is not necessarily a miracle. Miracles express from above downwards, changes of mind express from below upwards. You stepping "up" to the miraculous mind can require many steps before you are "high" enough to express "downward" with miracles. In a way though, any movement towards God/truth/love is a step in the right direction. The shifting itself isn't the miracle, the miracle is the love that expresses AFTER the blocks to awareness are removed. Although having said that, when you express a miracle it strengthens you also, increasing your sanity, so....

8) The miracle-mind thought system is totally different to the ego thought system in that it has an omnipresent and holographic nature. This means that the miracle is everywhere. It also means the miracle can express in "a part" of the dream and seem to produce a wide variety of specific results. However all miracles are inherently united and consistent and devoid of any recognition of levels of difficulty or heirarchy or size or any other ego construct. "To God all things are possible." I visualize God as like this ocean of liquid where all aspects are fluidly flowing all over the place and completely defies the entire ego thought system and all of its very rigid, compartmentalizing laws. The miracle-minded are literally miraculous in that they can create anything, can do anything, can heal anything, can produce any changes to any appearance, and there is nothing they cannot do.

9) Miracles collapse time because they introduce sort of a separate "moment" of time in which all of the horizontal laws are defied and a "new state" is directly implemented, instantly, which is almost like taking a tiny clip from "the future" and inserting it into the current timeline "out of the temporal order". Another analogy is a vynil record, as if you suddenly bump the arm and it skips some tracks and resumes playing further along in the song. The interval in-between of the "thousands of years" that were skipped, essentially has collapsed or deleted an entire portion of the timeline. Their purpose IS to collapse time and bring about the end of the need for time. Ultimately they lead to revelation and total wholeness, and then are no longer needed. This is all to do with mind. But this DOES NOT exclude apparent changes to forms, bodies, sickness or death, because all of those things are actually mental states, thought-forms, ideas, images in the mind, which are just as much within the scope of mind-power as anything you would normally consider "inside your mind". You have to realize the entire universe is WITHIN our shared minds, and therefore even physical forms have to be ultimately disappeared and "healed" and "shone away" by our light, in order for the the entire sonship to totally be free from dreaming.

10) Miracles are a maximal service you can render a brother. All expressions of love are maximal. That means they express FROM "total" love, not partial. However, you can be in varying degrees of miracle mindedness depending on how you express or "relate". If in a given situation, you have one possible response which is egotism where you make the problem real and use it for attack etc, and another possible response is that you remain "in love" and affirm the truth of both of you and see your brother as sinless and calling out for love and you "empower" both of you, this is a miracle. You chose to love instead of hate, you chose to express a truthful healing charitable gracious blessing rather than attack.

11) Miracles are also "energizing" in that they give LIFE to others ("all around the signs of life spring up"). They supply a lack. They are given by those who have more to those who have less. Lack is just "lack of love", so by supplying love you bless and remove a curse and energize and shine light onto the "area of separation" which causes it to reintegrate and become whole again. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness" because you have to be in a mindset of wholeness (miracle readiness) in order to see your brother's holiness and innocence, which strengthens this in both of you and thus energizes and gives life to both of you. When you heal, therefore, BOTH of you receive healing. Separation isn't a "private idea", it's something that "comes between" like a double-sided sword, and removing this sword restores communication in BOTH directions.

12) Miracles can move mountains and raise the dead. Since both of them are illusions and all forms are illusions, and all illusions are based on separation, the miracle-minded have total power OVER these things, either by bringing life to them and healing them, or by demonstrating this power OVER them by changing appearances. A body returning from death and decay to life, or a mounting moving from left to right, are both "changes to appearance". Miracles change appearances to PROVE and demonstrate that the forms themselves ARE illusions BECAUSE they could be changed, and therefore cannot be real because they are so easily manipulated by the mind. The illusion of objects being physical, heavy, large, or that death is too difficult to undo etc, all these illusions crumble to nothing when they are shown to be changeable.

13) Miracles require faith and trust. Having faith in your brother's innocence even when they show up as guilty/sinful/sick, overcomes/overlooks/forgives their illusions and can shine them away. Your mind CAN enter the mind of another and enlighten it. Also certainty (fearlessness) is required (even if temporarily suspended), because miracles occur as thought-acts which are decisive and committal. You don't have to merely have "strong belief" "of your own", you need to also RELY ON or depend on God, trusting HIS power and strength, and knowing what HE is capable of, so that you have TRUST in the certainty of the outcome and KNOWING that it must occur. This goes beyond your "self" as an individual or separate miracle worker. You can do nothing on your own, but you can work WITH God to co-create. Faith/trust also correlates to belief.

14) Miracles also correlate to acceptance/receiving of atonement. They are expressed through PRAYER, which brings about the active "doing" of miracles, because in the prayer you combine thought and belief and faith (key ingredients that are MUST have's), and ask with the heart (not necessary to use words). This "asking" is almost the same thing as "expressing" or "stating" and "seeing" what change you want to occur, as though it has already happened and has been received. "Believe you have received and you shall have it." Miracles EXPRESS FROM the atonement. You have to accept some atonement to accept some "miracle juice", so that you can give it. That means that in some small way, in some part of you, on some issue, you accepted the truth about you as innocent and loved, rather than condemn yourself with sin. This part of you now has received a miracle or has been restored to a more miracle-oriented way of being, and this now can express to others. In a healed part of you, when confronted with another situation like what happened before, you might now "bless" instead of "see sin", and this IS capable of healing others.

15) Overall it seems miracles are essentially HOW the entire illusion of separation is reversed. In all its way, all its appearances, all its consequences. Every form of suffering, all sickness, death, and also demonstrations of the falseness of the ego's laws. Moving a mountain may well demonstrate and violate laws of physics and weight and size and so on, proving that these are not TRUE, that illusory limitations are not true, and this can bring healing to the mind. Miracles can be teaching devices. They remind you and your brother of what is true about you. The entire "lifting up" of all brothers and the "lifting away" of all forms of separation and the "disappearing" of all suffering and forms and illusions and eventually the universe itself, is "the miracle", which is kind of everywhere and omnipresent and comes from God.

16) You are a miracle. This means that God creates miraculously because God is also miraculous. It's natural to be miraculous. You are miraculous in the sense that anything is possible to the holy, and God who is alive has miraculously created the sonship. To the ego, it should not be possible, but it is. A miracle as a "creative expression of thought" is your natural way of creating in heaven. It's how you express love. It's an extension of yourself and increases joy and overcomes lack and restores BOTH you and the thing you create. When you express miracles or miraculously in the world it similarly follows the same laws of GOD and creates wholeness, healing, health, happiness, freedom, love, perfection, holiness, joy, peace, life.

17) Miracles are super-natural. This means they are totally above the ego's "nature", and fly in the face of everything we think of as "the nature" of this universe. This includes all ego laws and physics and time and space. They express from above the battlefield, from heaven, falling like drops of healing rain on the desert (absence of love) below and supply a lack and bring the dead back to life, raising it up towards resurrection. Miracle workers are like angels or holy beings who step inside a dream of death and start expressing themselves, demonstrating all over the place that nothing here is fixed or limiting or has any power over you at all. As beings of light and immortality and creativity, when we express as this kind of identity (christ-aligned) we totally defy every law of the world and therefore literally produce "miraculous" effects. To the ego, miracles are considered un-natural, but to God they are considered completely natural. There is nothing they cannot do and there is nothing your holiness cannot do. You are UNLIMITED, and the sheer degree of limitation of this ego world is shown to be extremely false by every miracle expression.

18) Being miraculous is your natural inheritance and does not require anyone else to choose to be miraculous. It doesn't "require" a holy relationship. BUT, it can IMPLEMENT a holy relationship due to the fact that it heals the separation between brothers. Jesus as the one who woke up can perform them for anyone, and he inspires all miracles which intercede for your holiness, but in so doing, he also unites you with Himself and the two of your minds join and share love, if you are willing. You still have free will and no-one can force anyone to wake up or be healed if they do not want it or if it would frighten them.

19) If you can grasp how God's mind is omnipresent and this means that all of him is in every location FULLY at the same time, which TOTALLY defies the entire ego world and all its forms of matter and space and time, you can get a better sense of how anything is possible in God. And how, in contrast to that, this world and its laws are set up to be extremely limiting, to suggest no two things share anything, forms are things in their own right, nothing is coming from the mind, mind has no power over anything ("the mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this"), and everything is separated off and compartmentalized into boxes and finite objects. This is SO TOTALLY OPPOSITE to God's nature and the nature of anyone who has access the miracle-working mind or the "attitude of love". Love isn't just a finite thing in a box. It is miraculous, life-giving, spacetime defying, and completely ignores all illusory differences. When the world is PROVEN to be NOT separated out, and NOT disconnected from the mind, and NOT a thing in its own right and can easily be changed by the power of the mind, the true nature of God's UNLIMITEDNESS is revealed.

20) Miracles are what happens when an ego-defying, omnipresent, spatially-defying, time-defying, massively potential, unlimited, whole miraculous mind, comes into contact with the ego illusion of limitation and separateness. You can express them and bestow them everywhere, they are unlimited in number, and all support each other forming a "web" of atonement. You have to realize that all physical objects are part of the MIND, and are thoughts, and are perceptions, and are ideas in the mind. Therefore when mind changes and there are actions of expression of miracle-mindedness, this CAN and DOES also change and manipulate the appearance of physical objects. Separating mind from body is an error in this sense. Mind has power OVER the body. "That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind proves the mind must be stronger than the body." Whenever you elect to "be a bit more miraculous" or "be a bit more loving" or "express and stay strong in the truth" or "utilize your creative power" or "bless another" or "repair separation" or "reveal the unreality of an illusion" or "demonstrate that you are not limited" or "join minds with your brother" in any way, you are being miraculous.

An interesting insight I had is that what we see as causing us, we literally take to mean it is causing us to exist. If we are the effect of it, we are whatever it decides we are.

When we are caused by God, we are forever an effect of God. Whatever God wills us to be we are that. God has total authority and privilege in this and we have absolutely no say in it.

Fortunately God's idea of us and what he wants us to be is very loving and beautiful, and so we are created and "forced to be" perfect happy immortal beings forever.

But if you switch your idea of what causes you to anything else, anything of the world, the body, the ego, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, a similar thing happens. Your SELF is once again defined by it.

So let's say the world does something to "you", someone attacks your body or something, you might see it as not changing YOU but maybe changing your body or causing upsetting feelings. But you assume that YOU are still you.

However, this can't be true, because if you perceive that these external things are CAUSING you at all, you MUST believe you are their effect. YOU, your self, your identity, is the effect of them. And they have the power to change you, alter you, upset you, affect you, modify you according to their will.

This is part of how the mind shifts its IDENTITY from being identified with spirit/Christ to identifying with other things like the the ego or body. When we try to become one with these things, or we give them power, or we see ourselves as caused BY them, our very sense of SELF actually changes.

You begin to see yourself kind of like through the eyes of this other thing, the thing you gave power to. However it's treating you, whatever it's doing to you, is redefining you. You now become the effect of it and your whole sense of identity repositions as a victim and a sufferer and that which is attacked and weakened.

When we look for things to forgive, we might say that a person did this or that to us, or something in the world is upsetting us. But it's not just that it does something to upset us, it does something to CHANGE us, and that literally changes our sense of who we are.

When you believe the world, which is your dream, is dreaming you, and it has power to affect you or change what you are, your sense of self shifts from an immortal being to a temporary mortal suffering entity. The mind shifts its view of itself as though it's now being caused BY the world, and loses track of the soul. As if what causes you CREATES you.

Who you see yourself as, the role you play, how you are positioned, who you are in the drama or story, all becomes defined BY the causes you perceive to be having an effect on you. This can happen even with emotions and thoughts where you start developing a sort of sense of being a suffering person who the emotions or thoughts are happening to.

To wake up from this we have to become clear that we're not only not affected by anything in the whole world, but that nothing in the world has any power to CHANGE us in any way. Otherwise it has the power to change our SELF, and convert our identity into something we're not. Even a slight upset emotion is a change in identity, a twinge of unhappiness, a minor fear, it's all going to change your view of what is true of you.

So we have to learn to stop making ourselves CAUSED BY anything other than God. Nothing in the world does ANYTHING to us. We are UNCHANGEABLE, and nothing anywhere can change us except for God - who has no intention of ever changing his mind about us. We have to let ourselves be only what he wants us to be, and accept the truth of ourselves, in order to recognize WHO we really are.

"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." W191L9

"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. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." M6C3

"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." URW190L5

"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." UrW253

There are two approaches to ACIM. One is to learn the theory about what is true or false. The other is to actually change your mind and transform your awareness so that you wake up to experiencing it.

Theory is learned on a horizontal level. It involves the intellect. It involves trying to understand what ACIM says and means. It's analytical and it studies the words, the levels, the structures, the relationships of things, the definitions of words and the "description" of the truth. it dwells on the form and the word choices and so on.

Some people have an easier time learning the theory than others. Some people are not as intellectually able to get their heads around the intricate depths and nuances of Jesus's genius. For some the theory seems complex and off-putting. And many people get the theory profoundly wrong, while others are very accurate in their discernment of it.

Sometimes there are debates and fights about what the course says and means. This is all to do with the horizontal approach. It's an intellectual battle in which sides try to convince each other that their understanding of the course is the correct one. And in many cases some people may well be correct while others are very lost. There are some people who are so incredibly lost on the theoretical level that they are practically learning a totally different belief system. They think they're heading toward reality while heading away from it.

Then there is a vertical movement away from hell toward heaven, away from darkness toward light, away from ego towards the Holy Spirit, away from the body towards the soul, and away from the world towards the Kingdom of God. This is a transformational movement which does actually require a vertical change of mind, an awakening, a willingness, an opening, and a trust.

In the vertical learning we actually have to apply the theory. The mind has to be transformed. Beliefs have to be undone. Healing has to take place. Your life and your curriculum presents you with challenges and lessons which you have to learn. Your relationships have to change and your sense of identity has to alter. This is not achieved through theory.

Some people struggle to accurately understand the course's theories on the horizontal level, and turn a blind eye to this fact by trying to focus on something more experiential. They may focus on love or feeling. This can produce progress upwards to some extent, but then the faults in the theory hold them back.

It can hold them back such as, for example, someone believing that Earth is God's Kingdom, which is going to pull the person in the completely wrong direction. So while they're trying to go up, faults in the theory are pulling them down. It's like a handicap. There are some quite loving-seeming people doing ACIM who nevertheless say things which are profoundly wrong and delusional.

On the flip side, there are also people who become expert at the horizontal theory. Great intellects and scholars and theologians who are very good at discerning accurately the logical structures and relationships of things. Of realizing how everything fits together and correctly putting everything in its proper place. Some people are very good at this. But at the same time, those same people can at times become lost in this understanding and fail to apply the course to move vertically. The "study" of the course then becomes a handicap that keeps them from opening their minds and actually encountering reality.

I think for the most part the ideal is to be proficient at both. We need theory in order to help us to make sense of things, to guide us in the right direction, to clarify meanings, to have a proper framework so that you know what you're supposed to be doing and why. But to also then take that and use it, apply it, live it, look at how it works in your life, use it to change your mind, to develop trust, to actually open up to reality, to a different kind of vision, and to shift your sense of identity away from the body. As the workbook begins:

"A theoretical foundation such as the Text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth."

So yes you need to be pretty accurate with the theory, but the purpose of that is so that you can be more effective and efficient in your application of it to your life. Your living curriculum of lessons, holy relationships and life events is where you will be having to apply the principles.

"The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

It's not enough to be excellent at the theory and not apply it to change yourself. It's not enough to try to change yourself while being absolutely all over the place on the theory. If you really want to shoot for the stars you need to understand the course in principle, and apply it in practice. The two work together to atone your mind correctly, heading in the appropriate direction for the appropriate reasons. Otherwise it's like sailing your boat in the wrong direction.

As Jesus once said to me, "you understand it, now you just need to apply it."

Sometimes I find it difficult to relate when people suggest that you "just" do this or that, in order to be awakened or spiritual.

Even if it's coming from a masterful person and even if it makes total sense and even if its deeply simple and pure and lovely, I can't relate to it or use it.

Expressions coming from a certain 'level 'of consciousness can only really be related to by people who are also AT that level of consciousness. Those broadcasts are NOT helpful for people at a lower level, except as perhaps an inspiration. There's a big difference between an expression of "this is what it is like here" versus "this is how you come up to this level".

The reason is because the 'level' that I'm currently at, I need ways to remove the blocks to awareness in order to become aware of a truth/love/experience that "already is".

I don't need to work on learning how to 'do' what is already done. I don't need to practice 'being'. I don't need to TRY to be still or quiet or meditative or whatever.

The Course tells us that we need to focus on simply removing the blocks to love. This is akin to severing the anchors which keep us attached to the bottom of the ocean, dragging us down. Once let go, we naturally float back to the surface.

This to me can be a problem with teachings coming from a higher level. They can be impractical and not really helpful. They sound fantastic. They're beautiful. And they're truthful expressions from a greater perspective. But they're not always relatable for people who are stuck down in the quagmire of illusions and delusions.

We don't need to construct reality, or make things heavenly, or spend heaps of time trying to produce some kind of skill or ability to be what we naturally already are underneath our disguises. We just need to learn to take our disguises off. And that process is a practical one in the application of forgiveness or other methods to undo delusions.

I could say, well, just be still, be at peace, stop thinking. But that's not going to last. You're not going to be able to do it. And then it will just be annoying and you'll feel like you're inferior for not being able to just flip spirituality on like a switch.

This can be why the spiritual quotathon can produce not only a sense of confusion and impossible expectation, but also attempts to give to students things they are not ready for and which don't really help them to get out of their confusion. If things are too abstract, the only way you can really relate to that abstraction is to be experiencing it. There needs to be more of a middle ground.

This is why often you get teachers who are perhaps awakened on like "level 3" or whatever but they don't have a practical "level 2" teaching platform that helps people to go from where they are actually at to their next steps. To move them forward. And then the things they say which are so beautiful and lofty sort of make them into a mysterious yet inaccessible idol that becomes worshipped and followed in a state of confusion and misunderstanding.

If I go visit God and I come back and I say, well, hey, all you have to do is be with God. Easy right? Can you do it? Then you'll try to do it and you'll fail, then get frustrated and disappointed and believe separation is real and you'll beat yourself up and compare yourself and judge yourself as insufficient, unworthy or inferior, which is the perfect foundation for turning me into a spiritual idol that you worship. You don't need that.

You need guidance that you can relate to that works for you at the level you're at, in the language you currently are speaking, that nudges you forward just a little bit past your current reality, and leads you on to the next steps. That's how you gradually wake up. Not by hitting yourself over the head with a giant space mallet trying to digest things which your mind really cannot comprehend yet.

Trying to get ahead of yourself doesn't work. The ego likes to suggest you should do that, but then you end up just emphasizing how "far behind" you are from the special chosen ones. Not that the masters are in any way wrong or bad or whatever, just that if truly they're a helpful teacher they need to be recognizing where YOU are at and what YOU can currently understand and speak your language, not just sit on a throne and radiate abstract experiences as though this is "all you need to do". Yes its true, yes they're correct, but.... that advice is next to useless when your mind is fucked.

Gotta walk before you can run. Gotta learn to flap wings before you can fly. Gotta take steps to get to the temple before you can go in. You need help walking, not jumping off cliffs.

Holy Spirit is an expert teacher in this regard, He recognizes our illusions (as illusions) and doesn't believe them, but knows that we do, and is able to not only speak our language but support us at whatever level we're at with whatever guidance we're willing to accept and are ready for. One step at a time. Non-threatening, non-pressuring, just loving gentle awakening.

God's will for us is perfect happiness, all the time. Total safety, love, blessing, peace, joy, no problems, perfect health, invulnerability, miraculousness, innocence. The end of sadness, grief, pain, sickness, fear and death. God wants this for us all the time. Do we want this? Why aren't we happy and at peace right now?

If you ask yourself, as you experiencing what God wills right now, the answer is probably that you do not really want it. If we're honest, we're not in that state. So what must that mean?

If God wills that we be happy and we are not happy, we must not want what God wills. We must be WILLING to experience something opposite, something unlike happiness. That means we must WANT to experience being unhappy. We don't want God's love. This is reflected in:

"I must have made a wrong decision because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself..."

If I am not happy or at peace, I must have WILLED, chosen, wanted, to be unhappy. It was a mistaken and poorly-made decision, made in egotism. So now we are unhappy and are trying not to do God's will. And it isn't bringing us joy because we don't want joy.

So if we get honest, this means unless we are having that experience of perfection and joy, we DO NOT WANT God's will. Which equates to, we do not really want God either. It must mean that something in us actually doesn't want it, doesn't like it, doesn't believe in it, resents and rejects it, doesn't believe it deserves it, fears it, etc. The appropriate name for that something is "the ego".

We have to be willing to look at this. Somewhere in us, if we're not doing God's will perfectly all the time, there is a desire to suffer. There's a sense of animosity toward God. There's some kind of rebellion going on. There's this part of us that does not want to wake up, does not want to be free, does not want to do God's will, does not want to be happy and does not want what God is offering.

It's not a pretty thing to admit to. Either I want God or I don't. You can kind of feel the sense of "attack" that the ego in us has toward God. We've kind of left God in a way, pushed Him away and distanced ourselves from Him. This recoil into darkness has made part of our mind twisted and unwilling. We're going to have to seek out and remove these blocks to being WILLING to be aware of love's presence.

We might be saying we want awakening or atonement or forgiveness or God but if we're not experiencing it NOW, some part of us does not want it. We have the freedom to decide that, but pretending we're not doing that is just more denial. The ego in is us kind of disgusted with God, feels vengeance, holds grievance against Him, resents a perceived abandonment, feels guilty and unworthy of Him, and is really at odds with His will.

God's will is supposed to be shared with us, and is so supportive and rewarding, that there should be no reason not to want it. It showers us with blessing and our divine inheritance. It gives us eternal life, freedom from all suffering and death, and eliminates all nightmares. It makes us happy and at pace and invulnerable. Just as "forgiveness holds everything I want".

And even if we think we want something else, something not of God, we can't possibly genuinely really want it, deep down. And so we've accepted that we want something that we don't really want, as a substitute for God, knowing full well that "The Son of God cannot be happy unless he knows he is with God."

This is what the gap of separation is all about. There is this "distance" we have between our ego and God. And our egotism wants to maintain and increase that gap. It's a relationship problem. An unholy relationship between God and our sense of self. We actually need to "forgive God" and learn to trust Him again. And in order to do His will without seeing it as "what we don't want to do", we have to be fully willing to embrace it as entirely on our side, helpful to us, supportive of us and in our best interests. It has to match what we want.

Any egoic sense of not wanting what God is offering, is keeping us unaware of His love. We're like pouting children hiding in a corner not wanting to cooperate, even though our parent only wants to love and support us. We keep saying no to reality. We keep saying yes to a wide variety of other distractions and meaningless things that we think we want more. But all the idols of the world are set up to be artificial forms of meaning and value, designed to keep you turning away from God and wanting something other than Him.

If we're to be willing to do God's will, to go where he sends us, to heal as we let Him teach us to heal, to be truly helpful, then we need to look at these ways that we are denying the truth, blocking God from loving us, not accepting atonement and believing things that are various forms of attack. God loves us, and His will for us is completely positive and enriching. Our inheritance is tremendous. Are we willing to allow ourselves to be loved again? Are we really willing to let go of our protest against Life and resurrect into eternal happiness?

There is a myth in the ACIM community relating to how perception works. It's based on the belief that we only have one perception, one outlook. There's us, in the body, perceiving. We read stuff about how perception shifts and how it changes what we see.

So we think ok, my one perception will shift and it will show me a different world. In other words, the bad stuff I was seeing will seem to disappear and I will see good stuff. We read about the spiritual eye and christ vision and we start to think that our entire perception is going to shift to ONLY seeing perfection and beauty.

This of course then implies that all the bad stuff, all the sickness, the wars, the conflict, the decay, it's all going to magically disappear from my perception and I will not see it at all. Which in turn means, all the hospitals will be empty, everyone with broken limbs will magically be fixed, it's my dream so the entire physical contents of the world will transform into a heavenly condition.

This is not what ACIM teaches.

Perception is a little more complicated because there are actually two perceptual mechanisms involved, and Jesus goes to great lengths describing them.

One perception mechanism, the spiritual eye, is direct "mind seeing", also referred to as the eyes of Christ or Christ Vision. This seeing does not rely on or depend on the body whatsoever. It is not limited by space or time or distance. The mind can be anywhere, go anywhere, see anywhere. It can see through walls.

In fact, the spiritual eye does not really acknowledge what ACIM refers to as "the veil" of physical matter, the granite block of sin. It looks right THROUGH it as if it's not even there and looks to the light of the real world beyond. This fixation on the face of Christ is one way of perceiving. But there is another.

The body has its own perceptual mechanism. It has physical eyeballs. Its form of perception depends entirely on illusions. And the body's perception is not capable of seeing anything else.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see"

"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."

"The body's eyes behold it as solid granite"

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation"

"This is the function you have given your body's eyes. 5 It is not seeing. 6 It is image making. 7 It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

The body's perception relies entirely on the laws of physics, which the spiritual eye completely transcends. They rely on photons of light, concentrated particles of finite energy. Light has to collide with surfaces of physical forms, objects, matter, and be "denied" by the form. The light is thus "reflected" rather than passing through it. This reflected light then enters the body's eyes and passes images to the mind for interpretation.

This is a fundamental difference between the two types of perception. What Jesus refers to as "physical sight" can only "see" when vision is blocked. In other words, seeing has to stop at the surface of objects, in order to see them as being there. This seeing is therefore blinded by physical objects. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." Your eyes cannot see through matter.

Spiritual vision is the opposite, in that it does not stop at physical objects, it is not limited by matter or surfaces, it looks right through them as though they are just a very thin transparent veil. It overlooks the physical world because "to forgive is to overlook", looking beyond to the light.

Christ vision sees past the illusion of physical form to something beyond it - the face of Christ. Vision therefore doesn't really pay attention to what we would call physical stuff or the world of bodies, nor dose it function based on "seeing photons".

"This world of idols IS a veil across the Face of Christ"

"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ"

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body"

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all"

Essentially, body vision is blinded by perception of the form of physical objects/matter, but to the body this causes it to "see" them. ie my vision "stopped at" the surface. Spiritual vision does not use photons of light, does not depend on physical matter, and sees directly with the mind.

The thing is this. For anyone who has a body or is in a body, BOTH mechanisms for seeing are simultaneously functioning. It does not matter how asleep or awake you are, whether you have false perception or true perception. It does not matter if your mind is sick or healed. If you still have a body, the body's eyes STILL will continue to report images of the PHYSICAL ONLY world to the mind, at the same time as the mind trying to see past it. It will still see the forms of matter, bodies, wars, sickness and death.

This is also why for example you can read the ACIM workbook and STILL READ THE WORDS, even if you are making progress in opening christ vision, because you are still using the body's eyes at the same time. Those who wake up in the world are still perfectly capable of watching tv and choosing food and navigating around a building and driving a car.

This "double vision" of body sight and mind vision, will occur as a kind of parallel perception. As the spiritual eye opens, as your mind opens up to direct vision, as you overlook (forgive) the world of matter, your body is still going to function in exactly the same biologically limited manner. It is still going to relay messages to the mind as to what it senses and sees. And the mind has to sort out what these messages mean to it.

Mind, as the only seer ("only the mind sees"), is therefore receiving impressions either directly (the real world, face of Christ), or indirectly (via the body's eyes). It is experiencing TWO inputs for a while. In order to open the spiritual vision, investment in physical sight has to be diminished. But this only means that the images coming from the body are recognized as illusions not to be believed. Visions of reality are accepted as true, visions of the physical are recognized as false. There are two levels of perception:

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye (which is now a second way to perceive), simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the ***two types or levels of perception*** is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind ***that has let itself be healed*** (has christ vision AND is using the body) will no longer acknowledge them. 3 ****There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others (seen with the body's eyes still), and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before****. 4 But the healed mind (having true perception, accurate recognition) will put them all in one category; they are unreal (recognized as false)."

This does not mean the mind is blind to sick bodies. NOR does it mean that seeing sick bodies is proof that your mind is sick! You see them because your BODY shows them to you, but your mind decides whether to BELIEVE what the body sees.

You still see physical signs of sickness because you're still USING the body. Even when the body is used by the Holy Spirit for communication and healing, even when your spiritual eye is very open, physical sight STILL functions and the mind DOES still SEE the images of the physical world. But it categorizes these images as "these are not reality, they are illusions." It is not tempted by them, deceived by them, nor does it believe they depict the truth. This means you are AWARE that you are in a dream ie "awake in the dream."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die*** (via physical eyes).Yet they are not deceived by what they see (because the mind is not tempted and doesn't believe the physical is real)."

So you see (pun intended), while having a body, your mind is going to be in a state where you keep seeing the physical world, in its continued condition of constant inescapable corruption and death, complete with sick broken bodies and suffering and time and everything going wrong. BUT, the condition of your mind will be such that the MEANING of these images will be different. How they strike your mind will be different. And what you recognize them AS will be different.

You WILL still see the same FORM of physical matter, people with missing limbs, rotting leaves, dead carcasses, the signs of decay and weathering, rot and animals eating animals etc. But your mind will not regard them as true, real, valid, wanted, heaven, or God-created. They are simply recognized as an illusory dream. You will be aware that it is a dream. This doesn't mean you are blind to them, it means you see them accurately for what they are. True perception produces ACCURATE perception, which correctly interprets body visions, and is therefore NOT an INABILITY to see bodies.

Being in this position, where your mind can see beyond the physical world to the light of reality, where all differences and forms and shapes are not given credence, but where the physical is STILL included in what is seen due to still having eyeballs, you are now above the battlefield, in the world but not of it, aware of dreaming. And now you are in a position to be truly helpful.

What that means is, you can discern accurately what others are doing in the world. You can see their physical ailments. You can recognize their emotional and mental sickness - their call for love. And you are in a position to offer them help, WITHOUT making their sickness real. It's because you DO NOT believe the sickness (that you do see) is real, that you CAN help.

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

This is what makes you a teacher of God. Being in a position of greater truth YET STILL IN THE WORLD. Able to still REACH those who are still in bodies, able to heal both the minds AND bodies of others, able to see sickness and famine and war and death, and able to offer help. Able to heal the sick, transform matter, raise the dead, move mountains, etc.

This sets you up for the situation where there is a ground for performing miracles. Because only if you can be "more healed" (have opened christ vision, mind seeing past bodies) while simultaneously being exposed to those who are "less healed" (can still see them with the body's mechanisms), do you have any way to HELP anyone. You are still "where the sickness is" but are not sick yourself.

And miracles are a service. They are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less. They supply a lack. This is ONLY possible if you can be in the world in a healed state, NOT disappearing into a state of perfection. This is the function of a teacher of God. They help those who are less loving than themselves. They dissipate the fear in others. They raise the dead and heal the sick. This is ONLY possible because you have simultaneous Vision and body sight.

Christ needs your body to reach those who need reaching at a PHYSICAL level. Miracles are needed to demonstrate PHYSICALLY symbols of truth and to prove to those whose eyes are not open that there is a better way. The body is used to communicate to those who see only bodies, that their spiritual vision may open. And miracles are performed to liberate their minds from being blinded by perception of form. To demonstrate that the laws of the world can be broken.

ONLY when the face of Christ is FULLY seen, at the instant of atonement, is the investment in physical sight COMPLETELY undone. And investment only means dependence upon and belief in. The "veil" of physical matter, which the body alone can see ("only the body makes the world seem real"), appears as thin and transparent to the healed mind. It is seen through like x-ray vision to the light beyond.

And then eventually it vanishes from sight completely as the real world is seen but for an instant. Only as the world is not seen AT ALL do you stop seeing sick bodies. Because only as the BODY ITSELF is utterly transcended and let go does the mind awaken to a body-less reality. This means the mind goes beyond being awake in the dream (vision + body vision), and returns to a state of ONLY seeing with the mind (and only seeing the Kingdom of God). That's what it means to wake up FROM dreaming, in which for you the world ends.

This is why Jesus was able to walk the Earth in a highly healed state of mind, HELP OTHERS, perform miracles, SEE LEPERS, SEE THE DEAD, and demonstrate the laws of God. Without his BODY'S SIGHT, he would not have been able to see OR communicate with those who were limited to bodies. And because He had both christ vision and body sight, he could act as a Teacher of God in this world, before he woke up FROM the dream of death entirely.

"But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this ***no longer sees the world***."

"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, ***and disappears*** before His holy sight."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. ***What further sight is needed***? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love ***behind all forms***, beyond all purposes. "

"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 which it came."

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

When you dream at night, your mind is perfectly capable of creating entire environments in great detail. These dreams are not real, and so are projections of ego thoughts from the mind, but at the time they seem like real places. Your mind is able to create oceans, streets, buildings, people, all manner of creatures and locations.

It's even able to embed an extraordinary variety of subtle feelings into the scene or ways of experiencing what's happening, such that it seems to mean something very specific to you, or so that you get a certain impression from it.

Your mind can create people and experiences which are a perfectly symbolic representation of any idea or feeling or experience it cares to make. It has at its disposal an absolutely unlimited number of variations in both appearance and meaning and emotional content. If you can imagine it, your mind can invent it.

As your mind projects such environments, it can also sometimes project you as a character in the environment in a third-person manner, or sometimes you can also experience it from a first-person perspective. You can manifest any kind of body. The body can also be changed into any form and express any kind of disease or situation regardless of any rules or laws whatsoever.

In your dreaming, objects can be transformed into other objects. You can pass through objects, you can fly, you can control things with your mind, you can communicate telepathically, you can have encounters with any kind of being imaginable, and you can teleport instantly to any location. There is practically nothing that's impossible.

All of this happens inside your mind. All of this is your mind "dreaming", which correlates to Jesus's definition of "projecting". The mind is literally projecting a three-dimensional movie scene down to the finest detail, complete with storyline and all manner of events and interactions. As such, this projection "creates perception".

So as you're in the dreaming state, your mind is literally projecting everything you then "see". So if it projects a beach and an ocean on a sunny day, this projecting manifests those things in full and then you witness them or "perceive" them. The projecting comes first. The perceiving comes second.

Now, in the physical world, you're tempted not to believe this same mechanism applies. You believe certainly that you perceive, and that you perceive what seems to be a world out there complete with people and places and events, but you don't for a moment think it possible that your own mind is projecting it. But it is.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of projection and many have come to interpret this to mean that you project ONTO something which is already out there. This is the result of not believing or recognizing that your mind actually makes the world appear in its entirety, or that this world is in fact just another dream. Yet Jesus tells us:

"...What you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same."

However, because we do not recognize or believe that this "physical world" is just another dream environment, that our mind is perfectly powerful enough to create in the finest detail, we think that it must be really "out there" objectively, or that it came to be there from some other powerful cause.

The result of this unawareness as to how it truly comes into being, is the belief that when ACIM talks about projection it's talking about what your mind projects ONTO this pre-existing world. People will then work with their "forgiveness process" to take these projections back and undo them.

There is some validity to that step because even inside of the dream itself, there is a whole other layer of "personal projection" whereby individuals add an extra layer of projection and denial to everything they see in the world. They project extra guilt and sin onto others and onto the environment. So to take back those projections is a very helpful step in owning up to who and what you are.

However, that's not the only form of projection taking place here in this dream. The dream ITSELF is a projection. You could say, your personal projections are coming from your own private mind, as one Son in the Sonship. But the collective Sonship or Christ mind is also projecting this entire world. That's who the dreamer really is.

You can take back all your personal projections and come to a place of clarity or awakening, becoming aware of this world with a clear perception of it. This means your perceiving has been clarified. This is an awakening to true perception. But this does not mean that you have undone PROJECTION. Projection comes before perception because projection makes it possible to perceive.

Once perception is purified and is clear, which will produce an experience of being awake WITHIN the dream, able to perceive the dream clearly, there is then another stage where the projecting OF the dream needs to now be undone. Removing projections onto the dream is the reversal of perception, which is where most ACIM students focus, but we have to realize that the projection that made the "stuff" we are perceiving clearly is also an activity of the mind which needs to be undone.

Undoing the projecting of the world itself - yes the physical world - is the second layer of awakening. It means realizing that you are still dreaming this world, you are still manifesting objects and people and environments, and you are still inside of a dream. You are still subject to every law that the dreaming puts in place, because those laws are established in the projecting of the world. You may be fully awakened to be able to see the dream clearly, but now the dreaming itself needs to stop.

When you are projecting personal stuff onto the world, it's like having a dream within a dream. You are already inside a dream (which you think is a real world) and now proceed to dream within it. Just like a daydream. Your projections at the personal level therefore place your unconscious crap outside of your conscious separate self. But it still exists within the world. Taking all of that back and fully undoing it won't undo the world itself, because the world itself is being projected on a much greater scale by a much bigger mind - the collective Christ Mind.

For you to see a car or a house or a person or a tree means that these forms have been projected by the Christ mind. The Christ mind is unlimited in its power to dream of forms. It has invented an entire universe, just like your little personal mind invents fictional places and characters at night - stories which are entirely believable and which you experience as though completely real.

Therefore, if you are still perceiving at all, if you are still having perception of the presence of objects, forms, people, buildings etc, then this must mean there is STILL projection happening from a larger level of mind. The reversal/healing of that collective projection is the undoing of this entire so-called "world".

This is the level at which the Course addresses when it says "There is no world, this is the central theme the Course would attempt to teach." It literally means that this physical world and everything in it is a dream, a projection, which DOES NOT REALLY EXIST AT ALL, just like how our nighttime dreams do not really exist at all.

Literally, all physical forms are ILLUSIONS, i.e. dreams. They are not there at all. There is no truth to them, no reality to them, they are absolutely completely fictional in every way. The mind is making them up. And when this is fully recognized by the whole Sonship, this entire physical universe will be recognized as having never existed - i.e. it does not exist now, and it never will exist, and there simply is no world here.

This is also why the Course tells us that "at no time does the body really exist." Many students love to keep the body and make it special and explain how the body does exist or how it can be seen in the present moment or used for a holy purpose or whatever. Ultimately, factually, in Jesus's words, it DOES NOT EXIST. It is an illusion at most. It cannot exist in Eternity and it does not really exist at all.

Now, you can see perhaps that in the ACIM community there is a tremendous amount of confusion because of these two kind of "levels" in the making of illusions. The level of the personal individual conscious self and its seeming scope of influence or illusions, and the level of the collective shared mind of Christ which IS responsible for dreaming this entire universe.

For the most part, most students are fixated on and can only really relate to the experience of being a separate self in a separate body, the projections that their personal self makes onto the allegedly pre-existing world, and so their undoing process usually entails taking back projections that are placed onto other people, or changing your mind "about the world" instead of attempting to change the world itself.

This has produced a huge division in the Course community between those who believe the Course is telling us to find a personal sense of peace "in" the world, in spite of the world, in spite of sickness, in spite of death, and those who believe that this ultimately falls short of the whole truth and that the entire world itself is not there. The result is an attempt to be at peace with sickness, to keep the body and deny it through some kind of transcendence, and still results in death. This distortion of the Course then produces two camps.

The first camp basically sees themselves as a little individual body self, who has their own personal stories and projections. They do not consider the world to literally not exist, and cannot conceive of how they might have power over it. What they end up doing is focusing on undoing their personal stories and projections "onto" the world, or "onto" others, as though this is all that the Course is asking them to do.

They will refuse to believe anything beyond the scope of this, and will justify it with various quotes from the Course. Now, the thing is, they are not wrong. The Course DOES teach that at the LEVEL of the personal level, you need to take back projections from others, find peace in spite of what's happening, come to see God "in" the world because God is in your mind, work on changing how you look at the world rather than trying to change the world, never attempting to take the spirituality of the Course to others because it seems like a private process, and just generally everything which fits nice and tidily into this "box" of how the individual separate self perceives an objective world.

There are plenty of parts of the Course which tell us seemingly straight-out that this is what we are supposed to be doing and that this is the truth and will use this interpretation to justify not doing anything outside of this definition. The thing is, A Course in Miracles actually has multiple "levels" of truth, and this is not a contradiction. There are truths which apply on a certain level.

In terms of the personal self, we do indeed need to stop projecting shit onto other people and change how we "perceive" the world, to reach true perception or to have corrected perception. However, this isn't the end of the story. The people who see the Course as saying this, which is easy to do given that this actually is part of the process of complete awakening, will try to fit EVERYTHING the Course says into this box. And this also includes miracles.

To these believers in personal awakening inside the dream, they tend to justify that other things the Course says must fit inside the box of correcting perception, in order for there to seem to be consistency and integrity. And you can sort of find slightly skewed interpretations of what these other parts of the Course say to make them seem to "fit" into that box. And this is what has happened with miracles.

Such people will then explain that a miracle has got something to do with perception shifting, correcting perception, the process of waking up to true perception or is just another way of saying "changing your mind" about the world. This is understandable given that they see the Course as one whole consistent unit and don't realize that it's being presented on multiple levels, or that there are multiple levels of sleeping.

The Son of God, Christ, is the source of the dream of death - the dream of this entire physical universe. And within Christ, within that dream, there is a fragmentation of identity into the Sonship, which comprises many individuals, and each individual has their own separate seeming "private world" of misperceptions. But what they are mis-perceiving is the dream which a HIGHER LEVEL has dreamed, thinking it is a given and is real and is outside the scope of their conscious awareness. Indeed it is outside the scope of their identity, because it's coming from a level of much greater unified identity as Christ - the ONE Mind.

Therefore to try to explain what miracles are or what Christ is, these individuals will try to fit all of the Course's references to miracles and Christ into the same box of "what applies to individual Sons". And that's a mistake. This gives rise then to a complete stripping down of what Christ is, a stripping away of the POWER that must be present to dream an entire universe and make it seem physically real, and a complete diminishing of any concept of "real miracles" which have the power to do anything - including healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, or whatever.

Trying to fit all of that inside a "I am a separate Son, one of many" kind of box, to have it make sense TO that one limited identity or scope of awareness, completely glosses over what miracles are or and what Christ's power is. People will then have an awakening up to the level of the maximum scope of their INDIVIDUAL consciousness, i.e. an awareness of being one of many Sons of God, and will refer to that as being Christ or aware of the Christ in others. IT IS NOT. Not in ACIM's definition.

Christ is a mind so vast and powerful that it can dream entire planets, can create a whole universe - or multiple universes. It can put in place an absolutely countless number of particles of matter to form buildings and people and environments which people believe is SO real that it must really be a real world. Seeing the holiness of an individual Son in other individual Sons is not the same as seeing the face of Christ. It is definitely a state of mind of profound unity and oneness, but there is an entire other level to awareness which is vastly beyond this.

To reach this other level of awareness requires a complete transcendence not only of the personal ego self or personality but also moving beyond being a separate Son. It means being THE WHOLE SONSHIP as One. In this, there can no longer be a personality, or a separate mind, or separate thoughts, or reliance on a body. It is a very advanced state.

Such an experience is way beyond the personal body self or what the body self is capable of doing. The Christ Self is vastly powerful, unlimited in the truest sense, and can literally do anything because He is able to dream this entire world. To Him, this world is recognized as not being real at all, being something He Himself is dreaming in its entirety. It does not exist without His dreaming and has no inherent reality of its own. If it were not for Christ dreaming the world, this entire physical universe would disappear instantly.

At this level, which is what forms the second "camp" in the ACIM community, it is recognized that there is an entire level of truth in the Course way bigger and more expanded than the parts which apply to the individual self. At this level, we're talking about a mind and an identity which is truly One, singular, as God's One Son. This mind, this Self, is beyond all Higher Selves and includes them all.

Such a Christ mind is responsible for dreaming this entire physical universe and for therefore putting in place absolutely all of the things, objects, people and events which appear to exist here. Such a mind is so powerful, there is literally nothing it cannot do. Such a mind is transcendent of all bodies and forms, transcendent of all of the laws of the physical universe, and can completely override absolutely anything in an instant. This mind is extremely creative, is totally at-cause, and is not at the effect of ANYTHING in this world whatsoever.

Such a mind is completely invulnerable, literally immortal, unlimited in its power, able to manifest objects - in fact planets and solar systems - out of nothing, and for such a mind miracles of healing and manifestation at a "human level" is practically nothing. THIS is the level of mind which Jesus demonstrated, and it is this level of mind which is responsible for SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES.

You could therefore say, that the level of the personal self-awakening is a level of "natural miracles", and the level of awakening as CHRIST is a level of "super-natural miracles". It is very common that those in the first camp tend not to believe in super-natural miracles because they do not see the parts of the Course relating to or teaching about the Christ-level of mind. Instead they see the watered down, nice tidy little keep-it-in-a-box relating to the individual self interpretation of what miracles are. In other words, miracles are just little changes in perception experienced by an individual. It's not true.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles LITERALLY are super-natural miracles, as evidenced by practically every single thing that the Course ever says about their nature. When correctly understood OUTSIDE of the box of the closed-minded and still "a part of the dream" personal self, everything Jesus teaches about miracles points to their supernatural power, the Power of God, the ability to LITERALLY move mountains, to heal the sick, to undo all forms of disease and suffering, to undo death itself and produce resurrection.

There can be no complete resurrection without this supernatural level of awakening, because death is only fully overcome at the level of the Christ mind, not at the level of the awakened individual Higher Self. There are an increasing number of people waking up IN the dream and staying in the dream who do not exhibit any signs of supernatural miracles whatsoever, because their mind is only just now at the beginning of opening up to the Christ mind.

You will find that all of these people still go through DEATH, because they have not escaped the dream of death and have not fully awoken FROM the dream of death. The absence of miracles, the nature of which Jesus demonstrated, which He has told us in many ways we are perfectly capable of, is the first sign you will see that shows that awakening to the Higher Self or highest individual self is still short of a complete awakening.

The Course will make so much more sense when understood to contain more than one level. This doesn't mean we're dividing up the Course into imaginary levels as such. There ARE different levels because there are stages in separation. Christ, the One Son, is a very different level in terms of scope and power and capability and awareness and identity, compared to the level of one individual "son" in the Sonship. Awakening to the Sonship is profound and an extraordinary experience of waking up from the even littler self - the ego false self. But going from the ego little self to being one of many Sons is not the same thing as being ALL Sons with a single mind, wielding the Power of God to produce real miracles.

A Course in Miracles therefore IS literally teaching us that miracles - supernatural miracles - are not only possible but something that we can become capable of IF we are willing to go all the way to awakening in the dream and then awakening FROM the dream. We might be aware of who the dreamer is, but until we decide to BE that dreamer and realize the sheer power that we have as that dreamer, we will still be subject to all the laws that the dream puts in place, seemingly powerless to stop them or change them. And as such we will not see miracles.

It should be clear then, that the only reason we seem unable to change objects, heal the sick, manifest matter out of thin air, feed 5000 people from a few fish and loaves of bread, to walk on water or raise the dead etc, is only because there is a LARGER MIND which is dreaming this world who has FAR more power than our little personal mind, and it is that larger mind which has implemented the physical world and its laws.

It is that larger mind that is sustaining the physical world and its laws. So if you want to be able to override that dream, you need to become aware of and access that larger mind, from which you will be able to demonstrate truly supernatural miracles. This is why in the dream, we seem so powerless, so unable to change hardly anything, to barely even have a shred of telekinesis, to be incapable of stopping aging or death, and to hardly have any power whatsoever over sickness or suffering. It's because the larger mind is very powerfully "holding" all of those things in place.

If we want to be able to gain access to the power to undo death and sickness and so on, we need to wake up ALL the way to the Christ mind, to the DREAMER, to become total causality. In that mind, in that awareness, and with that Identity of Authority over all illusions, we WILL then have the ability to do absolutely literally anything in this world.

Recognize then that Jesus does speak at different "levels" in the Course and not just all at one level. When He speaks of very high-level Christ-level things, these things cannot be properly applied or understood at the level of individual self. Trying to do so will lead to all manner of misunderstandings and disempowerment of your full potential.

Being able to recognize which level Jesus is speaking at - which level of awareness and identity - helps you to know what applies to the scope or context that you're referring to, and also helps you to make much more sense out of what Jesus is teaching. Without that, trying to smash everything into one little box will severely fall short of what A Course in Miracles is teaching, not to mention producing a lot of confusion and conflict.

The Christ mind is projecting the physical universe. It is a dream. It is not real and it does not exist. The single-son mind is within this dream, as an individual character, and that individual has its own dreaming that it projects onto the dream. Dreams within dreams. When that son wakes up and stops projecting onto the dream, He has "awoken" to an awareness of being One among many sons, and at this level it is possible for other Sons to still be sleeping. But THERE IS MORE beyond this.

The single Son in the sonship must now go further to become aware of the collective Single Identity as God's Holy Son - as Christ - an identity which has so much scope and power that it is capable of unlimited miracles. It is at this level that Jesus refers to when He says just about everything He says about miracles. For example, "miracles should be happening all the time". I could go into this much more deeply but that's for another article.

Realize then there are at least 2 stages in awakening, two levels, and that Jesus speaks to each level in the Course at different times. There are actually at least 3 levels because level 1 is the ego false self identity, level 2 is the Higher Self (one son of God in the Sonship) and level 3 is the Christ Self (the whole Sonship/Christ consciousness). There is actually a little more:

Level 5: Heaven/Spirit

Level 4: Christ/christ universe (creates all of the levels below this)

Level 3: Higher Self/higher universe (where most awakened people actually are)

Level 2: Holy Spirit/spiritual universe/astral plane

Level 1: Ego-self/physical world

The first awakening level typically takes people to level 2 then 3. This is a level where miracles aren't happening very much, but the potential is there. Level 4/Christ is where the demonstrations of Jesus correlate - extraordinarily mild-blowing miracles. And then there is Heaven - the home of Spirit. When Jesus speaks of Spirit He always talks of how it is already in a state of grace forever and nothing has happened to it whatsoever. That's the level of pure reality. Home in Heaven.

It should be apparent then that it is very common for ACIM students to try to relate everything the Course says to the level of "my separate self", within the context of being a body separate from others, and within the scope of "my mind" as in their own little separate conscious self, whose perceptions and projections onto a completely separate world make up the entire focus of their grasp of awakening.

They will then believe that once they experience "waking up", they're done. But they're not done. Where are the miracles? Where is the demonstration that you are dreaming the world and have total power over all illusions and forms? Where is the proof that there is no death? Where is the real resurrection and signs that show that you are immortal?

And yet this undoing of distortions of perception at the individual level only brings us to an awakening that reveals the full scope of our SEPARATE self within the Sonship, it doesn't bring us to awareness of being Christ. There is a whole other level of awakening which is vast and extraordinarily powerful, a single shared identity for whom supernatural miracles are effortless and continual.

I will finish with this final quote which I enjoy, and which is speaking of the level of Christ:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Wake up! Then wake up some more!

"The real world still is but a dream." - section 7 of Chapter 29, section 4 of ACIM.

In the Course, sometimes Jesus uses some terms which SEEM to imply something He did not mean to imply. When he referred to the "real world", He did NOT mean the world is real. And by world here, I'm talking about the physical universe, because every reference to "world" in the Course is referring to the physical universe (the dream of death).

So Jesus referred to the world, seen correctly with "true perception", ie perception without any errors - still perceiving WITHIN the dream, within space and time, but without any delusions ... as the "real world". It is "real" as in, seen WITH TRUTH, the truth OF it is seen correctly. The truth OF it is that it is NOT REAL. The truth of it, is that it is FALSE and untrue. When this is RECOGNIZED with true perception, you are seeing the "real version" of the world. In other words, real as in, what it actually is (unreal) compared to what you thought it was (illusions appearing real).

He uses this terminology because He's comparing it to when you have false perception, where you see this physical world with eyes of hate and judgement, and do not recognize it for what it is. In false perception you see a world of vengeance. You see hate IN the world. When you compare that false view OF the world, with a CORRECT view OF the world, the correct view is seeing "the truth" ABOUT the world... which shows you, in correct recognition, that this world is FALSE and NOT REAL.

The world is still an illusion. A false perception OF an illusion makes it seem real to you, and then you do not recognize it is an illusion, and you think it is the truth. That mistaken perception of the world needs to be corrected in order to see the FORGIVEN WORLD. When the world is seen through forgiving eyes - eyes of truth - those eyes do not see hate and guilt and fear IN the world. It simply sees what is "there", which is... an illusory world. It SEES and recognizes that there is a FALSE WORLD appearing in perception. You might well see God "in it", or see God "about it", or overlook the world to see Christ beyond it. But the world ITSELF is recognized as NOT REAL. The "real world" is actually the NOT REAL WORLD.

Once the world is recognized as not real, ie you are finally able to SEE what this thing IS for what it actually is - a false illusion pretending to be a world - then the purpose of perception and of the world is complete, and THEN YOU WAKE UP FROM THE DREAM, the world disappears, and there is only you with God. NOW you are in reality.

Jesus's use of the term "real world" in the Course has been very confusing for many students, because so many of us rely on the exact specific words Jesus uses and we don't really take it all in proper context of the bigger picture. This creates contradictions. If Jesus really meant the "real world" was actually REALITY, this would go against 99% of the rest of the Course. He ONLY uses this term to describe a correct perception of an UNREAL world - see the "reality" or "truth" of the world, which shows you that it is not really there. It's not a real world at all.

Jesus actually does this also in some other places in the course where he uses a terminology that SEEMS contradictory or seems to suggest something He did not intend. To discern this you need quite a bit of experience grasping the metaphysics. For example He said in one place that something can be "perfectly real within time but not in eternity." That can seem to imply that something inside of time - even though the course teaches that time is an illusion - is "real". If you interpret it that way, you will now come to a vast array of further confused conclusions. Jesus is not saying that anything in time is real at all. He is only saying that eternity is real and anything in time is an ILLUSION of reality, and seeing it correctly is seeing the "reality of it" - the truth that it is an illusion, just as above.

The "real world" is not real. There is no real world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. This is the thought which anyone with an ego DOES NOT WANT. The fact is that when you get to True Perception, you WILL and MUST recognize that this thing you've been calling a real world, is JUST an illusion. Nothing more or less. It has no reality to it, no truth to it, it is recognized and registers with you as completely FALSE. You see THROUGH it, with forgiving eyes. You do not buy its illusions, you do not believe in it, you do not think it is really happening. And then it disappears as God scoops you up and you wind up back in REALITY. A reality in which THE WORLD DOES NOT EXIST. Or in a word, "Heaven". Only heaven is real.

"THE WORLD YOU SEE DOES NOT EXIST" (the world you see with your physical eyes does not exist).

"Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not. And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?" - ACIM

When I think about how I used to practice forgiveness, it all seemed so mechanical. I didn't really understand what forgiveness was, even if some version of it was spelled out in various books. I didn't understand what part Holy Spirit played, or what to expect of Him. It seems to have taken a very long time to refine this.

At first, I understood forgiveness was about 'it hasn't really happened' and forgiving for what people have NOT done, and that this entailed some form of taking back projections and stopping scapegoating. I tried various people's techniques and so on for releasing what I'd taken back, and sometimes it seemed to work a bit, not often. Most of the struggle seemed to be remembering to even forgive at all, or how to do it.

Over time I adopted another method which I felt provided new insight into how this works, and that involved some fairly clear steps to take, including going into the feeling and finding out where it came from and seeing that I did it to myself and then trying to see out 'the truth' about me. And in some ways that seemed to be quite powerful. But it still was pretty much me doing this on my own.

If I would ask Holy Spirit to help me forgive, he would perhaps help me with insights or wording and so on. But still it seemed to all be about me changing my perception, finding the real cause, stopping believing things that weren't true, discerning what was true or false etc. And still Holy Spirit was sort of more of an advisor or guide.

More recently, however, I became willing to start to experiment with allowing Holy Spirit to come into me, Himself, and to do whatever he needed to do. It was kind of baby steps at first. Just exploring and learning to trust. I would invite Him into my 'body' and He would seem to move in me and do some energetic/emotional changes, if I was willing. Sometimes he would do this 'flush' thing where, once he has done some setup, excess emotions/fear/stress drain out of me. Or, he would lift this 'stuff' up from my feet all the way up to and out of my head.

While this was helpful to me I didn't know why other people weren't talking about this or doing this. I didn't know in what way it fit with ACIM, and yet I knew it was Holy Spirit doing this. He would say "surrender" or "relax" and I pretty much knew that right after that he was going to perform a healing of some kind. But like anything, in order to 'open up' to this stuff it requires willingness, trust, curiosity and the ability to listen, to ask questions and build a relationship.

More recently I gradually have received more clarity from various sources about forgiveness, what it is, what it does, and what other aspects of Holy Spirit's thought system I need to align with, such as taking responsibility, being unconditional, acceptance, etc. Michael Murray has a good handle on those 'tools' and the metaphysics behind it.

What came to me then was that instead of attempting this kind of mental-oriented process of forgiving through thought and perceptual adjustments, which is very head-oriented, I would begin to open up my heart to Holy Spirit and become willing to *receive* His healing. I think the turning point was when I realized that "He will correct all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him" really literally means that HE will do the correction, not just of my perception, but also of all the side effects, symptoms or consequences that came about as a result. And that includes things going on in my body, my emotions, and the world around me.

He began to literally 'cleanse' me of guilt and sin instead of me trying to wrap my head around them or see them from a different vantage point. I could talk myself into higher truth in an intellectual way, but here Holy Spirit was starting to stir in me and move through me and heal me. Preparing the way perhaps for working through me on behalf of others. This was something I desired and wanted to explore and open up to. Now when I forgive, I know that toward the end of it, and maybe even before I get done with 'my part', Holy Spirit is going to likely step in and do something. And I mean, DO something. Action.

As I explore this more, and open up to miracles, and make myself a channel of Holy Spirit's healing power, I am allowing my 'forgiveness' to be more a practice in, ultimately, receiving healing from God (mental/emotional/physical) rather than me trying to use my head to figure out how I'm innocent. It is more experiential. I want to *experience* God. I want to *experience* truth and not have it just be some mental exercise in discernment. And it's even more than that.

What about God? What about love? I feel a stirring that I want to spend the rest of my time simply focusing on .. how to be unconditionally loving, how to receive and extend God and His miracles, and how to just love love love love love. It's not mental. It's not intellectual. It's in the HEART. God is love. I want to be in the love with God. I want everything to be focused around and centered on love. And I want to be open to God being the one who heals my mind and emotions and body, and those of others too. I want to share in God's love and receive it, instead of thinking (with ego) I have to do all this work myself. Yes I need to still take some steps and have a willingness, but I realize more and more that 'waking up' isn't anywhere near as heart-felt a 'concept' as being reunited with God. Who wants to clinically wake up unless it's all about a grand reunion?

I want God to be in my practice of A Course in Miracles, and that has much less to do with the methodical mechanical forgiveness processes I used to think were 'the way to do it'. Maybe I needed them in order to realize they are unrefined or less effective than God's way. We are meant to open up to allow Holy Spirit to flow through us fully and openly, to direct us, to speak for us, to heal through us, and to be our mind. All this 'doing it on my own' stuff is very tiresome and unnecessary.

Thank you God for revealing the truth of your light and love experientially in my life and extending it all those I meet. As Jesus outlines in the beginning of the Text about miracles (in the unsanitized version):

"You should begin each day with the prayer 'Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."" - Jesus.

Let's take a closer look at sin and find out why no-one has ever sinned.

"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

""Sinless" means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless or not. If your mind is part of God's you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful."

What is sin?

Simply, it is the attempt to reverse cause and effect. You are the effect of God, and God is the cause of you. When you attempt to reverse this, so that you are CAUSING GOD, this is "sin". It would mean God is now affected by you, changed by you, against His will. That means you have attacked Him and changed him. The belief that you CAN do this, and that you HAVE done this, is the belief that sin is REAL. But this is IMPOSSIBLE.

There is a simple fact to keep in mind. You CANNOT change God in any way. You cannot cause him or affect him. You cannot do anything against His will. You cannot attack Him or make Him be something He does not want to be. Which means, literally, YOU CANNOT SIN against Him. You cannot cause God, therefore you cannot sin. Your hands are tied. You cannot attack anything real.

This also means that IN REALITY, nothing real can be threatened, nothing real can be sinned against, nothing real can be CHANGED, and therefore SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE. You literally cannot go against, oppose, object to, resist, attack, defend against, or do anything TO God or anything real. Sin is literally impossible. Sin literally CANNOT HAPPEN, and HAS NOT HAPPENED. And this isn't mere theory, you literally HAVE NOT SINNED AT ALL.

It is vital to absorb this FACT, because it lays the foundation for correctly framing what's to come next.

You have not sinned, you cannot sin, sin cannot occur, you cannot attack God, you cannot change reality, and you cannot cause the death of life. SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY.

Now. As you find yourself in a DREAM WORLD, Earth, reading words on a screen, you are not being aware of reality. You are not effectively "IN" reality. The world is an attempt to overthrow reality and replace it with unreality. The world is unreal. It's a dream of death. It's an ATTEMPT TO SIN, despite the fact that actually doing this IN REALITY is impossible. It's your best effort to TRY to PROVE that sin is not only possible but has occurred.

You MADE UP a bunch of dream illusions to try to paint a picture of what it might look like *IF* you had sinned. That picture is this world. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." It's a picture of THE IMPOSSIBLE. "It is the world you see that is impossible." In this world, NOTHING HAPPENS. "All events are nowhere."

Yet this world SEEMS to contain things happening, seems to feature bodies attacking bodies, and seems riddled with sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." And if we BELIEVE that this world is REALITY, we WILL believe that the "sins" that occur are REAL sins, mistaking FANTASY SINS for reality. These ILLUSIONS of sin, IMPOSSIBLE sin seeming possible, are literally nothing but fiction, with NO REAL CONSEQUENCES against anything real. God is not affected by it, nothing real is threatened by it. You literally have NOT CAUSED ANY DAMAGE OR HARM EVER.

The fact remains. You literally cannot sin. You can't even begin to sin. This world is not real and so anything "happening" here is not REALLY happening. If you break a window, you did not break a real window. You broke a dream window. If you killed a flock of sheep in a fit of rage, you didn't. You merely dreamed of doing so. If you think you did some terrible crime that is punishable by death and suffering, you are ATTEMPTING to hold a deathly judgement against an INNOCENT Son of God, BY MISTAKE.

Because here's the fact of the matter. If you cannot sin against anything real, and therefore sin is impossible, you believing you HAVE DONE SO MUST BE MISTAKEN. You MUST be confused. You MUST be delusional. You MUST be out of your mind insane if you think it's even POSSIBLE to sin, yet alone that you have, or "have the proof" to show for it. There is no such thing as evidence of sin. There are only lies and illusions of sin. There is no real sin. ALL SIN IS FAKE.

Only by being very mistaken does anyone BELIEVE they have sinned. Only in confusion are we convinced that it's even POSSIBLE to cause something against its will. Only by being in ERROR having made an error of discernment does it seem plausible or "happening" that there can be "real death", "murder", "war" and the like. These are DREAMS of hell, not real hell. They are illusions of sin in an illusory world.

You have never sinned. You will never sin. God finds you guiltless, sinless and innocent forever. This is what you need to wake up to - accepting this is FORGIVENESS. The overlooking of sin, the overlooking of guilt, the overlooking of death. There is no sin, or guilt, or suffering, or sickness, or death. ALL of it SEEMS real, SEEMS to be happening, SEEMS like an awful terrible nightmare. But it is nothing BUT a nightmare. It's a nightmare to BELIEVE you can sin when you can't, or that you HAVE sinned when it's impossible.

You cannot sin. You will not sin. You have not sinned. There is no sin. No one has ever sinned. No one can sin against you. You have never sinned against anyone. YOU ARE NOT A SINNER. You are ETERNALLY INNOCENT. This is the only verdict the Holy Spirit will accept about you because He knows without a doubt that your idea of sinning is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE and completely illusory.

You are DREAMING of sinfulness, suffering and death. You are punishing yourself in a hell of your own making for NO GOOD REASON. You are finding yourself guilty for having DONE NOTHING. You are not criminal, sinful, or guilty. You have never hurt anything or anyone. You are EXONERATED because IN REALITY SIN DOES NOT EXIST. If you think it exists, you are unaware of reality.

Belief in sin IS THE PROBLEM, not the sin itself. This whole world, the entire ego separation, the dream of death, is ALL about your BELIEF that you DID SIN, in DENIAL of the fact that YOU DID NOT. The WHOLE THING is a case of mistaken identity and false accusations. A claim that you accomplished something you could never do. It's an attempt to invent the evidence and give it credit/reality so that it SEEMS to prove you DID commit a horrible crime against God. YOU COULD NOT, NEVER DID, NEVER WILL.

So this whole world is A MISTAKE. You are MISTAKEN when you believe you or others are sinful or guilty. "BELIEVING in" sin being true is the actual issue. Your belief is mistaken. Your belief is madness. Your belief is an ERROR. And all errors can be CORRECTED. You believing you CAN and HAVE sinned is NOT TRUE, it and this error in thinking needs to be corrected so that you will REALIZE, you never did anything AT ALL. You accused yourself FALSELY.

No matter what you think you did, no matter how extreme or severe or what the consequences seemed to be, YOU HAVE NOT done a single thing EVER that God is upset with you about. You have ONLY been very mistaken. You have only ever had "mental illness", believing something is possible that isn't. You've acted insanely because you were not in your right mind. No one in their right mind believes in sin because the authority-problem notion of "I can change reality" is utterly ridiculous.

Mistakes call for FORGIVENESS AND HEALING. To forgive is to overlook the error and recognize the truth. You have not sinned. There is no sin. "And in this view are all your sins forgiven." A mistaken person merely needs healing, not punishment. You deserve forgiveness and healing, not condemnation. You have simply been confused and have mistaken illusions and dreams of sinning for reality.

Not one single sin in the history of the planet has ever happened. There is no sin anywhere. All "doing" is illusion. Everyone is eternally innocent. God finds you worthy, and loves you forever. Sinless, guiltless, deathless, fearless. You are holy and always were.

The ego can be pretty sneaky. Usually it is merely suspicious. And usually it will tell you just seemingly 'small lies', just enough to get you a bit upset. This way the ego gets to hide while you're kept under control by little lies.

But then as you get upset, it's willing to start to tell you slightly bigger lies. It hopes to pry you open like a can-opener, gradually reinforcing the lies and getting you to believe in it more and more.

Over time, gradually, if unchecked, you'll start to build up some major conviction that what it's saying is true, or that what it's saying will happen is true. Before you know it, you've gone down a slippery slope into hell.

The ego bargains that if it can keep your awareness from rising up to question it, it can keep pulling you in, deeper and deeper, adding layer upon layer of deceit and lies. It banks on you going along with it, believing it, listening to it, being scared by it etc.

Over time you even start to side with it, because by believing it you begin to develop a false idea of what is true and real. You enter into insanity and everything flips around and you start to really believe that what the ego has said is actually true. You will even start to defend it. And by identifying with it, you'll even feel offended when someone else points out how much it is lying to you.

At that point, it's hard for someone to reach in and show you the truth because you are so 'close' to the ego, in identification, that you think that what it's said about you is who you really are. Seeming to 'attack' the ego then seems to be an attack on YOU, and the ego counts on that, for you to become its defender. It is now your ally.

This can go on for quite some time and in fact can even take you all the way to death. Death can only happen by you giving the ego consent to destroy you, by you just falling into all of its traps and deceptions and coming to side with its conclusions. And the funny thing is, because you're unconscious, you won't even REALIZE that you're falling into a trap, or see it AS a trap, and therefore won't even sense motivation to get out of it. You'll walk right into a death trap thinking it's your salvation.

So as this goes on, the ego is willing to become more vicious and to scream more and to tell you ever increasingly horrifying things, to build up your fear and your allegiance. It counts on you believing it, reacting to it, buying into it, and going along with it, in order for it to tempt you a little bit further into a nightmare of hell. This will continue so long as you keep falling for its tricks.

But this is a risk for the ego, because the more that it exposes its hate and its destruction and its desire to destroy you, it's really risking the possibility of you noticing how ridiculous it is. It will only bring out its 'big guns' when it knows that you are sufficiently cultivated into its deluded ways that you will not be likely to question it - that you don't have enough awareness or discernment left to NOTICE that it's giving you lies.

It will also come out full force when it senses that you are about to abandon it and withdraw your belief in it, because it doesn't want you to undo it.

It needs you to not RECOGNIZE a lie for what it is, but to fail to realize that the ego is even against you. It wants you believing it is your best friend so that it can pull you into unconsciousness.

The risk is great. If the ego turns to viciousness and comes out of hiding and presents its biggest, most vicious attacks, things could go either way. Either you will be so horrified and reactive that you'll just buy right into it, OR, you might suddenly start to notice how utterly ridiculous this all is.

When life goes to SHIT, and things just become really ridiculous, sometimes you'll start to exclaim to yourself, "this can't be happening", "it seems like a dream", "I can't believe it", "this is just so ridiculous" etc... this is you starting to REALIZE that the situation IS ridiculous. The problem is that many of us will continue to side with the seeming reality and seriousness of the situation, instead of realizing that the ABILITY to see the ridiculousness is the WAY OUT, and to focus on that. You're starting to see through the ego's lie, but your belief that 'stuff happening' is real often prevents you TRUSTING your instinct.

If things get so ridiculous that you just can't believe it, you might even start to laugh at how ridiculous it is. This is good. This happens when you've so totally exhausted the purpose of this ego lesson or your use of it, and have run out of a need for it, and now you've come to a place of SURRENDER. Usually, you will only go along with the ego because you think there's a benefit of you getting to control life, or that you need to control life in order to deal with the problem the ego lies about, and it's often not until you SURRENDER that ego position by realizing how FUTILE the separation from God is, that you'll finally WAKE UP to realize that this is all just a ridiculous stupid dream that you can no longer take seriously.

And so the allegiance with the ego then is broken. It exposed itself, it took a risk, it did everything it could to fully and directly confront you with bullshit, and you laughed in its face. Congratulations.

This filesystem of a computer on an open network is actually a very good analogy for the structure of heaven and the relationship of individuals.

Let's say that there is a file system containing all this content.

Let's then say that you have your own computer (your soul) which is networked into the file system (via the christ mind which connects the souls).

Let's say that because the system is "open", other souls also can hook themselves up to the file system (via the christ mind).

And let's also say the system is so open that anyone who connects themselves to the file system also becomes "part of" the system, and their system is open, and so it allows access to their own computer by the main filesystem and also by all the other computers (souls).

In this open environment (heaven/sonship), I can access a file, say a pdf file, on the file system, and have full access to it. I can read the whole file. Simultaneously, you and other souls can access the same pdf file, and have full access to it, and share it, at the same time, and read the whole thing without limits.

Similarly I can access YOU, the file on your own computer (soul), and fully access everything about you and share "what you are", including any "creations" which you might have stored "inside" your own computer (within your being).

And as such in this open state, the entirety of creation is accessible to everyone simultaneously, fully, and without restrictions. Everything is shared. No-one is denied access. Everyone can access everything fully, even if others are accessing the same content, at the same time. Our access overlaps.

NOW.

Consider the separation idea, or the ego. What would happen if you suddenly became selfish, and decided that you wanted access to one of the files on the file system, to have the same full access you had before, BUT... with a condition.

The condition is, that no-one else is allowed to access it at the same time as you. You want exclusive rights. You want ownership. You want the content to be isolated. You want to keep others away from the content and not share it with them. And to do this you have to put a "wall" of some kind around the little piece of content to a) keep you inside of it where you can access the content, and b) keep others outside of it so they can't access it.

Now, let's say that rather than you doing this with a file on the main filesystem, you instead try to do this with your own computer (soul). Let's say you try to make it so that you have access to your self, but other souls don't. That the main file system is also deprived access from your computer, and no-one is allowed to share what's on your computer. You want a "private" system.

So you put up a wall around your computer (the body, around the mind) to try to keep you in and others out, so that you can have exclusive rights and possession of what is "inside" you and reject what now seems to be "outside you" (the rest of the network/sonship). You're now being selfish. You've put yourself into lockdown. You have shut yourself off from SHARING with the whole, from the network, and from the main filesystem, and so all you are left with is what's inside your own system.

In this state now, you are still basically the soul, the self, which you were before this happened. In this act, you did not actually invent a self. You already were a self, when you were sharing the filesystem, as God intended. Openly. But now that you put a wall around yourself, this makes "your self" become "separate". It's like you unplugged your computer from the network so that no-one else could share what you have.

So this produces "a self which has BECOME separate", which previously was not separate. This is what "the separate self" means. THIS *SELFISHNESS* is the EGO. Not the idea of a self or soul.... the idea of a self or soul that has become trapped in isolation due to the walls its put up, the blocks to awareness, which have disconnected and disassociated itself from sharing with the whole networked system. So now you are a perfect being surrounded by limitation. The limitation needs to be removed, not your SELF.

In fact, in order to "wake up" from the state, you need to plug your self back into the network (sonship) and re-join with the whole system (heaven), by plugging your computer (soul) back into the network via a cable (christ mind) so that you can share the whole system again. And this also means the whole system now has access to YOU as well, because you are part of the content. Literally this means that a part of the sonship, a part of creation, which was orphaned, is now returning to the whole, so that the whole can now SHARE IT and access it and therefore benefit from and enjoy it (you) just as much as you enjoy others.

So you see just like with computers, which host NON-PHYSICAL content, Heaven also hosts non-physical content. And in that kind of system it's possible for us to SHARE and have simultaneous access with everyone else, without anyone being limited or restricted or shut out in any way. This is the nature of Heaven, God's creation. It's all based on openness and sharing by many individual souls who ALL have FULL access to the WHOLE of everything all at once.

Your soul has full access to everything, and to the ego that would mean "there is nothing left" for anyone else. But to God, your full access means everyone else ALSO can share and have everything. Just not exclusively. There is no exclusivity, isolation, SPECIALNESS or selfishness in heaven. It's a totally 100% open shared system of freedom.

ACIM: "The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self fullness."

Is the miracle just for you, or for you to give to others also?

Did Jesus only experience miracles for Himself, or did He also share them with others?

When Jesus performed a forgiveness process, do you think that He was applying it only His personal, separate self and his own separate mind? Did the rules of forgiveness only work within his inner experience, or did they overflow onto others?

I am discovering something which I think has been majorly overlooked by the ACIM community. I overlooked it because I always thought "I" was doing the Course, therefore "I" was the one who needed forgiveness, that "I" should claim atonement for my ego self, and that therefore "I" am the only one who is going to benefit from forgiveness and miracles.

But the ego cannot claim the atonement for itself. So THAT "I" cannot be the Self that we are claiming the atonement for. Therefore if that I isn't the identity who experiences atonement, it must be an atonement that extends beyond that I, right? It must go beyond the ego self, and therefore the miracle MUST be shared with others. We MUST be awakening to a shared identity, which is a shared mind (minds that are joined cannot be sick), which means that whatever process of forgiveness and miracles I am applying, it CANNOT just apply to my "self".

I'm suddenly starting to see all manner of understandings about forgiveness, which I had applied to my "separate-me", suddenly applying to others. And as I look further into the idea of working "healing miracles" for others, it is starting to become glaringly obvious that the process of applying forgiveness "for my self" can actually be applied FOR another person.

In other words, this isn't all about me me me forgive myself. As within so without. The "in here" mind in this body is not all of my mind. The world "out there" is not outside of my mind. The out-there world is actually inside my mind because my mind CONTAINS the world. Now, we're talking about at the level of CHRIST here, not just the level of personal Higher-Self mind. The One Son, not the sonship.

I do believe that in ACIM Jesus is teaching us from a level of Christ much of the time, and that the truth's he's trying to point us to are at the Christ level, not just level 2 or 3. At the Christ level, the entire world is the ego, the entire world is an illusion, and the entire world is within my mind. Therefore, "other people" are also in my mind, they are part of my dreaming, their illusion of sickness and death showing up in form are aspects of MY delusions, and therefore I CAN heal their sickness by healing my "self" - ie returning to the Christ identity - the shared collective Christ consciousness.

That means the Course isn't just about me remaining separate - an ego - studying the Course in isolation, doing it "to myself" or "for myself", ie, for my separate identity. In order for miracles to express through me to "others", the rules of miracles must apply equally to the "me" that thinks it is separate inside this body, AND the "me" that is showing up externally. It is all One.

For example, when you look at someone else's body and you see sickness. If you believe it is real (God created it), there is an illusion in "the mind" relating to misperceiving that sickness. You think that illusion is in the mind that's in your body. So you go about a forgiveness process to correct that illusion seemingly in "your mind", to adjust your "personal perception", but it now means you see the other person's sickness correctly as an illusion. This however still leaves an illusion out there. The person is still sick. And in God's truth, illusions are not real, so that person cannot really be sick. Their illusory sickness must go!

So there is an "application" of a forgiveness process that is meant to be applied to OTHERS. This is the proper functioning of the "procedure" of performing a healing miracle for your brother. When bringing in the Holy Spirit and fulfilling your role as "asking for what you want" through commands, and are believing the person must be healed (per God logic) regardless of what *appearances* show, this means overlooking and thus forgiving the appearance of sickness being real.

The forgiveness is occurring in my mind and I move into a place of forgiveness, where I am not making errors, and where I do not see errors as real. And at the same time, that alignment with God will activate the Holy Spirit to flow through you. If you then express that the person is not sick but healthy, their body MUST respond and change to a healthy body.

My willingness to overlook the illusion of sickness in another, yes it heals my own mind if I have delusions about it, but once my mind is free of that delusion, I am now in a position of authority and power. And I am also now joining in mind with the brother. And I also no longer support their sickness. Therefore, as the loving thing to do, I can dispel it.

So what I'm seeing is, much of ACIM is taught as a sort of self-help program, focused on your separate self with no way to apply it to your brother, that you cannot apply it to them without splitting your mind, that you can only forgive yourself etc... but, there is confusion about IDENTITY here. WHO is being forgiven and that that leads to, is quite different.

You are the light of the world. You are the salvation of the world. That isn't passive. That isn't like just being a shiny light on a mountain top. It has power. It dispels illusions, not just at the personal-self level but at the united sonship level. This is why some of Jesus's teaching actually relate to being the Christ, in which all of the illusion exists, and the ability to overcome absolutely all physical laws.

You can wake up to your higher self at level 3, and be at peace with this world. But that will not necessarily grant you walking on water. To do that, you need to become the Christ.

And for the Christ, there are no limits.

In A Course in Miracles there are at least TWO levels on which Jesus speaks, because there are TWO stages in awakening.

There is the level that you relate to as an individual self, waking up to your higher self.

Then there is the level of the entire sonship waking up to the Christ self.

The individual self projects illusions ONTO the dream world which the Christ self is dreaming.

That means, the individual self undoes itself by taking back its projections onto or about others, and forgiving itself. This leads to awakening as the Higher Self. One son in the sonship. People wakening to this level generally do not express many miracles and will still die in a body. Examples: Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Mooji, various Hindu yogis etc

But then there is more. Christ is beyond this. Christ is the dreamer of the physical world and is the maker of it. And Christ has full power over all of it. At this level the body is completely dissolved and disappears, which Jesus demonstrated.

These two levels have led to a rift in the ACIM community. Those who relate only to the individual awakening try to shove everything Jesus teaches into that box and make it fit. This results in the complete disempowering of supernatural miracles and a redefinition of them as just corrections in perception. That's not what Jesus means by miracles at all.

Miracles are at the level of the Christ mind overriding the dream that the Christ mind is dreaming. And that means, overriding all of the physical laws that the Christ mind is sustaining as the way this world operates. Such miracles are beyond the nature of the physical world (dream), they are SUPER-NATURAL. Everything Jesus says about miracles relates to the mind of Christ, not to the mind of the sonship.

These two levels in awakening (sonship vs christ) are the entire reason why there is a community rift, why some people believe that the Course is only asking us to change our misperceptions about a pre-existing world, to accept peace in the presence of sickness, to become peaceful or have true perception "about" the world. And the Course DOES want us to do this - it's the first stage in awakening. BUT THERE IS MORE.

Stage 2 entails waking up as Christ and demonstrating supernatural miracles all over the place, knowing that you made sickness and death and can abolish both. This is also the level on which Jesus teaches "there is no world" - this is the level where this is LITERAL, because the physical world is a dream.

Those who attempt to smash all of Jesus's teachings from all levels onto ONE level, result in a tremendous amount of confusion and delusion and limitation and closed-mindedness about what the Course is teaching and what it means. This produces a "sanitized" course, void of real miracles, void of anything supernatural, and void of the power to change anything or to stop or reverse death.

Certain statements Jesus makes are directed at the second phase of awakening to Christ, and make no sense at the first stage. Assuming there is only one stage or only one awakening is a huge mistake.

This is something I was very confused by for a loooooong time because so many people are also confused by this and just assume the Course has a single truth pertaining to a single level of experience. Jesus is speaking of at least 3 levels - the false ego self projecting ONTO the world, the Higher Self which is awake IN the world, and the Christ self which has awakened FROM the world.

Knowing when Jesus is talking about a specific CONTEXT or a level of AWARENESS or IDENTITY, is very important in properly discerning what He means, what He is referring to, and how it makes sense in the bigger picture. Most ACIM students are lost in believing that the Course has 1 level, that you should just change your mind about the world and find some way to be at peace with it, and then stay in the world and die and be hurt like all the rest of the world. That's WAAAY falling short of what ACIM is teaching and is a bastardization of the Course (by the ego, no doubt).

For example:

"The world you see does not exist." "There is no world"

This is at the level of CHRIST. It is LITERAL at this level. The physical universe does not exist and it has no power over you and you can change it in any way you see fit because it is your dream. You have that power.

If you interpret this at the level of an individual Son in the sonship, as an individual self, in a body, you will interpret this to mean that the "world" is your interpretation of the world, about the world, projected onto the world, and that you need to correct that "perception" in order to wake up. Well, NO! This is wrong. You need to correct perception but this only leads to the undoing of perception, NOT the undoing of the making of the world. This belief is a level confusion.

Another example:

"Seek not to change the world but seek to change your mind about the world"

At the level of CHRIST, this means your mind has power over the world and CAN change the world any way that it sees fit for any reason, because the Christ mind is the one that is dreaming it and LITERALLY can perform "physical miracles".

At the level of the personal mind, this is MIS-UNDERSTOOD (because it's being applied at the wrong LEVEL and it thus level confusion) to mean that you should only change your mis-perceptions of the world, self and others, in order to come to awakening to truth, and that's it... no power over the world, no power over physical matter, no ability to stop the dream or change it, really a form of resigning oneself to a state of "accepting the world as it is", which is a state of POWERLESSNESS AND VICTIMHOOD. It is a TRAP!

Recognizing the levels is very important to avoid these mistakes, but because these mistakes are made prolifically, MANY MANY MANY course students are very confused about what Jesus teaches and what the Course is teaching.

Those who are sane do not attack, are not sick, cannot hurt or be hurt, are immortal and invulnerable, recognize their oneness with others, have no interest in murder, cannot suffer or be unhappy, can only will with God, and can only heal. Nothing harmful or hurtful can come from a person in their right mind.

When a person is rooted in pure unconditional love, they can do nothing but love. All behaviors are coming from love. All thoughts and attitudes are loving. The right mind is healing, healthy, happy and whole. Sane people are innocent. Sane people are compassionate. Sane people cannot attack.

What this tells you is that 99.99% of the people in the world are not sane. They are not in their right mind. They are also not fully conscious. Anyone who is not in their right mind must have blocks to awareness, must be in denial, must be to some degree unwilling to do God's will, must be sick, and must be to some degree unhappy.

Anyone not in their right mind must have positioned themselves as a victim and a victimizer. The denial/blocks in their mind is preventing them from seeing their invulnerability and their innocence, causes them to be split-minded or in two minds, have a divided will which is acting against itself, and now sees themselves as under attack.

This produces state of non-awareness or unconsciousness. The amount of conscious awareness that remains, which pretends to be a full, complete conscious awareness, is still not fully conscious. Entire portions of the mind have become inaccessible to awareness. Entire portions of a person's identity are hidden from view.

The person thinks they wake up in the morning but they merely pass from sleep to slightly less sleep. The blocks in the mind block sanity. And those who are "sleep walking" in the world are typically not awake. They will tend to hurt and be hurt. They will tend to attack and project. They will tend to sin and feel guilty. They will tend to be afraid and suffer and be sick. And they will tend to be murderous.

What we can see then is that anyone not in their right mind has placed themselves into a state of at least partial unawareness, are attacking themselves unconsciously, do not see what they are doing to themselves and so seek to explain it with causes outside of them, and are in a state of attempted murder. What is not love is murder, and those not in their right mind are not wholly loving.

But someone who is not wholly loving, is not sane. They are insane. They are un-conscious. They are confused. They do not have the awareness that's needed to show them what the obvious truth is. They are out of touch with who they are. They can't tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. They don't know what they are doing. They are acting insanely and are in a state of being mistaken.

If we frame everything that insane people do as being a state of "not knowing what they do", that they are acting this way as a result of mental illness, not being in their right mind, and we can remember that the person is simply not aware of what they are really doing, we can enter into a state of greater compassion.

It's a state of recognition of what the truth is, in which we understand every person is innocent and holy and divine and invulnerable, and so if the person is acting foolishly or murderously they must be in need. They must be lacking love in some way and are calling out for love. They must need help. Something has gone wrong with them and even they are not in a position of awareness to know how to resolve it.

We really need to recognize that most of the people in this world are not sane. Just about everyone has mental illness. And that includes all the people who seem to be conscious, successful, holding down a job, raising a family, displaying confidence, seeming to be fairly happy and sociable, or what you'd consider an "average person". If they were truly fully sane they probably would not be in a body.

If we then recognize that anyone "not being as God created them" is not in their right mind, we can say that they aren't acting the way they are "on purpose". While it's true that on a higher level they ARE choosing everything they are doing, they are not aware of this in their present state of consciousness. They have denied themselves the love that would heal them and so do not want it. And the result of love's absence is insane behavior.

If we can see that everyone is supposed to be being completely happy, joyful, alert, healthy, holy, harmless and peaceful, then if they're not, we know something has gone wrong in their mind. And that means they are calling out for love. They may at the same time not want that love, because their denial of love is what put them into this state to begin with. But they do NEED love because love is all that's absent in their mind. They need the love they have blocked.

It's like, people have tried to unhook themselves from the life support machine of God. They've pulled out the wires and don't want the help. But they NEED the help because of what they've done to themselves and the state they've put themselves in. So now they are calling out for help in the form of not wanting help, which if taken at first appearance seems to be an attack on God and on you. But it is merely an absence of love, just as light would dispel the illusion of darkness.

"It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible."

If you can remember people are mostly insane and not in their right mind and not acting "on purpose" and not really wanting what they are doing, it becomes easier to not be deceived by the illusions they present. There is something deeper going on beyond the surface, beyond behaviors and beyond attacks. Healing is needed, called for, and the only appropriate right-minded response.

Fear is always produced when you perceive anyone as your enemy.

You cannot have enemies without fear. Fear turns innocent people into enemies.

There has to be a perception within your own self, for whatever reason, which has 'framed' the other person as though they are, can, will, or have done something to you that you didn't seem to want.

This can take on a lot of forms. It can be that someoneis making noises that you don't like. It can be that someone is outright yelling at you or trying to attack you physically. It can be that you don't like the color of someone's hair. It can be that you have a long-standing resentment toward someone for stealing your favorite object many years ago. The entire gamut of human ego experiences fall into this.

So you perceive that the person 'out there', is separate from you, and they are starting to do something, which for some reason seems to be CAUSING ME to experience something less than love, which is starting to have a seeming EFFECT on me. As soon as you perceive this, even slightly, and are having even a slight reaction, you are "under attack".

This is entirely based on, and requires, that you perceive the other person as 'causing you' to be a certain way for some reason. It doesn't even matter what the reason is. Just the mere suggestion that they're doing something 'to you' is enough. Therefore, 'cause' is in them. And if cause is in them, to any degree, then to your ego perception, cause is no longer in you.

It IS possible to see cause in others and to have cause in you - that happens in recognition of Christ and Oneness in all people - but when we lose sight of it in ourselves we DISPLACE it onto others, disown power, start being irresponsible for ourselves, stop being truthful, and enter into a state of unconsciousness, which is ego. If the cause is NOT in you, then you will see it ONLY in others, and that will scare the shit out of you because you have literally MADE YOURSELF POWERLESS by giving your power away. So fear feels like having no power (or hope) of being able to prevent attack.

So basically, ALL FEAR is produced when you perceive someone as being a 'cause' when you are an 'effect'. If you are affected by them, upset by them, don't like them, attacked by them, in any way or form, you ARE believing that you are under attack. You see them as a threat, a danger, a something you do not want and cannot accept. That makes them your enemy. And that means you're now in this... experience, of ego, which feels something like this...

The other person suddenly seems threatening, they approach, your blood pressure goes up, you start to feel anxious and self conscious, and yet at the same time you begin to rise up against the threat in what we call 'anger', and you try to counter-attack because you feel like you're being attacked, and the two of you (egos) come together and 'clash', and are now in a fight or at 'war' with each other, and this is TERRIBLY UPSETTING. You try to fight off the other person but you can't help but feel simultaneously in great danger and threat and therefore very afraid.

Now, the antidote then should be fairly obvious. And it takes the recognition that YOU, not anyone else, but YOU, at some point in this process, YOU decided to perceive the other person as unacceptable, something to be resisted, unworthy of love, in some way offensive, in opposition to you, or representing something you don't believe in, or perhaps have a history of upsetting encounters with you. YOU decided to see them this way. You didn't HAVE to see them this way but you did. You maybe didn't realize that you actually have a CHOICE, and you can choose again.

So you have to recognize the POWER you have, which is the power to CHOOSE, which you DID use, to decide that you would perceive this person as your enemy - in some way. And because of that choice, you AUTOMATICALLY entered into a state of mind in which there was separation between you, a sense of threat and danger emerged, you felt unfairly treated and angry and agitated, and simultaneously FEAR arose. And the strange thing is, that you thought that person was not only causing you to feel this way, but that it was THEM who were RESPONSIBLE for you feeling this way, as though you weren't even contributing to this experience at all. It seems on the surface as though 'they' are doing this 'to you', BUT, the 'it' that they are doing to you, is really ONLY possible because of how you have first perceived them as an enemy.

Perceiving others as against you or causing you or as your enemy automatically makes you a VICTIM. This is absolutely inescapable law. You cannot see someone as an enemy without being both afraid and experiencing victimhood. And no matter how much you are upset about what it feels like to be in that state of mind, and all the feelings that come along with it, and all the fear that floods your system, YOU ARE CHOOSING IT. And it is ONLY happening NOT because of what the other person is doing, but because of how your mind is looking at the situation. Your decision to SEE yourself in the role of victim, to SEE yourself as in opposition, and to essentially see YOUR own unacceptability projected onto someone else, THAT is the only reason why you are upset.

So what happens now is that you decide to take responsibility for choosing. You recognize you DO have a choice, you CAN see the situation differently, you WANT to, and then you do it. That means, realizing the other person is NOT causing this. At all. Not even a tiny bit. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM, EVER. This is all about you. It's your ego. It's your perception. You GOT what you wanted to get in your perception of attack. You GOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR in asking to be positioned as a victim, and by seeing yourself as one. So if you don't want that, choose not to do that.

Choose to see yourself as not a victim. Choose to see yourself as NOT having this enemy, and that that person is NOT your enemy and is NOT the cause of your upset and does NOT have the power to change you or affect you in any way. Remember miracles..."denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you." So if no causes outside of you can affect you, you are restored to INVULNERABILITY, to IMMORTALITY, to perfect SAFETY, to FEARLESSNESS.

Fear HAS to disappear because you're ripping out its foundation. Its foundation is the mental perceptual construct of seeing yourself as separate from and attacked by others. You cannot experience fear if you do not see yourself and others this way. It is impossible. Fear is separation. Fear is ego. Fear is being a WILLING VICTIM, on purpose, which is why fear - even though it is experienced like some horrible thing you DO NOT WANT, and some terrible experience you SAY you want to end, fear itself is actually YOU CHOOSING TO BE AFRAID because you want to be able to maintain a scapegoat - that someone else is responsible for your life and it's not your fault.

So if you want to wake up and be free of fear FOREVER, you need to take responsibility for your life, your experience, your feelings, your attitude, and for the RESULTS that you get when you 'play with fire', which is that when you play at positioning yourself as a victim, which you do by seeing someone else as your victimizer, you must inevitably experience terror and threat. You do not have to. And if you do not choose to see the situation as though someone is against you or has power over you or is choosing for you or is directly 'causing you', you cannot experience fear. Fear must vanish. And it will.

The instant you take back responsibility for what you're experiencing, right now, fear will massively deflate in a mere moment.

Similarly when you are justifying anger at someone seeming to do something to you, and you realize that underneath that anger there is actually FEAR, watch how that anger deflates and disappears INSTANTLY, because you've shifted to becoming aware of what the real problem is and not its projection. And if you go deeper to look behind fear, you will find your own victimy attitude which got you into this mess. If you can get there, watch as fear dissolves INSTANTLY. Watch as miracles of healing happen INSTANTLY, as you return to peace.

Surrender.

Time for another super-radical teaching!!!

There is no LIFE outside of Heaven. This world is not ALIVE. Bodies do not LIVE. "Life forms" are really "death forms". All forms are illusions. Bodies do not exist. Bodies are nothing, they neither live or die. Animals are not life. Humans are not life. The planet is not alive. This is a dream of death.

First of all, God did not create this world. As stated here:

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

Second of all, only that which is made of light (spirit) is LIFE, as stated here:

"Only the creations of light are real."

Third, LIFE means eternal life. Life is EXTENSION of God. Only in pure extension is there eternal life. Anything that is even slightly short of eternal life, is NOT life. Anything which does not have eternal life, does not have life AT ALL because it must be an illusion of an opposite to life.

"Either all things have eternal life or all things must die."

Fourth, bodies do not really exist an are not real. They do not live because they are illusions. As nothing, they do not have a life of their own. God did not create ANY KIND of body. Humans, or animals, or planets.

"The body neither lives nor dies, it is nothing."

"God did not create the body." "Love did not make the body."

Fifth, this extends to ALL FORMS and bodies. Animals, plants, fish, insects, humans, planets, the rules are the same. These are not forms of life. They are illusions in a dream. They might seem like life but they are not. How can an illusion be alive? What appears to be life is an illusion of something living that is not. To see bodies is deceiving. Nothing so blinding as perception of form.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS LIKE LIFE; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments ON WHAT IS NOT LIFE, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

The eternal barrier is the Earth and this universe. All physical objects. All illusions are forms. Their content is NEVER true.

Sixth, this is a dream of death. Death is the CENTRAL ILLUSION from which all others stem. That means EVERY illusion is an illusion of death. Anything even slightly less than immortality, is death. Even a slight headache is death. "Sickness is but a little death." Jesus also redefines death as anything that isn’t pure joy. Even a slight upset is death. A minor grievance is death. All forms are death forms. Bodies do not live. "Let the dead bury the dead."

Seventh, the body is the central figure in dreaming. There is no dream without it, and it depends on the dream entirely. NOR DOES IT EXIST without the dream. This means that when dreaming ends, which it MUST when you wake up, all stuff "made of dream stuff" MUST disappear. "The body is a dream". A dream of life, made of illusions, which denies life and Heaven, which must be death, is not ALIVE. Only that which is soul or mind is alive. Spirit is life.

Eigth, the body, as an illusion, cannot exist outside of dreaming. This applies to human bodies, animal bodies, and planetary bodies, and bacteria and fungus. All parts of MATTER are not life. It is a picture of crucifixion. A picture of death. Without illusions, bodies cannot exist or seem to. When all of your illusions are gone, and you are no longer asleep dreaming, the body must vanish. It literally disappears.

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

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"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."

Ninth, "to see a sinless body is impossible." All bodies are made of sin. The body’s eyes look upon sin and fail to see past it. The granite block of sin is PHYSICAL MATTER which the body looks upon and fails to see past, stopping at the outer surface of nothing. Sin is literally embodied as forms. All forms are forms of error. To forgive is to OVERLOOK. To see PAST bodies to reality. If you see a body, including animal bodies, you are blinded by sight of form. All bodies are sin. They cannot be redeemed, only overlooked.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch?"

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

Tenth, being WITHOUT a body is NATURAL. Bodies are UNNATURAL. What we call "nature" is NOT natural. It is totally unnatural. It is chaos. The nature of this universe is OPPOSITE to the nature of Heaven. It is against God’s nature. The world was made as an attack on God. Even with True Perception, this world is STILL 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. "

"The laws of this world go against your nature."

Eleventh, there is no world. The world is nothing. It does not exist. Anything within it must not be life, because life exists forever, and this would prevent the world from being nothing. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." "The time will come when all things visible will end." If this world does not exist, it is not life, so it must be death. The end of death is the end of this universe. The end of the dream of death.

"And the last illusion to be overcome will be death."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his"

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

Only heaven is real. Only the truth is true. Everything there extends forever. Extension of life is eternal life. Lack of extension is MAKING. "The world you made" is made, not created, so it has no eternal life and lacks life. Thus no life at all. It is an illusion of life. A dream of death.

"Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love."

Resurrection is the return TO life, the return to Heaven. It surmounts death, therefore overcomes the world. Here the curriculum ends.

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

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

God‘s "living world of light" is ALIVE! You are there. You have eternal life. To sleep is to be unconscious. Unconsciousness is death. A waking dream is still a dream. The end of sleep is the end of dreaming and the end of death. To awaken is to return to life.

"All living hearts are tranquil with a stir of deep anticipation, for the time of everlasting things is now at hand. There is no death. The Son of God is free."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

An opposite of Heaven is an opposite of life. Earth is the opposite of Heaven and is the opposite of life. It will never be life. It does not exist. There is no world. There is no life outside of Heaven.

The physical world we live in was deliberately designed by the ego mind to create the ILLUSION that separation is real. It is meant to, on purpose, deceive your awareness so that you believe how it APPEARS to be. Taking it to be REAL is an absolutely huge mistake.

One of the most powerful parts of this illusion is the appearance that we are SEPARATE PEOPLE, because we appear to be 'in' separate bodies. Separate bodies are a gross deception, which shows you through your 5 senses that you are isolated and cut off from so-called 'others', and that this is 'proven' by the body itself and the way it interacts with the environment.

In fact, the only purpose of the 'environment', is to create a separate SPACE of separation in between you and others, to reinforce the idea that you are not joined or connected or shared in any way.

But let's keep in mind, this world is made, on purpose, with the INTENTION of fooling you, and of fooling everyone. It very deliberately and purposefully was set up to make it look like we're all separate, nothing is shared, nobody is the same as anyone else, and that we are all housed in separate forms.

The result of this, IF you believe the illusion, is that we believe we are a limited to, confined to, and isolated within, our physical bodies, which seems to form a wall around our minds and limits our awareness.

The physical body is setup such that IF you believe the illusion, you will have a very restricted sense of awareness. Your awareness will seem to be 'stopped' at the perimeter of the body form itself, such that it seems that anything outside of the body is not something you have direct experience of. You can receive signals and sensations through the 5 senses that tell you, indirectly, what is 'out there', but generally speaking you will not be able to DIRECTLY experience it with your inner awareness. And for sure, you will not be able to experience it with a sense that it is part of YOURSELF.

This is how it was all set up. It's a tremendously powerful illusion that shows us everything that is UNTRUE, and everything that is false, in a very convincing way. And guess what.... almost everyone has fallen for it, hook line and sinker. Bigtime.

Most of us believe we are not other people. Most of us do not experience other people as ourselves. We've bought the entire lie that human beings are separate creatures. We even have laws set up about how when one person's body does something to another person's body, that person was responsible for the crime but not the person who was victimized. The entire gamut of ego illusory thoughts and perceptions are tied into perceiving this 'as real'.

And so this world is a huge trick. And if you've fallen for this trick, you will have all kinds of beliefs going on in your mind that tell you how the "ego" thought system is true. Such as that something can happen to one person and not another. Such as that someone can do something to someone else and have absolutely no effects from it. Such as that something can happen to you that you did not ask for in any way, and that therefore you are justified in being angry. Victims, victimizers, these ALL arise from the ILLUSION that we are all separate. And it is not the TRUTH.

This is why we have to learn to 'forgive', i.e. undo belief in, everything in front of our face. Because everything to do with 'form' IS a deliberate lie, a deliberate deception, a deliberate illusion, which has been put in place in a very INTENTIONAL way to bring about this deception. As Jesus says, "nothing is so blinding as sight of form". Form is the exact OPPOSITE of the truth. Yes, a conspiracy, to undermine the truth and to shut out awareness and to render everyone separate and unconscious. This is the ego's conspiracy against God, and this entire physical universe was made by it in order to COVER UP THE TRUTH.

So don't think this world is real, or that it's showing you truth, or that people are really bodies, or that we're all really separate, or that there really are victims and victimizers, or that anything is unfair, or that things happen that people don't choose,... those are ALL illusions and MISTAKES that you believe because you believe the ILLUSION that's in front of your face. The illusion that you seem to 'live in'. Its a huge trick. A massive con. It is not the truth, it is not REALITY, and it is not what God intends for His Son. As ACIM says, God could not submit His Son to a world such as this and BE loving.

This whole world and everything in it is an illusion. So we have a very big challenge in front of us, to learn NOT to believe in it, even while we're in it. To work our way out of it, back to an awareness of what the TRUTH really is. An awareness of God. An awareness of how these illusions operate and what they attempt to deceive in us. Our awareness is isolated and locked up in these little bodies imagining that this is all we are, or this is all there is. No, this is not all there is. This world is not all there is, not at all. In fact, this world is all that there is NOT, because it's not even real at all!

And if you will go as far as Jesus asks us to go with Him in the Course, in his radical truth.... "there is no world, this is the central thought the course would attempt to teach" - ACIM

Do we believe it? Can we see past the ILLUSION? Are we deceived? Have we come to believe it? Is it real? Why do we think we are separate people? Why do we think there are multiple identities in the world AND multiple identities inside what is left of your own self? It's not true. There is only ONENESS.

So welcome to the world. Welcome to the insane theater production of 'does not exist'', where nothing is as it seems, and there in no truth in it anywhere, and yet it is so deceptive and real-seeming that all who come here are caught in its web for a very long time.

It's a DREAM. But it's time to wake up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then we come to the course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, we can use the truth to deny what we really believe. We can say, ok in theory I get it, there is no world, people are not bodies, death isn't real, sickness is a lie etc. It all makes sense. But, that doesn't mean we really really deep down believe it. If we really believed it we wouldn't be here in sick bodies trying to die.

So then the truth is that at this time, right now, we do believe in death and sickness and that people are bodies. We can bring in the truth as a concept that people are not bodies, and that which gets sick is not really a person, and if the body dies the person hasn't really died. But at the same time the mind is still actually believing that people are bodies that get sick and die, and that still generates suffering. I'm doing the course, but life still sucks, and this is why.

Given that we do believe all kinds of lies, all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of illusions and falsehoods, as if they are real, we could be using these higher loftier truths, these theories, to hide from how we're doing right now. We could be hiding behind it and using it as a shield to cover up and deny and not look at and not recognize what we ACTUALLY believe right now. More of a spiritualised-ego wishful thinking, in love with the ideas but not living it.

I suppose that's some kind of a "bypass". We are giving lip service and partial belief to something higher, but are then using it to deceive ourselves into thinking that we no longer believe anything else. As if just by getting it intellectually that's going to undo all of our investment and belief and commitment to suffering and death. And doing a few lessons is going to fix it overnight. And just because I read some text it means I have no ego left.

There is in fact part of me still that does believe, for example, that my wife was a body, and that the body became horribly sick, so sick that it died completely, and now she is dead. That's an actual ongoing belief that I have, even if I strive towards higher truths that death is not real and she is still living in Spirit eternally. And that belief does still generate suffering.

Avoiding the fact that we do still believe in all kinds of ego bullshit, is a way to keep those beliefs protected. Covered over with a layer of garnish in the form of higher truths and platitudes. We keep telling ourselves we don't believe these things over and over again but deep down we still do.

And so the ego uses the truth to hide the lies, and keep them as sacred treasures. We can look and sound and seem all spiritual and as though we're clever at grasping metaphysics and are doing the lessons and all that to try to wake up. But it can easily be used by the ego, which is totally committed to the reality of death, to avoid admitting to what we DO believe. We're perfectly adept at using ACIM to add another layer of denial over everything the ego treasures in order to keep it going.

We do believe in suffering and death and sickness and pain and misery. We do believe Earth is reality and is God's cruel creation. We do believe that death is salvation and suffering is atonement. We do believe that guilt is justified and fear is totally rational. We do believe that we're not safe and that we are in constant danger. We do believe that the death of a body is an absolute loss of a part of reality that can never be regained.

We can't get past these beliefs if we aren't willing to at least admit that we do believe them. And we can't get past it by just going into denial and trying to take on a higher truth in order to COVER OVER those beliefs and pretend they're not there. A thorough investigation of what you DO believe in all honesty is required, to at least admit that you DO believe in it, in order to change your mind. Otherwise why would you bother.

This is also why Jesus says that we are supposed to admit that we DO believe the separation from God happened, that we DO believe we are a body, that we DO believe in things going wrong. But only so that we can THEN, in light of that, realize that we need and want to do something to correct it, and can properly undo those beliefs. If we just cover it up, Jesus refers it to a "misuse of denial".

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay." UrT2E50

So we do need to accept at least temporarily that we do not want anything to do with God. That we DO believe we are separate from God living apart from him devoid of him and that we do not want him. We hate God and want him dead. We have these beliefs. We find ourselves in spacetime in a human body pretending to be flesh and bones and believing this it is what we really are. We have to admit that this is our position if we want to get out of it. We can't get out of it by just hammering ourselves with theories and statements about what is true while keeping these beliefs going.

For me, I recently looked at this and recognised that I do in fact believe I am separate from God. And therefore, because of that, I need to now find a way to return to God. Almost like the very beginning of the journey, starting from scratch. It was as though I hadn't wanted to look at the fact that I did squarely believe in being separate, and had spent years avoiding that belief and pretending that I didn't believe it.

What keeps us from awakening and reality is the hidden desires we have to want nothing to do with it, and that has to be uncovered and relinquished. In effect, we don't get to God by just trying to go there, we have to unshackle ourselves from the chains that bind us to hell first. The ego commitment to death and the fact that you do want to die, has to be looked at. You want the opposite of God, which is why you're here in the first place. Just smothering that with shiny icing isn't going to make it go away.

Similarly in grief and loss I was not feeling happy, and had to admit that I was not happy, and that therefore because I wanted something else i wanted to be happy. And that was a stepping stone to seeking out that happiness, and realising that God is that happiness. I might not have done that if I would have kept pretending that I was happy. I didn't want to admit I was not happy because I thought that was "being more ego", but in fact it's merely admitting to how much ego I already believe in. I was trying to cover it over with denial and illusions of truth and fanciful ideas and lofty metaphysics.

We have to realise we're in the shitty stinky pig-pen if we want to realise that you're the prodigal son and want to go home. The way out of hell requires realising that you're in there in the first place. And the fact is that most of us in the world are so in denial that we don't even believe we're really suffering at all. Suffering has to be recognised AS suffering before you'll be willing to want something else. So long as it is kept hidden behind an illusion of the truth, you'll keep it going.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS."

The entire problem of the people of the world is that we're very confused about what is true. God, who is truth, has been deeply misunderstood. We've tried to replace God with a false God of vengeance, which we want to have nothing to do with.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

God has been framed as a murderous evil tyrant that wants us dead. We've associated him with all the properties of that which is not true, including darkness, evil, enemy, hateful, destructive, murderous, vengeful, sick, and death itself. We've even tried to make out that God is non-existence.

This "anti-christ" attitude is part of the separation idea of being opposite to God. In order to be opposite to God, we've made God out to be opposite to himself. We now believe God is nothing like he really is. We've turned him into a false God of war.

At the same time, we've mistakenly misbelieved and misunderstood and failed to recognize all false things for what they are. We think that non-existence is existence, that death is life, that hell is heaven, that suffering is atonement, that murder is justified, that fear is safety, that sickness is saving your life.

So now we have this worldwide problem that we're trying to move away from God, on the basis that we believe God is what we do NOT want. And we try to move toward the world of illusions, on the basis that we believe it IS what we want.

To put it another way, we now see God as an evil enemy to be feared, we want nothing to do with him, we do not want his affections or help, and we do not want to wake up to exposure to the fact of his existence. We are running away from him. We think that God is death and that we're running towards life. But we are confused, and we are actually running away from life towards death.

So now we have a state where we're all choosing to suffer on purpose because we are afraid of God. We're afraid of what we've made of him, what we think he is like. We don't want to go toward him because we think we'll stop existing. Even though moving away from him was an attempt to stop existing.

When we move away from God we are moving away from happiness and wholeness and love and peace and health and sanity. We'd rather choose suffering and unhappiness and despair and pain and sickness and death. We then want to keep our suffering and NOT let it be healed, because we literally believe it is defending us from God. We'd rather die than let him heal us with his poisonous offering.

This is the state of the world. A hugely common belief that we want the opposite of what God is offering. Even if that means we actually end up choosing to make, and maintain, even more suffering. Because we do not recognize it AS suffering, and do not think it's an insane thing to tolerate pain, and are quite content to put up with all manner of misery for as long as possible.

Not to mention the guilt, which we adore and cherish and want more of, and will preserve in an attempt to keep us and others stuck in bodies and suffering in order to protect us from God. The world actually believes that people leaving their bodies means they've move into the forbidden realm to be swallowed up by death. Something to be avoided at all costs.

The world is incredibly backwards. It has become acceptably normal to not question death, to put up with pain, to reject help, to not want healing, to fear questioning the reality of the world, on the basis that these are all threats to the protection it offers. The only reason we think the world is saving us is because we a very very mistaken about it and do not recognize it as a picture of crucifixion, with nothing to offer and no power to do anything.

It all boils down to this one simple thing. We're afraid of God and we don't want to go home. We think God will never forgive us, and we would rather die and be weak and helpless than admit to being mistaken. We are most afraid of the very thing we mistakenly believe is true, because it is false. And the very things we think are false, are actually true, and yet we hate them and want nothing to do with them.

Our minds have been reversed, our entire reality has been opposed, our sanity has been turned upside down, and our whole sense of what we want has done a 180-degree flip. Trying to convince the world to let God help is quite a challenge. The insane and fearful are heavily suspicious and mistrusting. The sick want to die. The lost want to stay lost and rely on their confusion for navigation.

But there is hope and a light because the reality of God's loving truth in heaven has sent its witnesses and its teachers and its healers and its power to resurrect the dead and lift us into the light. A light which at first we do not want and fear and dread, but which later we might come to trust as our salvation. It is only a false fear, which is a lie about God, that keeps us from happiness and health.

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do."

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

"It is extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit's justice. They believe He shares their OWN confusion, and can NOT avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice MUST entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit, and perceive the wrath of God in Him."

"Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him."

Let's have a closer look at what the course says about the world and whether it is God's creation. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or pick and choose which quotes you want to look at. I put a comment after each one.

To me, the way that all of these statements sound paints a clear picture that the "physical world" i.e. the physical universe - planet Earth, is NOT God's creation whatsoever in any way shape or form.

It also says to me and that every time Jesus refers to the world as something we do not want, he is not referring to some "misperception of it" that we don't want - some imagined version of the world, which he talks about in other passages - but rather, literally "the world" - planet Earth. It is an illusion not created by God, and it does not exist, and it is not our home.

Confusion comes in because at times, Jesus IS speaking about our false perceptions and the need for the correction of perception. But at other times, he is speaking at a higher "level" either at the level of someone with true perception, or even higher at a level of the One Son of God who made this universe. Not having a clear distinguish about WHICH level he is talking at in any given quote leads many people to a lot of confusing and false conclusions. Let's take a look at some quotes....

"You do not want the world." (who would want a world God didn't create?)

"The world provides no safety." (because it is an attack on God)

"This world was over long ago." (because it never happened)

"Nothing the world believes is true." (because the world itself is fundamentally a lie)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (because God cannot be in the world or of the world nor can He create the world. The world of dreams is not your dreamy interpretation of planet Earth, it IS planet Earth, a dream which you are inside of right now, sleeping - look around you! "Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." - tells us that when we wake up in the morning to eat breakfast, WE ARE INSIDE A DREAM, not a world that God created.)

"There are no satisfactions in the world." (because the world was made by us as a substitute for God's universe)

"It is the world you see that is impossible." (because the world we see - literally planet earth, not your interpretation of planet earth - is impossible. It cannot exist because God did not create it.)

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world." (because this world is entirely an EFFECT and it has no power to do anything)

"The world is not left by death but by truth." (because the world ITSELF is death, and truth is its undoing)

"Without the idea of death there is no world." (see .. the world is MADE OF DEATH and it will not ever be made of Life or given life or resurrected or turned into something living or God-created).

"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing." (because they are illusions, and substitutes for God's love. This means the world can NEVER be a satisfying replacement for God's Creation).

"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (Many many people think this means, that you have misperception OF the world, peeking out from a separate body, looking incorrectly at planet earth which somehow objectively came to exist "on its own" or created by God. What this really means is, YOUR perception, as the One Son of God, MADE THE ENTIRE WORLD, and the world *itself* IS a state of mind containing images. Trees, houses, people, it's all part of perception. Not perception OF trees and houses and people, but literally the things themselves. Those objects, your body, planet earth, are misperceptions.)

"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself." (because you are the One Son of God and the ENTIRE WORLD is a judgement against you. It's an attempt to deny who you are, to turn you into a form which dies, to picture what it would be like to be dead, and to completely obscure the light of Christ. The world itself IS judgement. Judgements OF or ABOUT the world are an entirely additional LAYER of bullshit that you added as a separate human, and is a SECOND LAYER of sleeping you added on top of dreaming the world.)

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality." (Again, this is one which many people think means, the world your little separate body-located self sees... thus your private perception. No. It's the world your eyes see. You see trees. You can call the trees good trees or bad trees, hated trees or loved trees, you still see trees. The trees you SEE - trees AT ALL - are nothing to do with reality. God did not create trees.)

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel." (This SHOULD be an obvious one. Given all the suffering and terror and death in the world, which is inherent to the world's nature, should NOT be possible if God created it. And claiming that it's really love or life if viewed correctly, is a complete distortion, again based in one person's body-identified personal opinion about the world. God does not create worlds where there are forms or bodies or things which die, NOR does he create worlds where even if those things are all part of one lovely "whole", they are possible either. God only creates HEAVEN, which is formless and has absolutely nothing to do with planet Earth in any way.)

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness." (Yes, planet Earth, is a bleak little world, and it will vanish into nothingness, because God did not create it. This does not mean your personal misperception of the world will vanish (though it will also) - the world ITSELF will vanish, because it is a lie).

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." (the purpose for this self-made world was to create problems that are inescapable, such as sickness and death. These problems however have no power over miracles which can undo them all BECAUSE God did not create a world of problems.)

"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." (I like this one because it says it like it is. The entire world, the entire physical universe, is a "picture" in the MIND of the Son of God, who is absolutely vast and unlimited, who is dreaming this ENTIRE physical universe and everything in it, and it was designed by him as the crucifixion of himself. Its depiction of things which have beginnings and ends, stars which are born and die, flowers which wilt, people who die of disease, planets that die, etc... is a picture of CRUCIFIXION not a picture of "God is very loving." While you can come to perceive it in a more forgiving way, that does not make or prove it is God's creation either, because if you recognize it for the illusion/lie it is, it MUST disappear.)

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all." (This is because the world is an effect of dreaming. What appears in it as "causes" are illusions of causes put in place by the dreamer. The world has no consequences. Anything God creates MUST have the power to CAUSE, and since the world cannot cause anything, it cannot be a creation of God.)

"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be." (There can only be joy and love and peace in what CAN be, i.e. God's creation, heaven, the kingdom, but outside of that there is no life and nothing can be joyful or loving or peaceful. The world is inherently a depiction of what peace is NOT like. Separation in all its forms is played out here, and every single particle of matter is at war with all the rest.)

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home." (This world is not your home... literally, planet Earth is not your home. This entire physical universe is not your home. But some people interpret this to mean, well, this imaginary interpretation of the world is not my home - the world I'm putting on top of the world is not my home. Bullshit. "The world" is simply planet earth. Planet earth is not your home. Surely you FEEL this? Surely you recognize that you feel like an alien here, and that the more you wake up the more you recognize that you do not belong in this illusory place? I know I do.)

"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."(Thank God, because this world is not something God would ever create. God is suddenly the author of duality and sickness and death? God sees sickness and death as lovely and precious? I think not.).

"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state." (Planet Earth has never existed at all. This is hard to accept I know. There is no world. This is the one core teaching in ACIM which many people refuse to entertain. This is because we believe the world is REAL and cannot conceive of how it would not be. Especially if you come to the course with a background in beliefs which say God made the world in some way, that's hard to put down. This isn't referring to a privately perceived interpretation of the world. Again, it's just simply... this world, planet earth, has never existed. We can deny and fight this all we want.)

"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible." (Would you say planet earth is a world of scarcity? I sure would. That's not a judgement or an inability to see its pure loveliness. Yes there's a forgiven world, which is the recognition that this world is an illusion and is nothing, but I think most would agree this is a world of lack and rarity. Just look at how empty outer space is and how distant civilizations or inhabitable planets are. Extreme scarcity.)

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (So here again you could say, well, this means my perception is nuts and I'm not seeing the world correctly. Ok. That's one LAYER of the problem. Once you undo that false perception you're going to find out, that the world is STILL a delusional system. Inherently, the mountains, trees, planets, forests, oceans, it's all a state of DELUSION, and that's not going to change when you get over your personal misinterpretations of it. See, the problem is, we think that when we overcome "my" personal misperceptions, that's going to be the end of the story. It's not. You have to not only get over your personal interpretations (which is ONE level of awakening), AND then go beyond the definition of "my self" to incorporate ALL SELVES into one single Son of God - as Christ. And in that view, there is an entirely second level of awakening which leads to God, and the acceptance that the One Son of God MADE this world out of insanity and guilt. Guilt, denied, became unconscious, and projected out as the physical universe, in which we are now hiding from it by pretending to be innocent. Hmmm)

"The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home." (because the world ITSELF is not your home. It's just a way Holy Spirit can USE it to help you to ESCAPE from it through truth - because it doesn't exist)

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." (Plain and simple. Normal language. The world you see, with your eyes, regardless of your mental interpretations or labelling or judgements, is an illusion of a world. God did NOT create it. Many people want this mean, my personal interpretation of the world is not the world God created, and once I am free of my personal interpretation, God is going to reveal that this world - planet Earth - is his lovely creation. Good luck with that. Planet Earth does not exist. It is an illusion. The course even tells us the "real world" is an illusion and will disappear.)

"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach." (AHA!.. .. If you can GET this one and accept it, you've made a huge leap away from the ILLUSION that this world dis real, or that God could have created it whatsoever, to the awareness that this world can NEVER be real because to believe that requires a belief in sin and death. There is no world. Yes, planet Earth. There is no planet earth, neither as a separate planet nor as part of some seamless "soup" of God-stuff. Pretty threatening to the ego which is why it fights it tooth and nail.)

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." (Miracles can UNDO the world itself, and everything the world says cannot be undone (itself), BECAUSE the world CAN be undone, proving that it is NOT REAL. What is real cannot be undone. If miracles can undo the world, they can bring about RESURRECTION - the undoing of death in ALL its forms, including physical and mental death. Eventually the entire physical universes is going to be UNDONE, because it does not exist. Only God's kingdom will remain.)

"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity." (Obviously, but this actually does not just mean that the people in the world are nuts (and most are, me included), it means the world ITSELF, the very fabric of spacetime, is insanity. It is impossible to be separate from God and this universe attempts to prove otherwise.)

"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon." (here, we're told the world RESTS UPON confusion. The world itself. Now, if this means your perception, sure, that'd seem to make sense. You can be confused, and become unconfused. Sure, makes sense. But this statement isn't speaking about you or your personal world. In fact, most of the course is not speaking to or about anyone's EGO SELF, and yet 90%+ of ACIM students THINK that the Course is talking about THEIR PERSONAL EGO, which leads to a ton of confusion. The world ITSELF is based on confusion because it's an expression of a belief that separation from God is possible, which is a confused state of mind.)

"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world." (And this never changes. The world is BASED ON death, made of death, and is ALWAYS DEAD. There is no life here. There is no life outside of heaven. All forms of "life" in the world, all bodies, animals, plants etc, the sun and stars, it is all part of a DREAM OF DEATH, and not one part of it has eternal life. Death was the motivation that MADE THIS WORLD. This world was MADE BY A DEATH WISH, not by God. That's quite extremely opposite to the folk who believe God created this world somehow).

"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself." (When this says "yourself" note that it does not just mean "you in a body and not other people." Most people take it that way because they have an ego. Statements about you making the world or the world being in your mind, is not about it being in your SEPARATE MIND. It's about it being in THE ONE MIND of the son of God. The ONE son of God is the maker of this entire world. It is not outside of THAT SELF. You are busy focusing on how to get your LITTLE SELF to a state of awakening of maximal naturalness, but there is more beyond that - realizing that you are the entire sonship and more. You are Christ, not just one Son.)

"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" (Who wants the crappy world anyway? It's full of shit.)

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (You can believe you are victimized when you believe the world itself is a CAUSE and you are its EFFECT. But when this is reversed (this is a course in cause not effect), YOU become the cause and the world is recognized as an EFFECT. It has no power over you because it is an EFFECT of YOUR dreaming it (as the One Son). This is how you are not a victim of it. Otherwise, the world can still kill you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent.)

"Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?" (Apparently Jesus is clear that the world is not a place of peace or freedom or holiness. So God cannot have created it.)

"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." (Yes dreams seem very real. What if i told you right now that you are actually INSIDE A HUGE DREAM? Right now... this room you are in or whatever, the people you are near, it's part of a DREAM. This is not what God created because it is a DREAM, not a reality. God does not dream or make worlds of dreams, or dreams of death. God did not create a dream world. You're dreaming, and you need to wake up FROM this dream, not TO it.)

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that every thing that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real." (Objects in this world have ends and beginnings. Every particle begins and ends. Every flower is sown and grows and blooms and dies. Beginnings and endings. It's not just a matter of not seeing them correctly or not realizing that "God is making them grow" or some BS, it's simply that, ALL FORMS ARE FORMS OF DEATH, and they all end, and that is why they are NOT eternal, and God did not create them.

"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." (Exactly, and elsewhere Jesus tells us that love (God) did not make the body. God does not create forms, or planets, or a physical universe).

"The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher." (The entire world and all things in it were MADE by us to be NOT ETERNAL, which is WHY it passed away, because it could not last. Nothing God creates can die or end or transform or change, no matter what words you use to try to make out that it wouldn't be seen "as change" when you're awake.)

"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." (I like this quote also because it locks in the form of the world as being evidence of a mistake. Everything in the world, bodies, objects, even the planet, are "little". All little particles and atoms. All little tiny little creatures walking around thinking they are big. Go up in an airplane and you'll see how little it all is. Every FORM in this world is little, as an idea of not being unlimited or infinite, because it's an idea of contraction AWAY from God. This is not God's creation or God's will, and God would not maintain this for an instant.)

"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. (mind over matter)" (Again this is another one which people can and do use to try to prove that references to the world are all about "your personal misperception", and that you need to fix how you see in order to see it properly, and that afterwards, you'll keep the world and stay in it because it's real. No. Your WISHES have MADE A PLANET. The wishes of the one son of God, has made an entire physical universe. These are wishes to die. Wishes to be crucified. Wishes to sin. Wishes against God's will. God did not make this. What you want to see, changes, IN FORM, as mind-over-matter, because your mind is THAT POWERFUL. It doesn't just mean you change your perception OF stuff, when your perception properly changes, the world ITSELF must change form, and so must the body.)

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition." (You put it there (forms, bodies, trees, buildings) because you WANT TO. Do you think you don't have that much power? The mind is very powerful. The world must match the outward picture of the inward condition of the mind of the ONE SON. The One Son is attempting to destroy himself BY fragmenting himself into many many individuals and forms scattered across many worlds. What shows up as objects and bodies is what the Son of God wants to see there. It IS his perception. The course says literally "the world IS PERCEPTION", which does not mean that your little human "perception" contains the illusory world, it means the ENTIRE WORLD OF EARTH is inside the perception of a vast mind - it is that mind's IMAGINATION. Meaning, physical objects, are actually a part of SEEING, the mechanism of trying to VISUALIZE STUFF, which brings it into appearance as fake images i.e. objects and forms and bodies. When the mind is free of all this, the physical world - yes - planet earth in all its ways - MUST DISSAPPEAR.)

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." (I would rather have what the Kingdom of God offers than what this world offers. This world is not my home. It does not contain the truth. It is not real. And God did not create it. It HAS blinded the sons to the father, which was its purpose. You cannot behold (see in any way) the world (physical planet earth) and behold the kingdom. Only one of them is true and real. Planet earth does not exist, was not created by god, is an illusion, and if you're still SEEING IT in any way, with any mind whatsoever, you are not in the Kingdom. To suggest you can BE in God, in his kingdom, while the world continues to appear or move or change or have form, you are in denial.)

"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love." (Looking forward to this! Finally a relief from this world of nightmares and death and suffering. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND THIS which God did create - his kingdom, heaven, filled with joy and life and peace and celebration. It is HOME. It is where you really want to be. Do not let the world, planet earth, bodies, objects, forms, people, places, idols, or anything else, KEEP YOU FROM going there and accepting it as your true home where your true nature is free at last. The world offers nothing in comparison. Pleasure is not love. Specialness is not love. Forms are not love. Sunsets and kittens are not love. "Never was love in the world."

There is no world. The people who do not believe this will continue to not believe this, and will object to this post and everything it says. They are free to do so, but they are not free of the confusion that is going to accompany those beliefs, or the fear that will be induced upon being confronted with this truth. I would hope people will change their mind and see what the course is really telling us. Then we have real hope.

When someone says or does something that you judge and perceive as wrong, you become upset.

In your upset, you claim that you are upset because they said or did something that was wrong - i.e. something incorrect, something that is a mistake, or something untrue.

But, even though YOU are claiming to believe that this thing is untrue and wrong, you are still upset.

Why are you upset, if what the person said is not true? Why do you become upset when someone says something untrue about you, something that seems to attack you, to slander you, to accuse you, to portray you as unfairly guilty, or to label you with something derogatory? Why are you upset if its not true?

The truth is, even though you are to some degree aware that it is not true, you're upset because some part of YOU does believe it is true.

If you didn't believe it, you'd just laugh. You wouldn't take it seriously. You'd KNOW with so much certainty that it's just ridiculous and completely false, that it wouldn't even seem to touch you or engage with you at all.... like it's got nothing to do with you.

But you DO think it's got something to do with you. On some level, deeper down, there is some part of you that actually thinks there is truth to what someone has said about you, even if you are simultaneously horrified and upset and are claiming that it's completely false in a very intense way.

You could be experience a very intense sense of it being unfair, of the slander being vicious, of the person being totally nuts in their accusations, and all of this other framing of the situation that makes it looks like they are wrong and you are not... and yet, you're still upset, despite your claims about how mistaken they are.

You don't really, really, really believe that they are mistaken, you actually believe that they are REAL, and what is real is true. So if you are 'really' being attacked, then you are being attacked with truth, and you believe in this truth so you will be upset. What you receive as real will strike you as the truth and you will accept it. i.e., you took it seriously and didn't overlook/forgive it.

And so this boils down to this simple fact: you are upset because YOU believe these things about YOURSELF.

So then it's really not so much anything to do with what anyone else has said or done. It's not really that they have accused you of something so incredibly - potentially - hurtful. It's not that there is even some kind of inherent attack-power embedded into their slander, or some kind of force in their words that can actually come into you and MAKE true whatever they are judging you for.

Instead, it all boils down to your own beliefs about yourself - your own sense of identity. Has this *attempted* attack got anything to do with what I AM? If it hasn't, because I'm clear about what I am, and I am immortal spirit, and I am eternally innocent, then in that clear identity I have absolutely no grounds for even thinking that it's got something to do with me.

But if I do not believe in my own innocence, if I myself am actually in some way AGAINST MYSELF, or have undermined myself, or think of myself as unworthy or not good enough, or think that I don't deserve love, or I don't like something about myself, you can bet that when someone comes along to appear to provoke you, you WILL think that it has something to do with who and what you are - you will think that they're talking about YOU and you will 'take it' as an attack on that identity.

So you can see this in people who are very against themselves, who have a lot of self-hate or self-loathing or low worth etc. When someone seems to attack them or judge them, they become very upset very quickly. This is because they themselves very strongly believe in and AGREE WITH what the other person is claiming is true of them.

The person is so upset by the stimuli because they themselves are very upset about their own self, they are upset about how they see themselves, they are already walking around with a huge baggage of pain and suffering within themselves that they feel very badly about, and this is now tapped into by the other person.

The pimple then seems to pop and the cover of denial laid over the top of this mountain of self-attack is taken off, and out pours the gush of a "reaction"... which typically is then blamed on and projected on and targeted at the other person, as though they created all of it.

But all the other person is doing.... is nothing. Absolutely nothing. They're just showing up and mirroring back to you a reflection of what YOU think of yourself. People will come into your life "as if by magic", attracted to the vibrational frequency or mental focus of content in your mind, that reflect to you what you currently think of yourself. And you will hate them for doing this, because you hate yourself. And each time they come along and seemingly do TO you what YOU are already doing to YOURSELF, you don't like it. And the only reason you don't like it is because they are doing to you exactly what you're already doing to you.

And so even if you are upset, deep down you in some way must agree with that person, even if they seem to be a horrible enemy, otherwise, why would you be upset? Why would you be having a reaction, if their judgements were completely false and you knew it? Why would you lose your peace and blow up in a rage or whatever if you're calmly certain that that person is very mistaken about who you are, and you are very clear about who you are? And I don't mean, clear about your ego self, but clear about your REAL self as God created you - innocent immortal spirit. Your real identity.

So every time you get upset, and it seems like someone caused it, it just means that YOU HIRED SOMEONE to come along (attracted them mentally) to come and point out, within you, what it is that you believe is true, about yourself and God, so that you will become aware of what is in you, and get an opportunity to question it. Is it really true? Do I really want to hold onto this belief? And if all you're doing at that point is falling for the appearance that someone else is causing everything you're feeling, then you've totally missed the point. And you're being dishonest.

It's more honest to step back and look at why you are upset. You are upset because you believe that your worst enemy's attack is actually true of you and deserved by you. You actually want it. You chose it. You asked for it. Yes you did. And that means that they're not actually doing it 'to' you, as much as YOU have done it to you. And since you're the one who actually believes this bullshit about yourself, YOU are the one who needs some correction. The other person is only there to "trigger" you, to draw your attention to areas of yourself where you thought you were pure but are not, or areas where you believe bullshit that needs to be purified. They're helping you. They're actually on your side, in the bigger scheme of things. And you hired them to do so. All those enemies of yours? They're your servants.

So at some point you have to get past this fireworks of blame and denial and projection, and take some responsibility. It's you that believes you suck and are not worth shit. When someone does something to highlight this, you should be thanking them. AND then you should work on undoing YOUR belief that this is true. If you are upset, you DO believe it is true, and you DO agree with them, no matter what you are experiencing and no matter how much you think this is not the case. If you are upset, you are believing something untrue about yourself, and the only way to be not upset is to undo that.

So yes, it's not anyone else's fault that you're upset. Look at yourself. What have you decided about yourself? What is it you believe about yourself?

Because if what the other person has 'done to you' is not the truth, then why are you still upset? It MUST be because you actually don't FULLY believe that it's not true. Some part of you agrees and some part of you has attacked your own self.

And what this will lead to is the simple insight, that ALL of your upset is really the result of your own belief about yourself, and NONE of it is really because of other people. And therefore, if you can change your own attitude about yourself, and learn to love yourself, you will be learning your LESSONS and will wake up to the truth about who you are. And then you will have peace, and you will stop putting 'helpers' in your life to provoke you "painfully". Instead your way will be made straight and Holy Spirit will go before you to smooth the way, such that nothing is about your little ego self anymore and you are fully convinced of your own innocence.

Not until you are fully convinced of your own innocence will you cease to be upset when other people accuse you of guilt. But when you get there, you will experience invulnerability, confidence, empowerment, peace and immortality.

In times when I am moving into uncertainty about whether it's true that this world is unreal, I refer back to some key statements in the course which seem very clear to me. One of them is "the body is a dream".

This anchors the truth that the body, and therefore everything the body is made of, and therefore by extension anything ELSE in the same environment which is made of similar stuff or is covered by similar laws, MUST ALSO be a dream.

This then implies logically that the whole world and universe is a dream, and the body is merely one part or character within that dream. And the course similarly backs this up. The body is the hero of the dream, and it cannot exist WITHOUT a dream.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. ****There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream****, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

The body IS a dream, and can only exist INSIDE a dream, and DEPENDS ON dreaming, and cannot exist WITHOUT dreaming. Which means that it REQUIRES SLEEP in the mind in order for a DREAM to be taking place in order for a body to show up. It exists WITHIN perception and NOT in knowldge. There can be no body without this sleep, and there can be no dream without this sleep.

Even those who seem to have "awareness of dreaming", who seem more awake than others but still are in bodies, are still having DREAM bodies. And these bodies are STILL dreams. And these people are STILL dreaming. Awareness that you ARE DREAMING is not the end of dreaming, it is merely a point of perspective on the fact that you are NOT AWAKE. And this perspective on being "awake in the dream" is NOT the same as BEING FULLY AWAKE, never again to dream a single dream.

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when ****he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real.**** He would have seen at once that ****these ideas are one illusion****, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be!"

The metaphysics of this is very simple and clear. When mind is FULLY AWAKE in heaven's reality, there is NO dreaming, NO sleep, and therefore there CANNOT BE BODIES. Bodies are dreams, and unless you are dreaming you cannot dream of bodies. Bodies are made up in the mind as part of the dreaming process. They are characters in the dream. Just as trees and houses and cars are characters in the dream. And none of them exist when you truly wake up to Reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life (heaven - "there is no life outside of heaven") is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely ****seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time****; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

It is also very simple and evident, therefore, to realize that WITHOUT SLEEP, you cannot have a body. You cannot BE IN ONE and be fully awake. You CANNOT be in the full awareness of heaven, in which you are FULLY AWAKE, and at the same time claim that "you have a dream body". Dream bodies ONLY seem to exist for those who are asleep and dreaming still. The body cannot enter heaven because heaven is a waking state, not a dreaming state, and the body REQUIRES a dreamer.

This is also why you CANNOT be "Christ in a body", or "God in a body". Or "awake in a body". Or "in heaven in a body." And also why Jesus was NOT "christ in a body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.""Love was never in the world of dreams."

To suggest this is possible, is to suggest that you can be in the full awareness of the Christ WHO IS IN HEAVEN, in the WAKING AND NOT DREAMING state, while simultaneously BEING ASLEEP AND DREAMING and therefore materializing a body. It is simply impossible. If/when Jesus shows up as a body now, to Earth people, it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. A temporary image within dreaming, used to symbolize something that is BEYOND the dream. Because Jesus is permanently in heaven.

"Christ has never slept."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit"

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him."

Either you are squarely in heaven 100% in total awareness of God and reality. Or, you are in some way ASLEEP, having perception, dreaming of a world and inventing fake bodies. The only special exception to this is the Holy Spirit who spans the waking and dreaming states as a bridge, temporarily, to offer you a SYMBOL of heaven within the dreaming state - the real world, to prepare you for a full and gentle awakening.

The body is a dream, a fiction, an imagined fantasy, an image, a fake symbol, not an end in itself, a representative, an avatar, a depiction of something it can never truly picture.

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is not possible for your body, or anyone's body, to FULLY REPRESENT what you are as spirit. You are INVISIBLE to this realm. You cannot be seen by the body's eyes. The body CANNOT SEE REALITY or spirit.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."So for example if Jesus were to show up here, his body would NOT BE HIM, because he is not body identified. His spirit would NOT be seen. And the body would be nothing but a SYMBOL, vaguely approximating an appearance that you might find appealing or reassuring, for some purpose. And the body that shows up is NOT HIM. It is merely a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Even if it looks just as 3D and real as other bodies. Because Christ cannot "be a body" any more than God can.

"Jesus was a man who remembered his soul." "But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge. "

You will not ever see GOD directly in a dream. He is not a body. He does not have a body. He cannot be IN a body. He is not in your body or in anyone's body. Even the idea that "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" is an idea of seeing the REAL world BEYOND bodies, in which there ARE NO BODIES. God in his unlimited infinite nature will not EVER be reducible to a finite form or shape or appearance. Even "visions" of God are perceptual illusions.

"PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

So you see, if you follow what ACIM says, it is very clear and consistent. Bodies are dreams which only exist inside of dreams for those who dream of them during sleep. And while you can become more aware of the dreaming state, this too is only preparation for true awakening FROM the dream state. And to awaken FROM the dream state you CANNOT maintain a body, or be in one, or have one. It cannot go with you to heaven. And as soon as you stop dreaming the DREAM BODY made of DREAM STUFF has to disappear entirely.

"The body is a dream. Like other dreams, it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose which the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

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

"Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS" UrT11J13

Let's look at the really big picture.

You are an immortal being with eternal life that lives in God forever. You cannot change or be changed. You are permanent and fixed. You cannot be altered, you cannot suffer, you cannot be affected, you cannot be hurt or damaged, you cannot be sick or die. Nothing can ever happen to you or disturb your peace. You are real, and nothing real can be threatened.

The so-called separation from God was an attempt to BE MORTAL. To invent death. It is a belief in EVERY single form imaginable of something OPPOSITE to your immortal nature. An insinuation, a lie, and a denial, that you can in fact "be changed", that you can be affected, victimised, hurt, damaged, broken, or even made to be sick, or even destroyed completely by death.

The entire world of space and time and everything in it was entry into a "dream of death", in which every single aspect is part of the attempt to believe that you are NOT immortal.

Even the slightest hint of fear is evidence of believing that you might not live forever. The slightest twinge of sickness is an attempt to PROVE that you can be hurt. The merest disturbance to your total peace signals a sense that somehow, in some way, your eternal extension and permanence MIGHT be in question.

And so as we entered into the separation, the tiny mad idea, we thought to ourselves that MAYBE we might not last forever. Maybe we could be changed, maybe we could alter ourselves even, maybe we could be changed by something other than ourselves. And maybe this would bring into question who and what we are, questioning even our permanence and eternal life.

This gave rise of course to fear, because the merest hint of a belief that you might not live forever induces a sense of threat to your existence, which frightens you. So we entered the "detour into fear", the "dream of death", an attempt to play a game of mortality.

We made this world, came to this world, to question our very NATURE. To draw into doubt what we are, and whether we can be what we are. We undermined ourselves. We attacked our own invulnerability. We tried to make ourselves into something that COULD be attacked, could be hurt, could suffer in some way.

So now when you look at the world and you look at ALL the massive number of forms of suffering, all fears, all victimhood, all sense of threat and danger, all sicknesses and mental illnesses, all death and destruction, every problem, all conflicts and competitions, all war and disagreement, every single nuance of body identification and believing you might be affected by something, is ALL merely a symptom of "trying to die". Trying to NOT BE IMMORTAL.

The solution to all this madness - the acceptance of the atonement - requires us to RELINQUISH DEATH in all its many forms. It requires us to ACCEPT once again that we are PURELY AND ONLY immortal beings with eternal life. It requires us to completely reject EVERY single little speck of a belief that says anything to the contrary.

All victimhood, all fears, all attack, all guilts and sins, all sense of suffering, all sense of threat and danger, all bodily identification, all belief in separations and conflicts, even the belief in change, all of it has to be questioned and let go. So that ALL that remains of you, all that you ARE, is your PURE immortal eternal self - the Christ - the soul, which resides in heaven with God PERMANENTLY safe and permanently alive.

You are life itself. You are eternal life. You are immortality. You are extension. You are the openness to never-ending. And because you know deep in your being that you are absolutely BEYOND all possible threats to your eternal nature, you are in a state of absolute peace and happiness. Not a single hint of threat, no danger, no concerns, no problems, no doubts, no suffering, no possibility of changing, not even the slightest hint of death in any form whatsoever.

You continue on. You are the immortal son of God. You have lived forever and you will always live forever. This is the central CORE TRUTH that the course is leading us to. Wake up to KNOW THYSELF AS YOU ARE IN GOD. The perfect pure immortal eternal being that is utterly beyond every form of death and every form of suffering forever, in total peace and absolute certainty. There is no death, the Son of God is free.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die." URT29I

"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." UrW191L9

"Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination." UrT20I7

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One." UrT29G1

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are." UrW139L6

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do." UrT9K8

"The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love." UrT14E4

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now." UrT11J12

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect." UrT25H5

"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. " UrT19J7

"And we will sleep no more and dream of death. " UrW191L10

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7

The separation from God, we did a big switcheroo. We swapped everything true for everything false, and vice versa. That makes our mind insane, because it means we no longer recognize what anything actually is.

To our insane mind, we see everything opposite to what it is, because the mind is trying to oppose reality.

God is regarded as evil, the Holy Spirit as an enemy, heaven as hell, eternal life as death.

Similarly evil is regarded as benevolence, death is thought to be life, suffering is atonement, and sickness is a way to exist longer.

The mind in this insane twisted state is very confused.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING." UrT7J9

If you can imagine then, if you believed that God is murderous and an enemy, and you tried to go towards God, your "egoic" insane mind would see this as a dangerous encounter. It would become threatened and adversarial, it would try to fight against it and go into fear. Just as you as a 'sane' person would go into fear if you thought an evil enemy were coming closer to attack you.

God obviously isn't actually attacking or evil or murderous, but the ego does perceive him that way. And so it makes "total sense" to the egoic insane mind that, for the sake of preserving existence and "sanity", you should stay away from God.

As you - your mind - starts trying to wake up from the insanity and move towards God, you're going to find that the insanity itself will interpret reality incorrectly. It will perceive that you're moving towards your death, moving towards evil, moving towards the very thing you fear and do not want. As if you're going in the wrong direction.

If you were to lurch closer to God all of a sudden, and saw his beauty and loveliness, your egoic mind would quickly project sin and guilt onto it, and become deeply suspicious that nothing can possibly be that lovely and be real. And it might thus read into it that God is actually a deceiver and the beauty is some kind of insane trick or a trap. And then it would go into fear as a defense.

Obviously this is where "sickness is a defense against the truth" comes in, because the insane mind reasons that in order to be safer, more alive, exist longer, and be protected, it must move AWAY from the threatening God (truth) it perceives. It does this by inducing more separation, reasoning that it makes total sense to get away from the vile enemy.

"Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them." UrW136L3

What the insane mind doesn't realize is that while it BELIEVES that it is moving away from evil, it is moving toward it. While it believes it is moving away from death (as God), it is moving further toward actual death, because God is really life. Inducing more separation induces all forms of illness, suffering and death, but in the name of self preservation.

So in fact we don't actually recognize suffering as suffering. We don't believe that pain is actually a bad thing. We don't think that sickness is terrible. And we even want to cozy up with death, as though it will protect us from God.

The course is trying to get us to reverse our entire thought system so that we begin to RECOGNIZE that evil is evil, suffering is suffering, pain is something you do not want, false things are false, etc... so that you realize in your sanity that it makes no sense to choose them. You would drop all of this misery in an instant if you actually realised that it IS misery and not love.

This is the state we're in. We're backwards and lost, not recognizing true things as true, or false things as false. We believe a whole host of awful stuff like pain, suffering, sickness, death, is actually "good stuff that we want more of". And we will happily choose it and side with it and protect it, believing it is saving us from a fate worse than death.

Each time we try awaken from this and move toward actual eternal life, toward God or reality or truth, the insanity in the mind is going to be suspicious of it, misinterpret it, read into it, and resist it. All based on a misperception of it. In effect, it may seem like you're trying to drag the ego kicking and screaming toward its demise - at least that's how it sees it.

The ego though can't enter a state of sanity because it's really just a label for being insane. It can't "exist" in the light of truth or in God. It requires the denial of God and it requires separateness rather than oneness. You, as the soul/mind, have to find a way to step out of the insanity and dis-associate, dis-identify, from being the insane person, and shift your allegiance to being the sanity of spirit. Or as the course calls it, reason.

You can be sure though that if you go too fast, your insane egoic tendencies will kick in and become frightened by the truth. It will resist and kick and scream. It will find ways to avoid it and deny it and not want it. It will feel offended and threatened by it. Because it does not understand what it's really going toward.

What then could seem like a passage down a dark tunnel into hell, to the ego, could actually be the stairway to heaven. But you have to be gentle with yourself. As the course says, time keeps gentle pace with you. The Holy Spirit gently plans events to help lead you to eternal life. You have a curriculum to go through piece by piece, when you are ready, as you are willing, and not before.

You don't have to rush or go fast, or try to skip steps, or race to the end. This is supposed to be a gentle awakening process, moving first into a happier dream and then onward.

If you try to expose your ego-identified ie insane mind to the sanity of God when it isn't ready, it will just be frightened by it. So go easy on yourself. This is where it becomes 'ok' in the short term, to carry on with your insane ego-serving human nonsense. So go grab some more ice cream and binge watch some favourite shows for a while, because you're probably not going to be waking up quite yet.

"This is because the last thing that can help the non-Right-Minded (or the sick) is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately exposed to a straight and undiluted miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening." UrT2C9

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it." UrM29A2

I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.

This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.

I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.

I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.

This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.

I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.

I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.

I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.

I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.

This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.

So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".

It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.

In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.

I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.

Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.

As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.

This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.

It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.

Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.

The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.

It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.

I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.

I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.

So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.

But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.

It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?

But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.

That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.

So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.

So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.

If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.

It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.

I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.

So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.

As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.

What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.

We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.

So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.

We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.

I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.

Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.

Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.

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

"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE." UrT9C1

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT." UrT9C3

"But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are." UrT8D6

When you are being an ego, you believe you are a separate body. You suffer. And then you think that in order to improve yourself, you will work on improving YOU, and NOT others.

You think of yourself as isolated in a box, separated off, not sharing. And then you think that if you work on "yourself", you will be able to rise up to a high level, accept atonement for "yourself", and then be done. And it won't matter that everyone else has not chosen to do the same, because they're none of your business.

We could go about practicing the entire ACIM principles but still staying within the confines of the "I am a separate person" box. Improving me, awakening me, me becoming more loving, me undoing my own guilt, etc. This is all selfish of course and part of the ego identity.

What ACIM is ACTUALLY teaching, is something quite radical. That we are all part of a collective mind, sort of a collective hive mind of consciousness. And that means we are all one, and other people are a part of ourselves. Literally we are in them and they are in us. Our souls are fused together. EVERYONE CONTAINS EVERYTHING.

This is massively different. Because now it means that in order to come OUT of the prison of the ego and the body, you cannot just treat it like it's something that applies "only to you." You can't just "work on yourself" in isolation. It's not a "self study". It's not even POSSIBLE for you to approach awakening while still retaining a sense of "I am only myself, and other people are not me."

What we should be doing is recognising that at the higher level, the golden rule is kicking in, we are SHARING EVERYTHING with everyone, we are part of the whole sonship, and our mind is SHARED with other people's minds. Our souls, our identity in Christ, it is all SHARED. We are NOT just ourselves, we are many people.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth." UrW161L4

This is a holographic relationship. One whole (God), with many parts (beings), in which every part contains the whole (oneness among brothers), and there is ultimately only one whole (God) yet it has many wholes (sons of God) within it, which are collectively the shared one son/christ/heaven.

So if you are to make headway out of physicality, away from the body and the ego, any kind of progress in spiritual awakening, it can't be with the starting ego mindset of "I am a separate person", and you cannot KEEP that mindset if you want to awaken. It's not true of you. You are not ONLY yourself, you INCLUDE others. You are waking up FROM a sense of exclusion and selfish isolation, TO communion with everyone.

So if you want to apply something where you're like, I am holy and innocent and guiltless and sinless.... you can't really be regarding that as applying ONLY to you. It has to be more like, WE are BOTH innocent and guiltless and sinless. We are ALL innocent and guiltless and sinless. Because you ARE the sonship.

This reveals the extension of this that.... you have to INCLUDE your brothers in your own awakening, your own healing, your own giving and receiving. This is what makes you a teacher of God - shared interests. Other people are part of your self. You have to be willing to give love to the part of you that is in them, in order to receive it.

This is why, per the golden rule, what you do unto others you ARE DOING unto yourself. This is why you have to look for the GOOD in other people, in order to FIND it within yourself. Because you are not just you. This is why your BROTHER becomes your savior, because essentially there is part of YOU in your brother. If you want to see yourself as Christ or soul, you have to see the Christ/soul in the other person AS WELL. You are BOTH that.

Whatever applies to them applies to you, because you are equals. That means whatever you are trying to give to yourself - do for yourself - apply to yourself - you have to get out of that mindset and instead apply it to EVERYONE EQUALLY. You can't find your "self", or even your soul, by focusing ONLY on your own self/soul exclusively. You can't tap into "just my higher self", it has to be that you're tapping into the entire Kingdom of God.

You have to give to others what you want to receive for yourself. Which means you have to give love to other people in order to simultaneously give it to yourself. Giving and receiving are one.

The ego's law is one of inequality in which what applies to you does not apply to anyone else. Where you are separated off in isolation in a prison all alone. And to focus on accepting atonement "for yourself alone" is completely contradictory to how things really are. The golden rule, which is an unbreakable law of God, says that whatever is true of you is true of everyone. So either you BOTH are innocent, or you BOTH are guilty, but never can you be DIFFERENT or have something special that applies only to you and not them.

So our whole practice of applying spiritual principles "to ourselves", "for ourselves", HAS to start to OPEN UP and INCLUDE other people. It has to be about SHARING. Because heaven's law is all based on sharing. Everyone in heaven shares everything equally and fully. So I should be saying, WE are innocent, we are BOTH innocent, we are BOTH sinless, we are BOTH guiltless. This erases the SEPARATION BETWEEN us.

It's the separation that needs undoing, not some personal issue that hides in a separate box. If all you do is "fix only yourself", you are NOT undoing the separation BETWEEN you and the others, or between you and the part of you that is in them. And so that will put a ceiling on how much 'you' can wake up, because by not including others you are maintaining the separation and keeping it going, which limits you. You cannot go ALL the way without including everyone.

It is therefore ONLY through communication, shared minds, joined minds and hearts, union, holy relationship, true oneness, that the separation is actually undone. It's not enough to "work on yourself". You have to be open to working "on the sonship". You are working to help heal THE WHOLE, not just your selfish self. To accept atonement for yourself ACTUALLY means that you INCLUDE EVERYONE in "the truth that applies to all", in which you accept what is TRUE OF EVERYONE, not just yourself. Otherwise we're just staying selfish little separate people.

"The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other." UrT1B24K

"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made." UrT16C4

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them." UrT5B1

There is no world.

The entire content of the physical world is happening within the split mind of the ego. It is all happening inside the one mind of the ego, shared collectively by all individuals within it.

Every event that takes place always has some form of separation involved, where there is a cause and a separate effect, a victim and victimizer, some kind of opponents, enemies, conflict.

Every role, every side, every persuasion of someone being for or against or right or wrong, all of them are part of the ego split mind.

The ego mind is a vast mind spanning this entire universe. It includes all planets and stars and galaxies. Every single event that transpires is an expression of self attack.

In self-attack, a single mind is at war with itself. It has divisions within itself which have split it apart and now, what used to be a single will has become multiple wills. And each of these wills is slightly different and has a different focus or goal. And none of them agree with each other, and so all of them are in competition. Chaos is the result (see the laws of chaos in the Course).

This gives rise to all manner of illusions across a vast spectrum throughout the world and throughout all history. In every war there appear to be two sides, the good and the bad, the oppressor and the oppressed, the attacker and the attacked. And yet both of those sides are happening inside the one ego mind. The one ego mind is playing against itself, is at war with itself, and is both its own attacker and its own victim.

When you do not see this and you fall for the illusion that one of the sides is better than the other side, one of the viewpoints is more justified or righteous, one of the parties is better or worse, or somehow there is an inbalance or difference between them, you have become fooled by the ego's illusions. You are misperceiving and are now experiencing the ego.

There is a line in the Course which says literally, "The world IS false perception." It does not say that the world is perceived falsely by individuals. It says there is one mind, the one ego mind, which contains the entire physical universe, within which there is a false perception happening. That means there are illusions appearing, there is misunderstanding, there is division and separation, there are multiple wills, and now there APPEARS to be many different sides all who do not quite agree with each other. And some of those sides now seem to be defending various positions or opinions, and yet ALL of those sides are part of the ego's state of misperception.

The world, the physical world, IS mis-perception taking place within the one ego mind. The world, the illusion of a world appearing, with all of its events and people, is actually a picture in a single large mind, where that mind is hallucinating, and is experiencing self-attack, and is having a major war with itself. This is why the Course says that the world is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" - an envisioning within God's Son of what it would be like if He were destroying himself.

Everything in this physical universe is at war with everything else. For particles of matter to even appear to exist there has to be difference and conflict, to allow there to be a fluctuation of some kind, which creates a localized point in spacetime where something shows up to demonstrate that what is true there is not true elsewhere.

If we are in the business of correcting perception, which the Course very much advocates, then we need to realize that this correction of perception cannot JUST take place within your little ego mind within your little ego body. Your little ego mind is only a TINY part of the entire ego mind. There is vast mis-perception occuring in and AS the entire world itself. THAT MIND, that large mind, which is dreaming the whole world, is mis-perceiving and experiencing self-attack all the time. THAT MIND needs to receive perceptual correction, beyond your own little PIECE of that mind receiving correction.

There is no world, by the way.

When you wake up to the `limits` of your own personal separate ego little mind, confined to a body still and subject still to the laws of the world, such as death and physics and biological processes and so on, and also spacetime itself, you have corrected the perception of a PART of the ego mind, but you have not corrected the grander perception of the entire ego mind, which is still hallucinating a universe-scale war against itself. This is the difference between waking up in the dream and having the war still wage all around you, versus waking up FROM the dream and ENDING THE WAR WITH YOURSELF, which means ENDING THE ILLUSORY UNIVERSE.

If there is a leaf on a tree which is not receiving quite as much sunlight today because there is another leaf above it which is blocking the light, this is a WAR on that leaf and will "cause" it to die off more quickly. If you accelerate what takes place underground as tree roots look for food, you will see that they literally fight with each other and try to fend each other off to secure ownership of food sources. The trees are at war with each other. When there is a cloud in the sky, blocking the sun, that is a war on everything beneath the cloud. I'm not kidding.

This entire universe is a state of war, a state of conflict, a state of self-attack. The one mind is dreaming of what it is like to attack itself and kill itself. It is a dream of dying and death. It's a desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to DIE, having hated a while. Do not glorify one little part of this world over another - that's still part of the ego thought system.

You do not escape this dream of death until you are able to completely transcend all of the laws of this universe and become supernaturally miraculous. You do not escape it by taking a side or seeing one thing as better or worse than another. You do not escape it by falling for the oldest trick in the book, which is that one thing is more spiritual or worthy or special or better or worse or more righteous or more justified or more ego or less ego than something else. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS AN ILLUSION OF SEPARATION.

This entire world is a mis-perception, an hallucination, happening in the mind of the One Son of God. It is a vast ego delusion, where every single role or side that can be taken "against" another is taken, and all sides and all roles are played simultaneously by that one mind. NO-ONE is more justified than another, and no side that anyone takes is better or more righteous than another. All victims, all victimizers, all opposition, all enemies, those who appear innocent, those who appear guilty, it is ALL part of the same ONE MIND PRETENDING that it is multiple individual selves with different opinions. This is also why no-one's opinion matters to the truth.

Perpetrators of suffering and war and violence and murder and death are just as much a part of the ego dream as those who seem to receive those effects. Both sides are a team. Both of them need each other. Both of them depend on each other to exist. Both of them must exist together in order to exist at all. Look at the whole of the mind - the universal mind - the one mind. Look at what it is doing to itself, within itself. It's beating itself up. It's pretending to put on a performance where one part of itself attacks another part and pretends it doesn't know it's doing it. This is the illusion we need to learn to overlook. This is what forgiveness must teach us to see past and not fall for or be hemmed in by.

There is no world here. it's just one mind's dream of hurting itself. This is the CENTRAL THOUGHT the Course is attempting to teach. That there literally, right in your fucking face literally, IS NO WORLD. This world we seem to live in and on is NOT REALLY THERE. It's a lie. It's a big fat illusion floating in the one mind. It is mis-perception of Self, and mis-perception of God. It's an attempt to destroy who you are. It is the crucifixion of God's Son, of which Jesus's crucifixion on the cross was just a reflection or symbol within a symbol.

There is no world. Can you handle the truth?

"ANY mistake can be corrected, if TRUTH be left to judge it. But, if the mistake is given the STATUS of truth, to what CAN it be brought? The "holiness" of sin is kept in place by just this strange device."

What is a mistake? It's just a conclusion you come to when you don't have all the facts. It's what you experience when you deny what is really true, and hide from it. Hiding from the facts makes you unaware of them.

You will base your conclusions on all the information you have. But if your information is lacking due to being hidden, you are very likely going to make a mistake. Based on what you DO know, your conclusions will seem to make total sense. But the problem is you have left out some facts, and that could change everything.

For example, the "tiny mad idea" that you can be separate from God, is an idea of something impossible. You cannot be separate from God because God is everywhere. The idea is ridiculous and makes no sense. However, if you go in denial and hide from the truth, you will lose sight of the facts. And now you can potentially convince yourself that separation is possible.

Believing separation is possible, IS a mistake. Because the fact remains that it is not possible at all. But we don't RECOGNIZE that it is a mistake, because we think that in our state of denial we still have full access to all the information. And in this we are also mistaken, because being in denial shuts information out of your awareness.

So as we go into the so-called "separation from God", as we "buy into" what seem to actually be very logical conclusions, making sense of reality based on what we think we know, we can become very mistaken and NOT RECOGNIZE that we are. We can believe separation is possible, even though it isn't. And this sets us on a slippery staircase where we're likely to make one mistake after another.

"Brothers, take not one step in the descent to hell. For, HAVING taken one, you will NOT RECOGNIZE the rest for what they are. And they WILL follow. Attack in ANY form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads FROM Heaven. Yet, any instant, it is possible to have this all undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell?"

Being in a mistaken state of mind, ie lacking awareness of the whole truth of God, you WILL come to false conclusions. You will assume that you are correct in believing that separation is possible. In order TO believe it, however, you have to assign the attributes of God TO the mad idea.

God means truth and reality and meaning and permanence. If you are mistaken, you are confused about what reality IS, and will lose track of WHAT is real. You will now start to assign God's attributes to the mistakes you're making. You will claim that your mistakes are NOT mistakes, and you will instead GIVE them reality and truth. You'll interpret them as ACTUAL FACTS.

Believing that a mistaken idea is actually a fact, GIVES the mistake a sense of truth, validity, power, causation, reality, permanence and life. It is by this mechanism that you convert mistakes into SINS. Sin is now the idea that, even though you are ONLY mistaken, you're not ACTUALLY mistaken, but are in fact correct, and therefore your mistakes are REAL.

If what you do in mistakes is real, then every time you make a mistake you are REALLY doing it. And you will find that once you start off on the wrong foot, believing in separation, you will progress ever more deeply into mistake upon mistake, until the descent into hell becomes so twisted and unrecognizable that you can't even tell what anything is anymore.

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is BECAUSE it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and AWAY from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."

A sin, then, is really just a mistaken state of mind, which has mistakenly believed that some property of God belongs to the mistake. It ASSOCIATES reality and truth with something that isn't true or real. It mistakes something false FOR something true. And it therefore produces confusion and insanity.

What this really means is that what we call "the ego" or the "split mind", is NOT a sinful state. There IS no real sin, on any level at any time. The ego is not really a sinful approach to reality. It is a MISTAKEN approach. It is nothing more than mistaken. The whole notion that "you are really separate" is a mistake. Separation is not possible, so you can't be separated off. To believe that you are, is to be mistaken, but not sinful.

You cannot be guilty unless you are sinful. You can only be sinful, or believe that you are, if you combine reality with illusions. If you mix the attributes of God with the attributes of something UNREAL, you get sin. A mistake is interpreted as permanent, as having real effects, as causing with a power of its own, and of attacking the vulnerability of something as though it were true and possible. IF that were true, your mistakes WOULD be sins. But it isn't.

The ENTIRE ego thought system is nothing more than a mistaken state of mind. A mind that does not RECOGNIZE what is true and false. It arises in a mind that has lost sight of the truth, due to being in denial of God. This denial has hidden the truth and concealed it, making it hard to recognize or see. And in that lack of light, things which are NOT true are CONFUSED with things that are. This means you are lost, but it does not mean you are sinful.

If the ego assertion is that "separation is possible" or "you are separate", it will base all of its sense of identity and truth on this premise. This includes its seemingly "selfish" attitude of self-preservation and self-interest and general selfishness. But these are not really sins. They are just a mind being mistaken. And the mind is actually trying to be very very logical in drawing its conclusions, based on what it believes is true.

If separation IS true, then you ARE separated off, and you SHOULD be selfish, because there is no-one else you're connected to that you can share anything with. It all becomes about "me alone" because you literally are believing you exist on a desert island in isolation. It makes perfect sense to such a mind that it CAN only look out for its own interests, because there has been a breakdown in communication and relationship with everyone else due to the separation.

This doesn't make the ego a sinner, it just makes it confused. It is just mistaken. The belief in separation is a mistaken belief because separation is impossible. WHEN the mind finally recognizes that its conclusions of "I am separate" were simply based on a false premise, that this entire way of thinking in terms of "me alone" was based on a LIE, that same mind will have a eureka moment and wake up to the truth.

There is no call for guilt, because real sin does not exist. When you believe that sin HAS reality, then guilt IS entirely justified AND inescapable. You WILL be forced to feel guilty and to seek to destroy yourself to atone for what you really did, IF what you did is believed to be taking place in reality. If it is not recognized that this world IS A DREAM, then you will, by mistake, condemn yourself to death for your "real" mistakes. Real mistakes are unforgivable.

To forgive then, or to apply forgiveness, we simply need to learn to recognize that we are mistaken. We are mistaken because we are in denial. The denial is making us unaware of the whole truth. We do not have all the facts. We don't really know what anything is, or what it is for. We can't judge anything correctly because we can't see the whole picture and are highly liable to come to a false conclusion. We can't draw ANY conclusions because we don't RECOGNIZE the problem or situation.

Therefore we need the help of the Holy Spirit who stands outside of this mistakenness and sees it for what it is. HE recognizes that we are ONLY mistaken. All of heaven knows this. All the angels know this. They come to our aid knowing that all we're doing is being asleep and having a bad dream, which seems real, but which isn't, in which all kinds of upsetting things seem to happen. And not one single thing we dream of is real or true, nor does it have any consequences whatsoever.

They come to our aid to simply tell us, we are mistaken and are incorrect. We need gentle corrections. We don't have all the facts and need to open up to a bigger truth than the one we believe currently. We need to have a little willingness to entertain the idea that we ARE in a mistaken state, and become open to the possibility of having drawn a false conclusion. The truth might even be totally opposite to what we believe, making it seem like something we do not want.

You are not guilty because you have not really sinned. Reality and truth can only appropriately be assigned to God. You should never assign reality or truth to a dream or anything in it. The world is not real and doesn't exist, because you are still at home with God in heaven, dreaming of exile. Nothing that you seem to do in your dream happens to anything real. Nothing real is ever affected. Only by giving it reality or truth can you deceive yourself that you HAVE done what you think is possible, but what remains impossible in truth.

Undoing the ego then is nothing more than recognizing that you are merely mistaken, and not sinful. This is forgiveness. The recognition that you HAVE NOT DONE what you think you did. You cannot have done it because it is IMPOSSIBLE in God's reality. Therefore it cannot be real or true. You DID NOT do what you think you did, in reality, you just dreamed of it. And you only dreamed of it because you were mistaken. Your mistake can be corrected and undone without ANY punishment or guilt or suffering whatsoever. "Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL tod ecide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"The power to work miracles belong to you."

Sometimes when I am thinking about ACIM matters, Jesus interjects and finishes my sentences. I was thinking "miracles are..." and Jesus interjected, "the power to heal."

This kicked in a sudden cascade of many insights, as I saw a wide array of ACIM material "coming together" under a single umbrella. A final missing piece of the puzzle that I've been trying to find for years.

I've struggled to be able to tie certain parts of miracle-working together. For example Jesus talks about miracles as expressions of love. He talks about changes in perception. He talks about healing the body.

He also talks about moving mountains with a power surge. And about the power of thought to produce effects. He talks of how the Holy Spirit enables you to do things not of this world. And then of course there's Jesus's demonstrations of e.g. walking on water, raising the dead, multiplying food.

How is ALL of this a miracle?

I couldn't reconcile how a form of "healing" could be said to "move a mountain". Or how Jesus walking on water was an "expression of love". I almost suspected there were two separate threads in the course - one of "mind over matter" and one of "miracle expression/healing" But there isn't, they are intimately related. Because BEHIND both of them, there is one thing.

The key... is POWER.

And by that I mean, SUPERNATURAL power. The Power of God.In ACIM, there is talk of power. There is also talk of STRENGTH. And there is also talk of ABILITY. These are all very closely related. If you have the power to do something, you have an ability to do it. To be powerful you must also be strong. And when we look to ACIM we start to see the pieces come together:

"The POWER to work miracles (what comes before miracles happen) BELONGS to you."

"To recognize that all POWER is of God is to gain all power."

"I am not weak but strong." "I am not afraid but ALL POWERFUL."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a POWER-SURGE that can literally move mountains."

"See the point about miracles as a perception corrector before he can effect miracles as CREATIVE ENERGIZERS, which they are."

"The fact that each Soul has this POWER completely"

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of THE POWER OF THOUGHT, and real avoidance of miscreation."

"Miracles are seen in light, and light and STRENGTH are one."

"When you have FELT THE STRENGTH IN YOU, which makes all miracles within your easy reach, you will not doubt."

"This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in STRENGTH"

"He will offer all His STRENGTH to every little effort which you make."

"Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, POWER and STRENGTH available to us in all our undertakings."

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but HAS THE POWER to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now."

"For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His STRENGTH instead."

"releasing the STRENGTH of God into everything you think and will and do."

"Every GAIN IN OUR STRENGTH is offered for all, so they, too, can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us."

"A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its STRENGTH."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot EXERT REAL CONTROL because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"The miracle is the MEANS, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

The list goes on. When you look, there are MANY many statements testifying that as our minds heal, they become STRONGER. And this strength is POWER. And this power is CAUSAL and is shared with God. And our thoughts have the power to cause things to happen.

Light and strength are one. Strength and miracle are one. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God" tells you that God uses his POWER. "What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world" entails the fact that He has all the POWER in heaven and earth.

"All POWER in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

It is too easy to be deceived by word associations, such as human notions of love. If we talk about "expression of love" as miracles, we might be tempted to think in terms of softness, gentleness, weakness, a LACK of power. This is an ego definition. Gentleness and innocence are actually very POWERFUL.

It is VERY clear, that BEHIND all miraculous ability, the driving force, is POWER, and it is the Power of God and it is ours to WIELD when we unite with God's Will. This power is EXTREMELY strong. This power POWERS miracles. This is how miracles are ENERGIZING. They supply a lack of power and strength.

"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the MIND MUST BE STRONGER than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings MORE LOVE to the giver AND the receiver."

Love, is not just love. Love is POWERFUL. God, who is love, is all powerful. This power, is UNLIMITED. That means it is CAPABLE of anything. It is "the power to" do anything. Love is not weak, it is strong. In sanity the mind is strong. To be miraculous is to be POWERFUL. By forgiving, you become STRONGER. Approaching light, you are approaching STRENGTH.

What this certainly means is, BEFORE a miracle takes place, a miraculous state of mind - miracle mindedness - is a STRONG MIND, a mind which has access to the POWER OF GOD - and it is the EXPRESSION OF THAT LOVING POWER which CAUSES a miracle to occur, which in turn produces effects. Power is the MEANS of miracle working. It is the ABILITY.

"The POWER ***to*** work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already ***able to***. Doing them will bring conviction in the ***ability*** (power). I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction (strength/power) really comes through accomplishment."

Ultimately then, the key thread which binds all the "powers of the mind" together, is the POWER OF GOD. This is why when Jesus walks on water, he uses THE POWER of the mind to do so, and this is a miraculous power. When he heals the sick and raises the dead, it is because he USES power to SUPPLY a lack of power. When perception is caused to change, it is because a "spark of life", a "power surge", an "energizer", is injected into the mind and CAUSES a change.

If we become too caught up in the EFFECTS that miracles cause, that is why it becomes confusing. If we think of miracles as "the expression that came from love" or as "the mountain that was moved" or "the body that was healed", we become confused. Because now we have some level confusion.

"Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. ***It is purely a means***, while any type of healing is a result."

Here Jesus is clear. Miracles are a MEANS. "The Holy Spirit is the mechanism (means) of miracles." The MEANS of being able to PERFORM a miracle, is having the POWER. The POWER is HOW the miracle is performed. The expression of the LOVING POWER OF GOD, is how miracles happen.

So when we look higher, beyond the RESULTS of miracles, beyond the changes, and the moved mountains, and the healed bodies, to the source, we see that in fact it all starts out with THE POWER. And this power EXPRESSES. And this power is UNLIMITED. And this power can do all of the above. The FORM that the effects take is highly varied and potentially a distraction from recognizing that they all originate in the SAME premise.

That you HAVE THE POWER to perform.

"Very few people appreciate the REAL POWER OF THE MIND."

"The mind is a VERY POWERFUL CREATOR, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

So when we say, "this is a course in miracles", what we are really talking about is, this is a course in BECOMING VERY POWERFUL. It is a course in becoming STRONG mentally. It is a course in lining up with the power and will and mind of God. It is a course in EMPOWERMENT and taking your power back (having given it away to the ego and to weakness). It is a course in becoming ABLE to perform POWERFUL miracles. To USE the POWER of the mind to accomplish anything.

"Teachers of God will take over the world because of their STRENGTH."

POWERFUL SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE WORKERS. .... is a far cry from how miracle working is typically portrayed. A mere "shift in perception" hardly testifies to "what the Holy Spirit (power) enables you to do is clearly not of this world", nor to the ability to heal others, or to move mountains. A miracle CAPABLE of being "a potential spectacle" is hardly likely when miracles are not given any credit for being POWERFUL.

We are in training to develop the ABILITY, the power, to use the power of God. And that is very exciting!

I have actually experienced God's power, once so far. It happened while attempting to heal my wife. A sudden immeasureable presence arrived and felt incredibly strong. Like a super force, so intense and so powerful in its presence, it felt like it could cause anything to happen. That it could move any object. That it was SO STRONG that nothing could resist it. As if it could have literally moved the planet. It lasted only a few seconds, leaving a complete miraculous healing in its wake (all pain vanished).

To GAIN this power, ALL power must be recognized as being SHARED with God. "To recognize that all power is OF GOD (from Him, hosted by you), is to gain all power." With the Holy Spirit working THROUGH you, you become ABLE to do anything. "Do His works". And there is LITERALLY NOTHING our holiness cannot do.

"The POWER to work miracles belongs to you."

The "secret of salvation" is simply the recognition that, if you are suffering in any way, you must have done it to yourself. No-one else could have done it to you, because you are immortal and invulnerable.

Paired with this realization is the recognition that, therefore, the world and its inhabitants cannot have been the cause of anything you are experiencing. So if you are upset, you must've done it yourself. But let's go even deeper with this. The real truth behind the secret of salvation, is that you are a permanently immortal being that can never change. You have been created to last forever and to never waver or be different. It is impossible for anything to happen to you in truth, whether seemingly caused by another person or the world or even yourself.

If you are truly immortal, no-one and nothing can affect you. There are no causes that can have power over you. There are no forces or wills that can oppose you or act upon you. There is nothing anywhere that can change you even slightly. Nothing can redefine you or manipulate you or force you into a different state. Nothing can upset you or disturb you or make you sick or dead.

The secret of salvation suggests that if you are seeming to suffer in any way, it can't be that anyone or anything ELSE other than yourself is to blame. YOU must have done this to yourself. But it is also true that in reality, even you do not really have the power to destroy yourself in any way. You cannot change what God created you to be. But you can BELIEVE that you have.

So if you are suffering, you must have entered into a mistaken BELIEF, that you have stopped being as God created you, you have forgotten who you really are, you have lost touch with your immortality, and are now suggesting that you are MORTAL. And in this mindset of mortality, you are now having FANTASIES about causes of distorted mental states in which you seem to suffer. You inflict suffering upon yourself and your body while pretending it is caused by something else.

The purpose of the secret of salvation therefore isn't just to point out that all suffering is self inflicted, but to point you BEYOND the suffering to the fact that you are an immortal being. The ultimate "secret" behind the secret of salvation, is that you HAVE NOT changed, you ARE NOT suffering, you ARE NOT sick, and you CANNOT die.

Any states in which you seem to suffer must be an illusion. Any forms of sickness must be a fantasy in the mind. Any bodily ailments or states must be fictional. Any unhappiness or disturbed peace or stress or nightmares must be of your own making. But even these, even all forms of suffering and destruction cannot ACTUALLY affect who you really are. They must be dreams and fantasies of mortality and of impossibilities.

What God has put together, no man can put asunder. In other words, since God has GIVEN you eternal life in your creation, you are endlessly perfect and cannot be "put asunder" ie destroyed. Not even you can destroy yourself, although you can believe that you are by CONFUSING yourself with something that is NOT yourself and trying make it look destroyed.

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

Recognize clearly that this says you ARE NOT sick. If you seem to be sick, the sickness cannot be true, and it cannot exist. It only appears to exist because you believe in it and are maintaining it with your mind, doing it to "yourself". And your identification with the body makes it appear to be YOU who is sick. But you are immortal and can NEVER be sick. Even underneath the sickness you are unharmed.

So we are to not only recognize "you are doing it to yourself", we are to STOP doing it to ourselves and move into KNOWING ourselves. Moving out of "I am mortal and I can suffer" into "I am immortal and I cannot suffer." Our whole problem is that we keep trying to be mortal, we keep trying to die, we keep trying to be sick, we keep trying to attack ourselves and play at being victims.

"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."

Jesus is literally saying that we as immortal beings are playing a game of death. Pretending to die, pretending to suffer, to be weak, to be unhappy, to be lost and attacked, to be hurt, to be temporary and destructible, to be offended and upset, to be vulnerable and threatenable, and to be anything less than permanently invulnerable. We are pretending to be mortal beings. And all of our blame of people and the world is just a cover-up for our suicidal ambitions.

We must choose eternal life again in order to stop pretending to be something that can suffer and die. To fully live is to live without suffering, sickness, fear or death. To live completely is to life forever. And to do this we must reclaim our immortality and stop pretending to be mortals.

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

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

This is our only issue. We are immortal beings pretending to be mortal. We need to identify clearly the many forms that "mortality" takes. The belief in death is also "I am upset by that person", and "they did this to me", and "I am sick", and "i am unhappy", and "there is reason to be afraid", and "my body is damaged", and "I cannot forgive them", and so on. Everything in the world is a form of death and the belief in death. And we need to learn to stop playing these games, stop participating in these activities, stop believing in these roles, and stop using them to try to prove that we are destructible.

If you want to not die, to never suffer pain, to never be sick, to never be unhappy, to never have your peace disturbed, to never be afraid or threatened, to never lose or grieve or feel guilty, then you need to enter into FORGIVENESS, which is the acknowledgement that you are still as God created you, there is no sin, there is no attack, nothing real can be threatened, and you are still eternal.

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more."

It seems to you that there is a separate power, a separate will, or a separate cause, which is "outside of your mind", which you seem to have no control over.

This power or will seems to show up in the body becoming sick, or stuff happening against your will, or things occurring which you complain about or seem not to want to happen.

But it's not a matter of there actually being a separate power that's acting against you. There is no separate will in the sickness doing its own thing out of control. There is no causality outside of your mind or in the world that can do anything to you without your consent.

So then you have to realize, whatever power, will, reality, force, unchangeability, intention, causality, or any other attribute of power that you see as being "in" that thing, or in the body, or in the sickness, or in the events, it CANNOT BE that these things are separate from your mind.

It is YOUR MIND, out there, separated off, seemingly turned against you, as if it is a separate cause or will or person. So now your body is showing sickness because your mind put the sickness there. And now the part of your mind which put the sickness there is at war with the rest of your mind. And now the rest of your mind sees that it seems to have an enemy who is willing against you.

You do not have an enemy.

Every enemy, every external cause, every illusion that it is "not you doing this", is actually YOU. It's YOUR MIND doing it to itself. This is the secret to salvation.

The sickness in your body is being maintained by YOUR MIND, some part of your mind, which has "turned against yourself" in unlove and denial. And now it seems there are two selves or two minds or two wills operating in conflict.

So then you get all of this impression that "you", the remaining part of your mind, is up against this foe who is "not you", and has a mind of its own. And it seems to have power over you, is causal, has will, is making decisions that you do not want.

There is no such thing. There is only YOUR MIND pretending to be two minds. Your have a split mind. You are divided against yourself. That means you are UNCERTAIN about who and what you are, are not loving yourself WHOLLY, and there is some belief in separation and denial in your mind which is making it SEEM as if a separate mind is attacking you.

So if that sickness is actually something YOU ARE DOING TO YOURSELF, and if that sickness is actually coming from your mind, and that "enemy" that you perceive is actually YOU, because you have regarded yourself as a sinner or attacker or vicious ego or separate sinner, then by you RECLAIMING this part of your mind into your whole self, you are alleviating and taking back and undoing this split in your mind.

So now if there is no split in your mind, this sickness has no mind to drive it. It has no mind to believe in it, because the sickness is just a symptom of SEPARATION, ie the idea that your mind is separate from itself. Or that there are two of you. Or that there are two decisions being made. Or two wills competing against each other. You are simply fighting with yourself.

So then, to the degree that you believe this separate cause/mind is out there and not you, to that degree you will think you have to "fight with it", and rise up against it, or find the power to attack it, having made it real, in order to free yourself from it. But that now means, you are attacking this other part of your mind, attacking your enemy, and thus attacking yourself.

Because that separate "source of will" out there, or in the body, is actually YOU. So to go against it simply reinforces the presence of the "sickness", or the symptoms, because the symptoms are just showing you that there is separation in the mind or you are attacking yourself. To attack the attack is not healing.

So what needs to happen only, is your RECOGNITION that the will and power and mind which you PERCEIVE as being "not in you" and "beyond your control" and "not you" and "I did not choose this" and "I am not causing this", must be TAKEN BACK, and reintegrated into your identity and your whole self, so that you are no longer attacking yourself or at odds with yourself. So that you are WHOLE MINDED, or SINGLE MINDED. That also means, so that you love yourself.

There is no enemy. There is no separate external cause. It's YOU! Take your power back. Nothing has power over you other than the power YOU GIVE IT by putting YOUR SELF INTO IT, by giving yourself away, through disownership, denial, and irresponsibility. You take what is in you - will, power, mind, causality, and push it away from you. Then it shows up as an enemy willing against you. No wonder! So now you need to take that back, reclaim the power, re-own yourself, stop denying yourself and be whole. This wholeness is healing. This wholeness undoes the belief in the SPLIT in your mind, and that split is the sole cause behind all symptoms of sickness.

This therefore means two very important things.

1) The symptoms of sickness can ONLY show up when your mind is split and divided against itself, and it is only by seeing part of your OWN WILL outside of you, against you, that you have level confusion and thus separation beliefs and sickness shows up. Also death. So you are the ONLY CAUSE OF SICKNESS AND DEATH.

2) When your mind is whole and not divided and is not seeing part of itself as outside of itself, THERE CANNOT BE ANY SICKNESS SHOWING UP. It *MUST* disappear. "Illusions recognized must disappear." Once you've taken yourself back and owned up to things and accepted the truth, there CANNOT BE SICKNESS OR DEATH.

Sickness cannot linger around. It's not like, ok, you fucked up and made a mess of things and sickness resulted, and now you get your mind into a happy place, and now you have to "live with" the results or consequences of your mistake. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! No fucking way. This is NOT what the course is teaching at all, and many people believe this IS what the course says - that you must become at peace with whatever shit happens. NO! You must STOP MAKING SHIT HAPPEN.

The condition of your body is a DIRECT REFLECTION of the state of your mind. "A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this". Sickness cannot last when the guilt behind it removed, making sickness impossible to return. A body not used for attack CANNOT BE SICK NOR CAN IT DIE.

It's all about you being the enemy of yourself, you having split-off parts of your mind which are seeming to "will against you", but it's really YOU WILLING AGAINST YOU. That means YOU OWN THE POWER that is causing sickness to happen. And that means YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND and stop making the sickness show up.

"You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both."

This is LITERAL. A sick body proves the mind is still sick. The body cannot show up as sick or dead if the mind is whole. Period. Anyone who if REALLY FULLY Integrated the whole of their mind fragments will no longer have level confusion and will no longer express a sick body from the mind, thus demonstrating a perfectly healed and healthy body, to PROVE that the mind REALLY IS believing that it is the SINGLE CAUSE of the body, more powerful than the body, and is thus miraculous.

Sickness must go. It is a lie. There is no such thing as real sickness or sickness that should remain while you wake up. If the body is still sick YOU ARE NOT AWAKE. If the body still dies YOU ARE NOT AWAKE. Reclaim all of yourself and you will regain awareness of immortality AND DEMONSTRATE IT.

Your only enemy is yourself. You are the only cause of everything you experience. You are doing this to yourself, and can choose again.

You can share the power of God, if you know how to pray. "Prayer (asking) is the medium of miracles". - ACIM

How do you ask? How do you pray? How do you accurately communicate with God as to what you want? How do you cause to happen what you want to happen, instead of what your unconscious chooses against you?

One part of miracles is believing you have received what it is you want, or in other words, acceptance of its "reality". But the receiving is only part of it. There is also the asking. "Ask and you shall receive". So how do you ask?

Asking isn't done by there being a sense of separation between you and what you want to happen. It isn't done in a typical asking fashion, where you say, "I do not have this yet, but I want it". That simply affirms and states that you do not have it, and that's going to remain the case. You think this is asking, but this is how a victim asks.

In victim consciousness, where you see yourself as powerless, where there are causes outside of you working against you, and where you are afraid, you tend to withdraw and stay frozen, acting as if you are choosing or wanting, but basically remaining paralyzed. There is no power in it.

This lack of power, or empowerment, literally means that the Holy Spirit - who is the expression of God's Power, has been blocked. Or basically, you are choosing not to USE His Power. His Power is shared with Christ, who you are, but if you are in a victim consciousness you have disowned yourself, and therefore disowned this power.

To ask correctly must entail the presence of POWER, because it is that power which actually gives you power OVER illusions, and actually is like a "force" which can make actual changes. If you are not empowered, then you are cut off from the power you share with God, and therefore do not have the power to do anything. So when you ask, in a disempowered state, you really strongly believe that there is no power that can actually act, and therefore the power does not do anything.

So you could be in a victim mindset and be very very strongly "asking" for help or change, pleading with God, begging for someone to be healed, and nothing is happening. Because even though you're making a lot of noise, most of which is a reaction to perceiving that there's a "really big real problem", it's all ego expressions, not expressions of empowerment.

You can also be in wishful thinking. You could be saying "I wish I wasn't sick". There is no power in that whatsoever. So it's a wish, but it doesn't do anything. So it's not really a request. You're not really asking for the sickness to be healed even if you're wishing very hard. You can really really strongly feel that you really really "want" a person to be not sick, because you think the sickness is real and want to help, but this "wanting" is not asking. It is just making the problem real and reacting to that delusional perception, taking the form of "looking like" you're asking, but really doing absolutely nothing.

God has the power to do anything. And the Holy Spirit can express that power with no limits. This power comes because God EXTENDS. And you are meant to be sharing in that power, causing you to be ABLE to actually CAUSE ANYTHING to happen. But you're not going to be able to wield that power if you are not in alignment with "being empowered". So victimhood has to go. You have to become responsible for being what you really are. You have to claim the truth and own up to your causality, which you share with God.

When you are in the victim mindset, you have disempowered yourself, and you are used to having no power. You think that if you do spiritual practices and "wake up" then you will still be a disempowered being, perhaps more responsible and aware but you don't realize it means you will have ACCESS TO REAL POWER. The power that creates worlds. There is a line in ACIM urtext which says "your mind has the power to create planets". No joke.

So if you want to get access to the power, first and foremost, you need to get out of the victim mind, which is your long-term goal of becoming closer to God's truth. As you approach that truth and align yourself with it, you are opting to become an extender of God's power (love). Meanwhile, you need to learn how to ask.

Asking is more of an act of stating that something is already manifest. It is a command. It isn't really a question. It's like writing reality. You don't ask by begging or traditional ego asking. You state what you believe in. There is, however, a caveat to this.

Such power can only be used for the highest good of all. You cannot be a "power ego" that gets access to God's power but uses it for all kinds of ego whims and purposes. The power only works through ego relinquishment, which automatically means it cannot be even accessed for malevolent purposes. It can only be accessed and used for loving purposes. This is why you need to be clear about what God's will is, because you can only use His Power if it is God's will that you do so.

if you want, lovingly, for a person's sickness to be healed, you do not say, "I'd like that healed please". You also do not ask God "are you going to heal this" or "can you heal this please?". You instead state a "new reality". You command the old reality to go, by cancelling the illusions psychologically, then you state what you want to change. You tell it to change, using that power. Your word becomes powerful.

"All your sins are forgiven, get up and walk" - Jesus' example.

Jesus isn't wishy washy in his asking. He is commanding. Authoritative. That's the key to asking. He doesn't ask God to maybe do something. He joined WITH God, BECOMES the power, SHARES the power, and EXPRESSES the power. THAT is correct prayer. That is the highest level of prayer. When there is a separation in the prayer where you think there is some obstacle to overcome, some time delay, some real problem, or some doubt as to whether it's going to transfer, that's basically ego and it will rob you of your power.

True prayer, the highest song, ACTS, as if it is real already. Jesus says his "workers are ACTIVE workers". It's not a form of asking that the ego is used to. It's counter to the ego's intuition. It's almost like, looking into the future and visualizing what it's going to be like, believing it is true, and pulling the future state into the present by receiving the truth that it WILL happen and already has. This is totally the opposite of the ego's form of asking, which focuses on the PAST and the reality of existing problems, causing there to be no power in the present and no ability to affect the future.

Thus, since asking is prayer, prayer must mean commanding results, ie expressing LOVE from love's perspective, as a representative of love, and it means that whatever song you are singing, whatever truth you are radiating, whatever you are ASSERTING, that is what you are giving, and that is what you are asking for. So asking in a way is backwards, you do not ask, you command. You receive.

You believe God's truth and make it a reality, regardless of what form looks like currently. How can a new form be expressed (e.g. a healed body) if you are dwelling on what the existing form looks like, or if you keep looking to the existing form to see if it has changed? Instead you focus squarely on the reality in the mind - what you are CAUSING TO HAPPEN. You do have a right to this power and you can access this power. It is your inheritance. But you need to unlearn the ego's ways of causing stuff to not happen, in order to reawaken the proper FUNCTIONING of the Son of God.

From lesson 261...

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside? "

"The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety. For the Son of God's impermanence is "proof" his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them. For if his oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be victor? Who could be his prey? Who could be victim? Who the murderer? And if he did not die, what "proof" is there that God's eternal Son can be destroyed?

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"The body is a dream. Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose that the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for."

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Changing the purpose of the body DOES NOT mean looking at it as a separate thing and skewing your vision to pretend it looks healthier than it is! It means, LITERALLY, CHANGING THE BODY to DEMONSTRATE that it is not sick!

Some people believe it's our job to change how we perceive the body, that we are to dis-identify from it, and so in a way separate from it. Some also believe we are to focus on healing the mind, not the body. Some also believe the course is not teaching us about healing the body. And some also believe we'll be able to wake up from dreaming without changing the body at all, or healing its sickness, or making it impossible for it to die.

But if this is true, if the body is just some "thing" that exists, that we identify with or not, or make ourselves separate from, or which is not part of our mind, then this raises a question:

WHO PUT THE BODY THERE IF NOT YOUR MIND?

Or additionally, what it is that causes the body to be sick and die if not YOUR MIND?

You have to then answer this question without resorting to jumping to a different level or using an intellectual bypass. The question can only have a couple of possible answers:

1) God made the bodies and we're just changing how we see them, and have to accept them as sick and dead.

2) It was us who made the bodies.

That there are no bodies, bodies are illusions, bodies don't exist, or whatever else along those lines is NOT a valid answer to this question at this point.

Someone HAS to be responsible for the body that is showing up, regardless of whether it's an illusion. SOMEONE is making it appear. SOMEONE is putting it there. Even if it's not really there.

So who is it?

If it's not you who is making the body show up, then it's God's fault. Yet the course says, "Love did not create the body". And God is love, so God didn't put the body there.

And if you are supposed to disconnect yourself from or separate from the body in some way, to go "only into mind", or to IGNORE its sickness or its death, WHO STILL is putting that body there? WHO or WHAT is making it sick? WHO is making it die?

It has no bearing on whether you are at peace or not or what your mind is doing in this scenario. Somehow, someone, or something, must be responsible for making a sick and broken body show up.

We know it's not God. And if you're claiming it's not YOU because you are not a body, you're shifting levels mid-logic. If you are the mind "only" and "not the body", and God didn't make the body, who is CONTINUING to maintain the body? Someone is! Someone is continuing to make the body appear and walk around the planet with sickness showing up in it, and supposedly you're off on cloud9 having a happy time ... so WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

What you cannot escape here is simple fact, that IT IS YOU who are making the body appear. Even if it's an illusion, it is YOU who are dreaming it. The world is not putting it there. God is not putting it there. There is no other cause in the world because there is NO cause in the world. The body didn't show up on its own. Nor did it show up because of your parents.

Your body right now, with which you are contemplating typing a response, or which you are using to read these words, is being put there BY YOU. And as such, you are 100% responsible for everything it showing up as. No-one else is responsible for it.

That means, in conclusion, SINCE YOU are the one who is making your body appear, YOU HAVE EVERY ABILITY to make an entire body appear! Out of nowhere! With the power of your mind only. You ARE DOING IT right now! You've been doing it for years!

So that means, if you are able to project a body, which appears to have a certain condition or state of health, what's to stop you from projecting a body which is in perfect health, has no sickness, and is not suffering, and cannot die?

YOU are putting the sickness into the body. It's your responsibility. The sickness can ONLY stay in the body IF you keep putting it there. If you are trying to get your mind into a place where it thinks of itself as "I am not the body" but the body is still showing up, what does that tell you? YOU STILL believe you are a body. You're not being honest. The body can only appear IF YOU make it appear. The body can only "stay sick" if YOU keep projecting a sick body (from a sick mind).

So there isn't any way to avoid this. You are the one who made your body. You are the one making it right now. That means your mind is pretty powerful at manifesting a human being. And more besides. So why would this ever mean, that you don't have the ability to make it show up as healed, or that you have to put up with suffering, or that you cannot remove sickness, or that you are supposed to become peaceful "in spite of death"? You will never be able to be at peace in spite of death because if death "happens to you" you will see yourself as a victim.

Healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. That's how it works. No-one else is responsible for your state of being, and nothing in the world causes your body to be sick or keeps it sick. No-one but YOU makes the body appear AT ALL. No-one but YOU has the free will choice to make it show up as a symbol of sinlessness.

No-one has to suffer and no-one has to keep sickness or to try to find ways to "work around it" or "live with it" or "tolerate it" or "transcend it". JUST REMOVE THE SICKNESS!!!

That's what miracles are for!

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

Here is the main problem we all face day after day. The body makes an ILLUSORY WORLD seem real. The world is an illusion of a world, a picture of crucifixion, a vision of hell, a depiction of total lies, holding not one single shred of truth and is designed to tempt you believe that illusions of death are reality.

The BODY, was INTENTIONALLY MADE, in order to sense this world and to try to make the world SEEM real - to seem to really EXIST. It does this through what we call senses, sensory inputs, detection, perception, ways of discerning that not only is something REALLY THERE, but it's DOING STUFF, it's changing, it's shifting, there are sensations being produced, you can touch it and smell it and see it, and all this turns into EVIDENCE trying to testify that THE WORLD EXISTS.

EVERYTHING THE BODY SENSES IS A LIE!

The body is designed to DECEIVE you. Its senses are designed NOT to be aware of reality. It's eyes are designed to be BLOCKED by forms of sin/error/matter so that you do NOT see. It's ears pick up on fake sound vibrations. You touch the surface of nothing with your fingers and believe it's a real object. It's a massive deception.

This is a pretty major issue for us because we're strapped into these bodies. We're being presented with this holographic virtual world all around us, showing us pictures of death, suffering, sickness and hell, a world where everything is fundamentally imperfect and impermanent. And then we're forced through the body's sensory inputs to PICK UP ON "what's there" and to relay that as messages to our mind. Our mind sees these messages and now has a choice, either you BELIEVE THEM, or to recognize them as UNREAL.

When your mind believes what the body senses, which includes ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE, any notion that "something is happening", any sound or smell or taste, any appearance of any body doing anything anywhere in any way, you are FALLING FOR TEMPTATION. You are being deceived by illusions and have entered into the ego. And that means your spiritual eye is not open, you're not having christ vision, and are unconscious.

The problem is, you're going to remain strapped into the body UNTIL you can COMPLETELY 100% transcend the world, and transcend and NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING the body detects. And yet the body is going to keep bombarding your mind with all of its sensory inputs. Pictures of crucifixion, bodies writhing in pain, wars waging, fights breaking out, people crying etc.

The body is going to just keep picking up and sensing this stuff and broadcasting it to your mind. So what is your mind going to do about this? How do you get out of hell? How do you transition from being DECEIVED by everything the body picks up on, to being NOT deceived?

This is where changing our beliefs comes in. And this is where forgiveness comes in. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". Which means to forgive the entire world you must overlook it, not see it, must learn to RECOGNIZE that it IS AN ILLUSION, and NOT BELIEVE IT. Believing the body's sensory impressions of the world are real is FALSE perception. Believing illusions are reality is FALSE perception. To reach true perception you must come to RECOGNIZE and believe, that everything the body picks up on as "out there" or "happening" IS NOT TRUE AND NOT REAL. IT IS NOT HAPPENING AND DOES NOT EXIST!

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think you brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED." It has not even happened. The events were ILLUSIONS! What your body showed you WAS A LIE! This is profound because it means literally we have to learn to open the spiritual eye which looks with TRUTH (holy spirit) and clearly recognizes what this world IS (a lie), rather than believing in it. A forgiven world is a NOT BELIEVED world. A forgiven world is a FALSE world. And this means weakening investment in physical senses.

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

So this is our issue. We are using a body which is picking up on a world of sin and hell which is not real, and which tries to tell us "ITS REALLY THERE". "It exists". Add this is what the body was DESIGNED TO DO. And it was designed to never do anything else. Which means it CAN ONLY LIE to you. So you have to learn how to STOP BELIEVING IT. You must learn to recognize ALL body signals are UNREAL and UNTRUE. Add that means the entire world you're in, everything you see, is NOT REAL.

It's by learning to recognize illusions as illusions, sensory inputs as FALSE, and trusting only the spiritual eye of truth and light, that you escape from the dream of hell and wake up to reality.

"Nothing you see means anything."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it."

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

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"To sense is not to know."

"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."

"Theirs (body's eyes) is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing."

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

"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."

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"God's teachers choose to look **on dreams** a while (the world). It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. **The dream says otherwise**, but who would put his faith in dreams once ****they are recognized for what they are****?

Awareness of dreaming (recognition that it IS a dream not a reality) is the real function of God's teachers. ****They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. (body visions) Yet they are not deceived by what they see.**** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity (reality, truth) alone is not a thing of dreams (not of or in this world). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream*** (behind the illusory world), beyond all **seeming** (appearances, illusions) and yet surely theirs."

"The ***body’s eyes will continue to see differences.*** (for a teacher of God who is still in a body using it temporarily alongside christ vision) 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed ****will no longer acknowledge them.**** 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, ****and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before.**** 4 ******But the *healed mind* will put them all in one category; they are unreal.******

5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world*** (all body sensors inputs including everything you see - you SORT OUT these messages in your mind). 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth. (mind recognizes the world is an illusion, because it sees WITH truth, which reveals what is true and what is not - the world is not)"

In ACIM, there is a central pillar which was not clear to me before. It is an unexpected strategy for acheiving salvation, which is pointed to and reinforced over and over again. And in effect is the ONLY way.

We may be familiar with the idea that ATONEMENT is the goal. Yes it is. The course also states that atonement, true perception, forgiveness, and salvation are all one, ie synonyms.

Atonement, as salvation, is a major goal. How do you find salvation, ie atonement? How are you saved from death and suffering? What power or ability is it that you have to get there?

Recognizing that salvation and atonement are the same thing, and salvation is "the ONLY way out of hell", the next key is to ask, how do you achieve salvation? Is there a secret to it perhaps?

Jesus refers to the "how", the key, as "the secret of salvation". Simply, "you are doing this to yourself." And to back this up, the supporting statement would be, "You can be affected by nothing but yourself."

This is similar to "Only the truth is true and nothing else is true". So let's say...

I am the one who causes ALL my suffering.

Nothing else causes ANY of my suffering.

If I so choose, I will not suffer.

This may seem unexpected, because we spend a huge amount of time lost in the ego, tangled up in other people, dramas, upsets and suffering. Our focus is pulled away from this idea constantly by ego temptations. And this builds confusing walls around this core idea.

Whenever it we've bought into the idea that someone else is causing us, we are affected by something, the world is upsetting us, things are happening against our will, we don't want something but don't see how we can stop it, etc... we're getting lost in FALSE causes, and losing sight of the forgiving truth that WE ARE CAUSING THIS. The cause is in OUR mind.

It is the movement AWAY from those confusions and untruths, TOWARD the STATE of salvation/atonement/forgiveness, that is "applying forgiveness". Undoing our false beliefs about WHO is causing us, is part of forgiving.

Becoming clear about how WE are causing OUR OWN suffering, is applying forgiveness. Our goal, to achieve the STATE of forgiveness, which is also true or corrected perception, we must "correct" the "errors" we are making in our discernment of what is true.

What is true is that WE ARE THE CAUSE of ALL of our own suffering. Becoming clear about this, seeing this accurately, recognizing it fully, is true perception. Perception "corrects" as you sift through and remove belief in "other causes" beyond yourself, which are FALSE causes. Illusions.

What I find surprising is that Jesus clearly is teaching us to simply CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER. And that if we are suffering, we HAVE chosen to do so.. And there are NO EXCEPTIONS. Our mind causes all suffering, all sickness, and death in the body. There is NO OTHER CAUSE.

At its simplest, this means, you have free will and choose what you experience. At all times. In all cases. And there is NO POWER capable of interfering with this. There are NO OTHER CAUSES of you other than God. Anything that happens, YOU CHOOSE. Anything you feel, YOU CHOOSE. Any suffering, YOU CHOOSE. You do it to yourself.

Why is that? It's simply because you have been given TOTAL FREEDOM by God. Free will provides you the ability to CHOOSE what you want and thus what you value. You ARE free to deny God if you so choose, and "God does not coerce" you to do otherwise. It IS up to you to CHOOSE heaven and happiness.

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Because you CAN CHOOSE, and there IS NO other cause of what you experience, you CAN CHOOSE NOT TO DIE. You can choose never to be sick. You can choose to always be happy. It does not take effort, it merely takes recognition, clarity, sanity, and decision.

You do not MAKE happiness or love or peace, those are shared with God who has created reality. But you DO choose whether to accept or reject them. You do not choose WHAT the choices are, but you do choose WHICH you elect to experience - real heaven or an illusory hell.

You can choose to go home. Nothing can stop you when you choose God. Death has no power over you. You are at the effect of NOTHING in this world.

The surprising, unexpected thing about this to me, is that I did not used to think this was the main focus. I did not think forgiveness would lead to this. I did not recognize that "forgiving" was about choosing, or that I HAD a choice, or WAS choosing. I did not think the secret of salvation was even necessarily the be-all and end-all of "how to get there."

But Jesus is clear. Atonement as salvation, is achieved ONLY through the total acceptance of your free will and the exercising of your CHOICE never to die, and thus to accept God and eternal life. You are free to come and go. You are free to make yourself suffer. And you are free to wake up at any time. Nothing can stop you.

The challenge then, in applying this idea, is examining WHAT you are doing, and then identifying not IF you are doing this to yourself, but HOW and WHY. A first step is to recognize you ARE doing to this to yourself, in all cases. The second step is identifying HOW you are doing this to yourself. The third step is identifying WHY you are doing this to yourself. And then finally the fourth step is CHOOSING OTHERWISE. ie, stop hurting yourself.

This reveals that really, this world is a world is suicide and death. Every person is attacking ONLY themselves. There are NO victims. Every person here is suicidal and self-attacking and hurting themselves. And we are all trying to learn how to LOVE OURSELVES. How NOT to hurt ourselves.

That entails RECLAIMING our power and freedom as CHRIST, a co-creator with God, capable of choosing whether to live or die, to come and go as we wish, and to become willing to choose ONLY LIFE. To choose God and go home. Not through coercion or force, not through wishful thinking, but simply by being in touch with the POWER of our decision to simply be ABLE to do so.

Jesus is telling us that NOTHING happens to us against our free will, as a result of someone else doing something to us, by accident, by acts of nature, by external laws, or by ANY CAUSE other than YOU. Your mind has TOTAL DOMINION OVER THE WORLD. You are the cause.

"This is a course in cause, not effect."

Being cause, is being empowered. Being cause is being strong. Being cause is being fearless. Being cause is being miraculous and creative. Being cause is being loving and whole. Being cause is freedom. Being cause, it is impossible that ANYTHING happen to you un-chosen by yourself.

This means TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY. You have the power to choose not to die. You have the power to choose never to suffer or be sick. Anything you ARE experiencing, you HAVE chosen, and you CAN change your mind. And this choice DOES NOT depend on anyone else. Nor is this choice made BY anyone else, nor is it limited by anyone else or any circumstance.