A Course in Miracles Topic - Illusion

 In the ego's world, illusions battle among themselves, with the ego believing that it can judge which is true. 
   Either truth is apparent, or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions.       M-17.4:10,11.

Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. ... truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace of God.  
    Conflict must be between two forces. It cannot exist between one power and nothingness. There is nothing you could attack that is not part of you. And by attacking it you make two illusions of yourself, in conflict with each other. And this occurs whenever you look on anything that God created with anything but love.            T-23.I.7:3-6,10/8:1-5.

Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from them.           T-17.I.5:2-5.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Prayer

The prayers of the ego demonstrate its belief in lack, and the prayers of the heart are answered to demonstrate wholeness.

The prayer for things of this world will bring experiences of this world. If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will be given because this will be received. It is impossible that the prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one who asks. If he asks for the impossible, if he wants what does not exist or seeks for illusions in his heart, all this becomes his own.                M-21.3:1-4.

Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly meaningless. The prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that you may be able to recognize what you already have. T-3.V.6:1-5.

The Bible emphasizes that all prayer is answered, and this is indeed true. The very fact that the Holy Spirit has been asked for anything will ensure a response. Yet it is equally certain that no response given by Him will ever be one that would increase fear. It is possible that His answer will not be heard. It is impossible, however, that it will be lost. There are many answers you have already received but have not yet heard. I assure you that they are waiting for you.                     T-9.II.3:1-7. 

You can no more pray for yourself alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion, … You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone, because you are not alone. ... … If you would hear me, hear my brothers in whom God's Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies in them.                               T-9.II.6:1,2,5/7:5,6. 

Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. What you ask for you receive. But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. ... God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation.              M-21.1:1-3,7.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Substitute

  In the world of dreams,  the ego is always trying to get the best deal, choosing and exchanging people and things in order to do "better".   
   A Course in Miracles starts equality, and states that any attempt to change, and thus improve anything, actually makes it worse; denying yourself the opportunity to learn from it what is True.

To substitute is to choose between, renouncing one aspect of the Sonship in favor of the other. For this special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution occurred is thus fragmented, and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation.

  The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. He does not judge between them, knowing they are one. Being united, they are one because they are the same. Substitution is clearly a process in which they are perceived as different. One would unite; the other separate.     T-18.I.1:3-6/2:1-6.

If you would attempt to substitute one aspect of love for another, you have placed less value on one and more on the other. You have not only separated them, but you have also judged against both. Yet you had judged against yourself first, or you would never have imagined that you needed your brothers as they were not. Unless you had seen yourself as without love, you could not have judged them so like you in lack.                                       T-15.V.6:3-6. 

A Course in Miracles Topic - Sacrifice

Sacrifice is an idea, that a vengeful God demands  punishment - God's response to our independence. How better to demonstrate this than the idea that God demanded his own Son pay "the ultimate price" in order to "redeem" mankind.

   A Course in Miracles knows that God's Love is freely given and has no "cost". 

 The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does.   T-7.X.5:5.

Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind has everything and strives only to protect its wholeness. It cannot project. It can only honor other minds, because honor is the natural greeting of the truly loved to others who are like them. T-3.I.6:1-3.

… fact that sacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love.                        T-15.X.5:6-11.

You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. T-15.XI.4:1-3.

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A Course in Miracles Topic - Anger

Anger is an ego device to proclaim its innocence while at the same time justifying its attack. ACIM responds that anger is solely your responsibility and is never justified. 

You have probably reacted for years as if you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear.     T-6.I.3:1-3.

… anger recognizes a reality that is not there; yet is the anger certain witness that you do believe in it as fact. Now is escape impossible, until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world.               M-17.9:7,8. 

Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appears as facts. Regardless, too, of the intensity of the anger that is aroused. It may be merely slight irritation, perhaps too mild to be even clearly recognized. Or it may also take the form of intense rage, accompanied by thoughts of violence, fantasied or apparently acted out. It does not matter. All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent, or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions.         M-17.4.

Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection only to destroy your perception of both yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers.   T-6.II.3:5-8.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Magic

Magic is the ego's attempt at proving its connection with spirit; and to explain, and thereby control, miracles. A Course in Miracles responds the you, having been created whole and complete, have no need for what magic offers.

The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit's acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless. Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself. T-4.II.8:5-8. 

All magic is an attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot be reconciled. T-10.IV.1:1,2.

Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.     T-1.I.14.     (Principles of Miracles) 

The avoidance of magic is the avoidance of temptation. For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God's. These attempts may indeed seem frightening, but they are merely pathetic. They can have no effects; neither good nor bad, neither rewarding nor demanding sacrifice, healing nor destructive, quieting nor fearful. When all magic is recognized as merely nothing, the teacher of God has reached the most advanced state. … For magic of any kind, in all its forms, simply does nothing. Its powerlessness is the reason it can be so easily escaped. What has no effects can hardly terrify.    M-16.91-5,7-9.

This is from a question in the Manual For Teachers - HOW DO GOD'S TEACHERS DEAL WITH MAGIC THOUGHTS?: 

How to deal with magic thus becomes a major lesson for the teacher of God to master. His first responsibility in this is not to attack it. If a magic thought arouses anger in any form, God's teacher can be sure that he is strengthening his own belief in sin and has condemned himself. ...
… Anger in response to perceived magic thoughts is a basic cause of fear. ... A magic thought, by its mere presence, acknowledges a separation from God                   M-17.1:4-6/5:1,3.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Fear

   Fear is an ego device  based on vulnerability and inequality.   Like the ego, it is a decision, and  your responsibility. 
   Fear and Love are the two choices in this world; once Love is chosen, fear vanishes.

For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. It is only their lack of understanding that frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly they are not afraid.             T-11.VIII.14:4,5.

The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about.      T-2.VI.4:1-3. 

The first corrective step in undoing the error is to know first that the conflict is an expression of fear. Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen. T-2.VI.7:1,2.

All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all.              T-1.VI.5:1.

Recognize only that the ego's goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness. ... For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. But the sane realize that only attack could produce fear, from which the Love of God completely protects them.                   T-11.V.12:1,9,10.

For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still translate the fear into truth. If you were left with the fear, once you had recognized it, you would have taken a step away from reality, not towards it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then. Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear itself is an appeal for help. ... If only attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must dawn on you. For fear is a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.          T-12.I.8:1-7,12,13.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Teaching/Learning

A Course in Miracles emphasizes that teaching and learning are the same thing; and what you teach demonstrates what you believe about yourself.

The role of teaching and learning is actually reversed in the thinking of the world. ... It seems as if the teacher and the learner are separated, the teacher giving something to the learner rather than to himself. … to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same. … teaching is a constant process; it goes on every moment of the day, and continues into sleeping thoughts as well.   To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true … The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice. The purpose of the course might be said to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn. You cannot give to someone else, but only to yourself, and this you learn through teaching.                                            M-in.1:1-3,5,6,7/2:1,2,4-6.

Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. … An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.               T-6.III.4:1,6-9.  

Each teaching-learning situation is maximal in the sense that each person involved will learn the most that he can from the other person at that time.        M-3.4:1. 

Teaching is done in many ways, above all by example. Teaching should be healing, because it is the sharing of ideas and the recognition that to share ideas is to strengthen them. I [Jesus] cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me because I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned, because by so doing you can depend on it.             T-5.IV.5:1-4.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Harmlessness

 The reality of everything is totally harmless, because total harmlessness is the condition of its reality. It is also the condition of your awareness of its reality.              T-8.IX.2:2,3.

Harm is impossible for God's teachers. They can neither harm nor be harmed. Harm is the outcome of judgment. It is the dishonest act that follows a dishonest thought. It is a verdict of guilt upon a brother, and therefore on oneself. … Nor can God's Teacher be heard at all, except by those who realize that harm can actually achieve nothing. No gain can come of it.Therefore, God's teachers are wholly gentle. They need the strength of gentleness, … .M-4.IV.1:1-5,11,12/2:1,2. (from What are the characteristics of God's Teacher's:IV - Gentleness) 

Yet whether or not you recognize it now, you have agreed to cooperate in the effort to become both harmless and helpful, attributes that must go together. T-4.II.5:5 .

A Course in Miracles Topic - Special Hate Relationship

The special hate relationship is the ego's attempt at claiming innocence for itself, by directing anger at the other as unworthy of Love.

Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies in looking at it. It would be impossible not to know the meaning of love, except for this. For the special love relationship, in which the meaning of love is hidden, is undertaken solely to offset the hate, but not to let it go. … You cannot limit hate. The special love relationship will not offset it, but will merely drive it underground and out of sight. It is essential to bring it into sight, and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to balance hate with love that makes love meaningless to you.                              T-16.IV.1:1-3,5-8.

All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are bargains with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted. Forget not this; to bargain is to set a limit, and any brother with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate.            T-21.III.1:1-3. 

Within yourself you love your brother with a perfect love.                 T-18.I.9:3. 

A Course in Miracles Topic - Special love Relationships

 Love is of God, and like God, there is nothing real that is outside of it. The ego's attempt at replacing the universality of Love with special and separate relationships is really the fear of the all inclusiveness of Truth.

The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it. Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible to understand it. God loves every brother as He loves you; neither less nor more. He needs them all equally, and so do you.         T-15.V.10:3-6. 

The demand for specialness, and the perception of the giving of specialness as an act of love, would make love hateful. The real purpose of the special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to destroy reality and substitute illusion. For the ego is itself an illusion, and only illusions can be the witnesses to its "reality."                           T-16.V.9:3-5.

Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. The special relationship is a ritual of form, ... .  T-16.V.12:1,2.

The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no attempt to rise above the storm, into the sunlight. ... The special love relationship is not perceived as a value in itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred is split off and kept apart. The special love partner is acceptable only as long as he serves this purpose.   T-16.IV.3:1-5.

In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as union. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion.   T-16.V.3:7,8. 

A Course in Miracles Topic - Specialness

      Everything God created is like itself - there are no differences - everyone has everything equally.
     Recognize your Self in your brother/sister, and see them as God sees them - with Love.

You are not special. If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the truth of what you really are, how can you know the truth?     T-24.II.4:1,2.

Only the special could have enemies, for they are different and not the same. And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot be escaped. What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself. But what is different calls for judgment, and this must come from someone "better," someone incapable of being like what he condemns, "above" it, sinless by comparison with it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart, but serves as grounds from which attack on those who seem "beneath" the special one is "natural" and "just." The special ones feel weak and frail because of differences, for what would make them special is their enemy.         T-24.I.3:5,6/4:1-5.

Your brother's specialness and yours are enemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and deny they are the same. …   Here is your savior from your specialness. He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. You are alike to God as God is to Himself.     T-24.II.9:3/10:1-3.

A Course in Miracles Topic : Attack

  Attack is never justified and the only thing that you attack is your understanding of your True identity.

Attack is always made upon a stranger. ...There are no strangers in God's creation.         T-3.III.7:3,7.

If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would know His power is yours. But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. The only way it could be justified is if you and your brother were separate from the other, and all were separate from your Creator.   T-22.VI.12:1-4. 

All attack is Self attack. It cannot be anything else. Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is an attack on your identification.         T-10.II.5:1-3. 

The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparent. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one's own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love must follow. What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion? ... You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe. T-6.in.1:1-5,7.

A Course in Miracles Topic - The Plan of Atonement

Trials are but lessons that 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 that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, "My brother, choose again.". T-31.VIII.3:1,2.

The Plan of Atonement is for individuals to learn to correct those mistakes that prevent their own awakening. They can't do this by themselves, because in Truth they are not by themselves. When they have awakened, and at each step towards awakening, they are part of the chain of forgiveness in which they teach and learn from each other.

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 the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created.                    T-9.IV.31,2.

The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations.                           T-1.III.3. 

Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time T.1.I.25 (The Principles of Miracles) 

A Course in Miracles Topic - Death

Death is easy to define and hard to comprehend. 

There is no death, but there is a belief in death.                T-3.VII.5:11.

The belief in death is the ego's attempt at making the dream, and thus itself, real.

When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did. Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. Like any other impossible solution the ego attempts, it will not work.                   T-6.V.A.1.

Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. ... 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.         T-20.VIII.7:1,3-7/8:1.

A Course in Miracles Topic - The Real World

 A Course in Miracles contrasts the world that we made, with the "real world" that reflects God's reality within the dream,  and thus becoming a transition to Heaven. 

   The real world is the state where perception is purified of anything that is not compatible with Heaven, and so the transition is quick and joyful.

The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived but wanted not.        T-30.V.5:2.

The world you made is ... totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of any kind.                T-12.III.9:6.

Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it you see it. ... You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with you. And 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.             T-18.II.5:1,8-14.

The ego may see some good, but never only good. That is why its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for that you could not accept. But it always adds something that is not real to the real, thus confusing illusion and reality. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and illusion, you cannot tell which is true. … Perceiving only the real world will lead you to the real Heaven, because it will make you capable of understanding it.                          T-11.VII.3:1-6,9.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Bridge

  A Course in Miracles uses the metaphor of a bridge to symbolize the transition from dreams to Truth. 
   The journey of awakening happens only with our complete willingness to let go of judgment and attack.

The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness.                  T-16.VI.10:1-3.

The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up nothing! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it.           T-16.VI.11:1-5. 

Be not unwilling now; you are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love will never satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything.           T-16.IV.2:5,6.

The bridge that leads to union in yourself must lead to knowledge, for it was built with God beside you, … .              T-16.IV.10:1.

The Holy Spirit is the Bridge to Him, made from your willingness to unite with Him and created by His joy in union with you. …
… The bridge that He would carry you across lifts you from time into eternity.                T-16.IV.12:2/13:4.

On this side of the bridge you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing.
… Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge with you, and to be released together there.                                    T-16.VI.5:2/6:4,5.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Altar

     
 The altar is within us. 

Grace is not given to a body, but to a mind. And the mind that receives it looks instantly beyond the body, and sees the holy place where it was healed. There is the altar where the grace was given, in which it stands.          T-19.I.13:1-3 

… as we ask to recognize what God has given us. We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him. W-104.4:1,2. (“I seek what belongs to me in truth”) 

Both Heaven and earth are in you, because the call of both is in your mind. The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not things; they are devotions. ... Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you want to serve. The decision is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.                      T-5.II.8:5-7,9,11,12. 

Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of spirit, and the turning away from the belief in physical sight. This often entails fear, because you are afraid of what your spiritual sight will show you. I said before that the Holy Spirit cannot see error, and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement. ... When the Holy Spirit is permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, He also looks immediately toward the Atonement. Nothing He perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from spiritual awareness is merely channelized toward correction.     T-2.V.7:1-3,5-7. 

A Course in Miracle Topic: Seek

   Truth is unrecognized because the ego sees awakening to Truth as the end of its existence. The ego has thus spent your lifetime trying to prevent you from seeing it - this is your conditioning. 
  The ego, however, being wary of you wanting to have greater peace and satisfaction, "helps" you seek, thus guaranteeing that you will never find. 

[This is about searching for love, which is another variation of searching for Truth.]

The search the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love it is seeking what it is afraid to find. ... It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him. Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love's presence, for it could not respond at all. ... The ego will therefore distort love, and teach you that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will search for love, but will not recognize it.       T-12.IV.2:1-3/3:1,2,4,5.

… the ego's rule is, "Seek and do not find." … "Try to learn but do not succeed." The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted, since they are all for facilitating the learning this strange curriculum is against. If you are trying to learn how not to learn, and the aim of your teaching is to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion?   T-12.V.7:1-5.

A Course in Miracles Topicc- The Conditions of Truth

Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. I [Jesus] can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself.     T-8.VI.9:8-11

   Let's say that Truth is a sphere, and as a sphere, one of its conditions is its roundness – it has no parts that are not round.
Form has many many shapes, but only spheres and circles (a sphere is made up of circles) have the exclusivity of roundness.    
   Knowing this, you can quickly determine, with any shape, as to whether it is a sphere.
   Truth is equally easy to diagnose, for the conditions of Truth are Peace – “The peace of God that passeth all understanding” (Corinthian 4:7) – peace without an opposite. Truth also consist of an all-inclusive Love – nothing is outside of it; and Truth is eternal – unchanging.
   Thus anything that has even an hint of struggle, of exclusion, or of change, is not Truth.
   When A Course in Miracles says that Truth is simple, and that Truth is obvious, it means that everything that lacks these conditions are false.

   The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. .... Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it.   All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. ... the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness: The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. .... Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.                T-14.II.2:1-3,5,6./3:1-4,6-9.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Will

 Free will is the idea of having needs that conflict with the will of other people, and even God. When the idea of differences is removed, then the belief that we would ever want anything that doesn't benefit the whole and is in total accord with God's Will is seen as false.
   Within Truth, we have no needs.

... rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate. It still remains within you, however, to extend as God extended His Spirit to you. In reality this is your only choice, because your free will was given you for your joy in creating the perfect.              T-2.I.3:8-10.

Your function is to add to God's treasure by creating yours. His Will to you is His Will for you. … You cannot find joy except as God does. ... Creation is the Will of God. His Will created you to create. Your will was not created separate from His, and so you must will as He wills.        T-8.VI.6:12,4,8-10.

To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. M-29.4.

You are afraid of God's Will because you have used your own mind, which He created in the likeness of His Own, to miscreate. The mind can miscreate only when it believes it is not free. ...  To be one is to be of one mind or will. When the Will of the Sonship and the Father are One, their perfect accord is Heaven.              T-3.II.4:1,2,5,6.

The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you will not listen to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free. That is why the ego is the denial of free will.  T-8.II.3:1-3.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Harm

  Truth, made by God, whole and eternal, cannot be harmed, and that any action that denies this by seeking to “protect” it, is really fear “protecting” illusion.

Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you. ... choice is always made between Christ's strength and your own weakness, seen apart from Him. Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly ...   Defensiveness is weakness. It proclaims you have denied the Christ and come to fear His Father's anger. ... What but illusions could defend you now, when it is but illusions that you fight?              W-153.6.7.

  If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you.  If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies, and teach them through the body that this is not so, you will understand the power of the mind that is in you. If you use the body for this and only for this, you cannot use it for attack. In the service of uniting it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion  is.    T-8.VII.3:1-4

A Course in Miracles Topic - Mistakes

The idea that mistakes have the power to change Truth, is part of the ego's argument that the separation is real. 
   Every “mistake” has a learning function, or else it is meaningless.

The Son of God can be mistaken ... There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty.    T-19.II.3:1-3.

It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. ... Sin is the proclamation that... guilt is justified.                           T-19.II.1:1,2,/2:3.

An error ... is not attractive. What you see clearly as a mistake you want corrected.    T-19.III.3:1,2. 

Mistakes are for correction, and they call for nothing else. What calls for punishment must call for nothing. Every mistake must be a call for love. T-19.III.4:5-7. 

A Course in Miracles Topic - Conflict

Conventional reality believes in "the survival of the fittest" - the fight for the right to exist. 

The so-called "battle for survival" is only the ego's struggle to preserve itself, and its interpretation of its own beginning. T-4.II.9:3.

It is difficult to realize that all conflict is meaningless, and doesn't require any response other than healing.

The levels created by the separation cannot but conflict. This is because they are meaningless to each other.      T-3.IV.1:8.

A separated or divided mind must be confused.                  T-3.IV.3:4.

The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of any kind. For it is made out of what you do not want, projected from your mind because you are afraid of it.    T-12.III.9:6,7.

The only judgment involved is the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other the call for love. T-14.X.7:1. 

review: Recognition,Accept,Condition

A Course in Miracles Topic - Sickness

  Sickness is the ego's proof that you are a body and cannot be like God

Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. T-1.I.24:2. 

The ego has a profound investment in sickness. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego's firm belief that you are not invulnerable?
   It is hard to perceive sickness as a false witness, ... .  ...those who want the ego are predisposed to defend it.    T-8.VIII.3:2,3/4:1,4.

A sick body does not make any sense. It could not make sense because sickness is not what the body is for. Sickness is meaningful only if ... the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premises sickness is inconceivable.    Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, … .              T-8.VIII.5:5-8/6:1,2.

Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love.       T-12.II.3:1-3.

All sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes.     T-26.VIII.2:1.

Sickness is a defense against the truth. W-136.15:6.

Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain. ... For sickness is an election; a decision. M-5.I.1:1,4.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Knowledge

"There is nothing partial about knowledge. Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate."



 Knowledge is the complete oneness with Truth and God.

Knowledge is the result of revelation and induces only thought.   T-3.III.5:10

Knowledge comes from the altar within … .  T-3.III.5:12

… perception must be straightened out before you can know anything. To know is to be certain. ... Knowledge is power because it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. ... True perception is the basis for knowledge, but knowing is the affirmation of truth and beyond all perceptions.       T-3.III.1:2,5,6,10

Knowing is not open to interpretation. You may try to "interpret" meaning, but this is always open to error because it refers to the perception of meaning.                     T-3.V.5:1,2.

The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge.                T-11.VIII.1:8,9

This course will lead to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. T-18.IX.11:1,2

The very real difference between perception and knowledge becomes quite apparent if you consider this: There is nothing partial about knowledge. Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate.                       T-13.VIII.2:1-3.

A Course in Miracles Topic - True

“The truth is true”. T-14.II.3,3

[the next line in ACIM is: Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there.       T-14.II.3,4]

... the truth is very simple: All power is of God. What is not of Him has no power to do anything. T-11.V.3:5-7. 

The reason this course is simple is that truth is simple. Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious. T-15.IV.6:1,2.

Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is One? He knows of one creation, one reality, one truth and but one Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. ...  The truth is simple; it is one, without an opposite. ... The truth makes no decisions, for there is nothing to decide between. T-26.III.1:1-4,8,10.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Defenses

In A Course in Miracles, defenses are but one part of attack, and a means by which the ego keeps the dream of separation in place.

God's teachers have learned how to be simple. They have no dreams that need defense against the truth. ... defenses are but foolish guardians of mad illusions. The more grotesque the dream, the fiercer and more powerful its defenses seem to be. Yet when the teacher of God finally agrees to look past them, he finds that nothing was there.... It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God. M-4.VI.1:1,2,6,7,11-15. (Manuel for Teacher's – WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD'S TEACHERS? # VI. is Defenselessness)

Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. ... Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you are giving up by attacking them.          T-8.I.3:12,4.

Peace is the ego's greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. The ego becomes strong in strife.                             T-5.III.8:7,8.

The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. ... The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable.        T-7.VI.6:1-3,5.

...when you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion.     T-22.V.6:1.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Judgment

   Maybe the hardest concept to understand is the idea that judgment, as the world sees it, is part of the problem; the solution is to give it up completely.

The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not knowledge rests.... In the end it does not matter whether your judgment is right or wrong. Either way you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it implies the belief that reality is yours to select from.   T-3.VI.2:1,2,10-12.

God's teachers do not judge. To judge is to be dishonest, for to judge is to assume a position you do not have. Judgment without self-deception is impossible. ... Judgment implies a lack of trust, ...  No teacher of God can judge and hope to learn.           M-4.III.1:1-3,6,11.

It is possible to look on reality without judgment and merely know that it is there.               T-3.VI.9:6.

The holy instant is not an instant of creation, but of recognition. For recognition comes of vision and suspended judgment.   T-21.II.8:2,3.

Judgment is symbolic because beyond perception there is no judgment. ... The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace.      T-3.VI.1:3/2:1.

The giving up of judgment, the ... prerequisite for hearing God's Voice ... Our curriculum trains for the relinquishment of judgment as the necessary condition of salvation.     M-9.2:4,7.

A Course in Miracles Topic - Giving,

Nothing real can be increased except by sharing T-4.VII.5:2.

   Giving, as seen by A Course in Miracles, is a means to keep something; and is seen by the world, as a way that something is lost.

God's laws are always fair and perfectly consistent. By giving you receive. But to receive is to accept, not to get. It is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to know you have. The recognition of having is the willingness for giving, and only by this willingness can you recognize what you have.          T-9.II.11,3-7.

LESSON 108: To give and to receive are one in truth ...Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one Thought whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first, nor which appears to be in second place. Here it is understood that both occur together, that the Thought remain complete. W.108.4:1,2.

To learn that giving and receiving are the same has special usefulness, because it can be tried so easily and seen as true.   W-108,6.1.

To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created.    T-5.1.1:7,9.