Did you know that the ego’s most heavily guarded block to awakening entirely from the separation dream of space-time, is our unwillingness to accept that only the truth is true and that quite literally, nothing else is true? This simple truth can be very easy for us to overlook. We think of it as something that is quite obvious and as something we already understand. We are apt to ignore the importance of really exploring it. We move our thoughts towards more “complicated” ideas, without really delving into what a powerful truth it is. Until we learn to recognize and actively separate truth from illusion in our daily thoughts and relationship interactions, we will unfortunately continue to attract conflict, disease, pain, lack and loss.

All suffering that we seem to encounter occurs because we still believe (and therefore accord value to) both the truth and the ego’s hallucinations. We mistakenly believe these two mutually exclusive systems of belief are equally true. In our split mind there is a pervasive confusion in the distorted belief that we are both human and divine; both the body and Spirit.

We have made the ego’s illusory projections of guilt – as conflict, sickness, pain, aging, lack, loss and death – equally as real as their true counter fact as peace, Love, health, harmony, perfection, wholeness and eternal life . We have also made the ego’s substitutes for Love real, things considered to be pleasurable or desired such as bodies with their sensual appetites and special relationships. No wonder we’re still cycling in the dream! Nearly all spiritual teachings including popular, non-dual teachings have made this common mistake. They passively condone the disastrous blend of truth with untruth which always protects the belief in physical bodies and ultimately leads to death.

“Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first, the second has no meaning. But without the second, is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. And truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.” … “This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure.” W-152.3,4:1

The relative world/universe is seen according to our desire. Projection always precedes what we appear to see and experience. It is imperative to recognize that to experience something pleasurable or painful, we must have first desired it. This desire remains unconscious until we’ve begun to heal the split mind through forgiveness.

Everything we seem to experience is seen either through the ego’s filter of guilt (body’s senses and its distorted memory), or we literally see through it with Christ Vision, to the healed, real world shining behind it. The first is viewed and thus manifested through its own belief in fear and death, while the second is valued and thus welcomed by its unequivocal dismissal of all forms of sin as unreal, and the joyful acceptance of God’s perfection in its place. Because the Mind looks clear past all illusions of fear, it is at peace and therefore, is able to embrace all-inclusive Love. All-inclusive Love cannot be known consistently – as the Will of God – until its illusory opposite has been recognized and erased through forgiveness.

To truly know and demonstrate the Love and Laws of God as miracles, we must eventually learn to discern the true from the false. This, by necessity, involves learning to discern between ego’s so-called laws and God’s Laws, the human from the divine, the body from Spirit, and the ego’s insane wishes from God’s Will. We do this not with the ego but by learning with Holy Spirit to make the positive separation between them.

We cannot “love” what is untrue and then expect to demonstrate consistent and miraculous healing of both cause (guilt) and its effects (suffering) in our mind. If we accept and attempt to love the untrue, we believe it to be real. Instead of asking Holy Spirit to reveal the miracle behind the appearance, we actually compound our confusion between what is true and what is illusion.

The miracle, as healing, does not affect anything real, it merely undoes the interference or block to our awareness of truth. But this healing cannot happen while we still prefer to glorify an illusion by: 1) seeing it as something desired or real, 2) believing it is something fearful from which we need defense, or 3) submitting or surrendering to the illusion. The illusion is entirely neutral. It has no power of itself. It is an illusory effect of our own untrue and unforgiven belief that we deserve punishment because we are guilty. We give the illusion power to affect us by our investment in its reality, which blocks the miracle.

The miracle cannot be genuinely welcomed until, with Holy Spirit, we’ve reached our own inner neutrality about the issue – free of resistance or submission to it. To reach this degree of neutrality, we must be willing to make the positive separation between truth and illusions in our mind. This is accepting the Atonement, and results in acceptance of the miracle in place of the illusion.

What we deem as natural through the ego, such as conflict, pain, disease, aging, scarcity, loss, death and violent acts of nature, etc., are not “natural” at all. These are miscreations projected by our fearful split mind. While we passively condone these illusions as either good or bad, and while we build our life around them, we are destined to perpetuate the separation dream. True healing arises from our comprehensive forgiveness which by necessity requires the uniform dismissal of unreality. We cannot forgive nor heal something that we choose to maintain is real, did in fact happen, or can harm us in any way.

“The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and [cannot] overlook it.” … “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 mind, 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 nonexistent. 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.”  T-9.IV.4:4-6,5:3-6

In the process of awakening, some spiritual modalities teach that healing involves learning to welcome, allow, accept, trust and love “what is,” whether it is mental, emotional or physical. These modalities don’t explain however that “what is” is actually an “untruth.” In this approach, the relative body and world are mostly viewed and taught as being causative rather than as “effects” emanating from unforgiveness in our mind.

On a more positive note, this approach of non-resistance can prove helpful by reducing the ego’s temptation to go into denial or do a spiritual bypass. The ego wants to intellectually argue that if the body, sickness or apparent adversity is not real anyway, it consequently need not be addressed. This denial is a common ego ploy to ensure that the student never goes beyond a concept into the direct knowing and experience of what the teaching represents: We share God’s outright dominion over all phenomena the ego projected. The ego wants to convince us that we are not God’s beloved Child, but instead, we are a mere body destined for suffering and death. We may tend to learn the metaphysical principles of the Course intellectually, but at the application or experience level our trust is often weak in applying them practically in all our relationships and with the body.

Bypassing occurs when we deny the fact that we do believe that untruth is real and that we are clearly fearful of harm. Instead of denying our belief that we’re a body which can suffer and die, we need to exercise radical self-honesty so we can unearth these denials without guilt or self-judgment. These denials are the very cause of all suffering, and we cannot employ the ego’s means to heal. We must learn to give them to Holy Spirit for forgiveness. Our trust transfers exponentially from fear to Love as we unlearn the ego’s beliefs, and in particular, as we relinquish our special relating, while practicing authentic relating using the Seven Keys.

The Split Mind – Perception and Knowledge

The entire realm of consciousness is exclusive of God’s realm of Knowledge. Consciousness (or perception) and Knowledge have no meeting place. The Holy Spirit in our Mind is the only mediator between them.

We made a vast dream of perception (consciousness), of time and space, birth and death, etc. It’s called the separation. Even the highest states of spiritual awakening, including the real world, remain still within the realm of perception/consciousness. Progressive levels of awareness and awakening are not known in the realm of God’s Knowledge where our Soul abides.

No real creation occurs here in the realm of perception. The highest attainment in the dream of perception is true perception. True perception allows the last step to take place, one which is taken by God Himself – the transfer from perception to God’s Knowledge.

The relative world is fiction, a massive dream all occurring in our mind (not brain). Included in this dream of perception/consciousness are bodies, the past, the dream of death, reincarnation, mother nature and its cycles, the astral realm, interdimensional beings and states, space-time, extraterrestrials and UFO’s, etc. None of these phenomena exist outside our mind.

Consequently, we do not awaken from the ego thought system through the dream of physical death. Death, as an illusory construct and defense against true union, is the ego’s central dream, without which there would be no space-time or separation. In renouncing our belief in death, we are recognizing that only the truth is true. The realm of perception would cease to exist in our mind because death and God are absolutely irreconcilable. Only one exists. In other words, our unquestioned belief in death as a natural and inevitable part of life (God), maintains the dream of separation. “Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem.” M-27.1:1

Death is the ego’s obsessive and non-negotiable escape route from Love, life, healing and union; all to ensure we never awaken altogether from the body identity and overcome its dream. However, we will eventually awaken from the separation dream through comprehensive forgiveness of our choice to perceive a dream apart from God’s Love. This is why, in His short incarnation, Jesus overcame death through His resurrection. He came to teach us that we too, can and will overcome the body and death. This is where the thinking of the world (as miscreation) is literally reversed.

“The ego wants [you] dead, but not itself. The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave.” T-15.I.3:3-4

While Creation is our natural function in Heaven outside our dream of space-time, healing is our function while our mind’s awareness journeys through its dream of perception. No co-creating with God occurs in our dream of duality. Healing is attained exclusively by forgiveness of our own projections of untruth, as the removal of blocks to our awareness of Love’s presence. All healing is forgiveness. It is the undoing of our investment in sin, guilt and fear and is thus the undoing of belief in bodies and death.

Our Soul dwells in the Absolute, eternally with God in the realm of Knowledge, even though we’ve chosen that our split mind dreams of duality, of perception/consciousness. Consciousness does not “know” with certainty, because it is still essentially judgmental, containing the questioning aspect which God’s unequivocal and indivisible Knowledge does not. The realm of Knowledge knows of no consciousness/perception because it is unified as one with God and our brothers. It is only here, in the realm of Knowledge, where co-creation with God occurs. The Soul continues its extension in Creation with God: “Creation continues unabated because that is the Will of God. This Will is always unified and therefore has no meaning in this world. It has no opposite and no degrees.” C-1.4:3-5

NOTE: See diagram

Realm of Knowledge & Realm of Illusions (Consciousness)

The mind divided between truth and untruth cannot Love. The closest we can come to the experience of changeless Love in the dream is to sincerely forgive all grievances and adversity, forgiving their singular source – as our own choice to perceive separation. This healing process is accelerated through the Holy Relationship. From our consistent forgiveness, the divided mind is returned to innocence and wholeness, which is Love.

“This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear.” C-4.6:1 Only the unified Will of God knows perfect Love, and this perfect Love casts out all fear.

The highest healing we can attain whilst still remaining in the realm of perception is true perception, which leads to Christ Vision and the real world dream. In truth, there is no attainment of One-Mindedness – as the unified Will of God – within the dream of perception and consciousness. The accomplishment of true perception heralds the joyful decision to end our free will “choice” to dream of an identity, will and world apart from God. The option of choice still resides in the realm of consciousness, which involves the possibility of doubt. To perceive then, in absolute terms, is to not Know.

Whereas in God’s realm of Knowledge, free of consciousness, there is no doubt, only the certainty of knowing. There is no choice to perceive an alternative to what we are as God’s all-encompassing Love. Maybe we can see now just why the entire separation is purely a dream only. The Son of God we are remains completely untouched by this dream of the choice to experience a fictional reality apart from God.

When we consent to heal our split mind, returning to our whole Mind as the unified Will of God, nothing remains to choose between. There is no alternative to God, or to Love as our unified Holy Self. This is One-Mindedness as the end of illusions. This is the end of perception or consciousness, and our return to Creation and Knowledge.

In the absence of our willing choice to miscreate by perceiving something apart from the Love of God we are, our Mind is returned to wholeness. Here, it knows only God and nothing other than God. We actively Will with God because we know we are the Will of God. The Will of God knows no division, and therefore no suffering. There is no point to dream of consciousness or perception any longer, as its purpose lies exclusively in our choice to perceive a dream of something other than the Will of God, as our shared and Holy Self. Who then would choose to fabricate and value an alternate identity and world?

“[Wrong-mindedness] listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the [One-mindedness] of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is One with God’s.”

“In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. [Consciousness] is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge.” C-1.6,7

Consciousness is still within the realm of perception and duality. Neither consciousness or perception is in the realm of Knowledge, where true Creating is. We won’t be aware of true co-creating with God until we ascend out of the dream of perception/consciousness and into Knowledge. This is something that most, if not all, spiritual teachings do not realize.

“Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to PERCEIVE is NOT to know.” … “Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense.” Urtext, Chapter 3, Conflict and the Ego

I feel that the following excerpt from chapter 4 in the Urtext is an especially clear and valuable teaching on the fundamental contrast between the ego and the Soul, and between the states of perception and Knowledge.

“The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion.” Urtext, Chapter 4

“Perception did not exist until the Separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept of levels.” … “Only the levels of the Trinity are capable of Unity. The levels which man created by the Separation are disastrous. They cannot BUT conflict.”

“The mind is very active because it has will-power. When it willed the Separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, it willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity IS clear perception. Urtext, Chapter 4, The Loss of Certainty

The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced.”

The Mind is the Mechanism of Decision

Knowledge is the realm of certainty with God and thus it is entirely free of the differing levels within perception/consciousness. It is free from the impossible choice to perceive apart from God. It is comprised of and Knows only the thoughts of God, and is therefore in and as God, as One. The world of form is the dream of duality, a dream of being split between the true and the untrue. Thus, perception is our choice to dream “apart” from God’s Certainty. Our Souls dwell eternally within the realm of undivided Knowledge and knows of no separation and no choice, no thoughts, no form, and no reality or experience apart from God.

In order for the Soul to dream of the realm of perception or consciousness, it required a “mind” with which to do so. Mind is the mechanism for decision, and is required for the illusion of choice in the realm of consciousness. The Soul is free of choice. Perception involves choice, while no choice is necessary in God’s Knowledge since there is just one unified Will with God. In God’s realm of Knowledge there is no “decision making” faculty required, as there is in the split-minded dream of perception. Our Soul is entirely impervious to all delusional dreams the mind is dreaming.

In the realm of perception, we are presented with constant choices to remember that the truth (God) is true, and that nothing else is true. In each moment we are making micro decisions about what we desire, many of which are unconscious. Everything we choose to believe, either painful or joyful, constitutes the value it has for us, and is exactly what we desire.

Given the free will to choose to dream of an opposite of Love, we imagine that we can think without Holy Spirit, without His truth and Love. In other words, we may say that we agree that God’s truth is true…but we prefer to forget that nothing but the Will of God is true, that everything else we perceive through the body’s senses is actually untrue. With free will to choose to dream apart from God, we hallucinate that fear is just as real and as powerful as God. Yet only the truth is true, and nothing else (fear, sickness, conflict, death) is true! We cannot truly know that the truth is true… until we make an undivided commitment to accept and demonstrate that nothing else (as fear) is true. Holy Spirit needs our willingness and our permission before He can help us with this process.

The ego’s illusory laws of chaos, such as nature, conflict, time, sickness, health, nutrition, medicine, scarcity, loss and death, are not the Laws of God. And while we still choose to believe and value them, we elect to be imprisoned by them. God’s Will as Love is the only Cause. And we are His Loving Effects. As His Effects, there is absolutely no cause in the body or the world that can harm us, once we wholeheartedly accept this via our forgiveness of everyone and everything.

The relative body/world is entirely neutral. These phenomena exist purely as ideas in our split mind. The body/world is not causative as it seems. If we are the Effects of God and share His exclusive dominion over all illusions, then nothing in our relative dream world, including the ego’s central dream of physical death, can possibly threaten us. Think about that. But better still, “feel” the truth in this: What would change or heal if we absolutely knew that we cannot be threatened by anyone or anything? In our deep acceptance of this “knowing,” is the Will of God.

In the Holy Instant of our wholehearted welcome of this knowing… we return our will to fuse as One with the Will of God. And joyous celebration in Heaven abounds as we receive this knowing.

Even in the realm of Heaven (Knowledge) we each have an individual Soul and that Soul expresses itself uniquely. We are not just one unidentifiable blob of light in truth. Jesus says that there are many Sons of God all with their own Godly expressions. They all share God’s Certainty and all-Knowingness.

As for mystics and saints who had awakened in the realm of perception, many of them are still “recycling” in the dream of birth/death/amnesia because they had not overcome the body and death through their misperception of them as causative. Therefore, they had not reversed “effect and cause,” to realize and demonstrate their complete sinlessness, and therefore their immunity to all phenomena they made in the dream, including the body and death. But there are some who awoke from the dream of separation entirely, and it’s comforting to know their image and help is available for us to call on.

“There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits and remembering their own Identity perfectly. These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon. And they will appear when and where it is helpful for them to do so. To those to whom such appearances would be frightening, they give their ideas. No one can call on them in vain. Nor is there anyone of whom they are unaware. All needs are known to them, and all mistakes are recognized and overlooked by them. The time will come when this is understood. And meanwhile, they give all their gifts to the teachers of God who look to them for help, asking all things in their name and in no other.” M-26.2.

At the Absolute level in the realm of Knowledge, we each are the Sons or Souls of God. These Souls that we are, are eternal and are eternally co-creating with God. Jesus revealed to me that these Souls (us) actually created many of the Angels as well. So, these Angels are some of our beloved Creations who are waiting patiently for our awareness of them to return. We can call on them in any Holy Instant. Their specific function is to serve us in the Ways of God.

As we awaken from the dream of separation (or consciousness) by overcoming the body and death, we don’t actually leave or ascend out of the dream as it would appear. Because the dream of consciousness exists only through our desire for it in our mind, our mind merely stops dreaming of the separation when it desires nothing other than to be unified with God by having attained consistently true perception (Atonement). But God does take this last step for us, once we’ve decided that all we want is His truth and Love, and union with all our brothers and God.

“The term “salvation” does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more than “right-mindedness” which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, so that wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only ONE direction in which it can move.” Urtext, Chapter 4

The Fear of Union

Our supreme fear, whilst we value the dream of perception, is the fear of Love, of God and of union with our brothers. Our foremost terror and the one that deeply underlies all appearances of fear, is not pain, loss, disease and death – but God as changeless Love, healing and union.

In the threat of our mind’s return to wholeness and incorruptible innocence, the ego perceives the grievous loss of its coveted “individuation” as the separate body and private mind, apart from our brothers and God. This loss of separation – as the fear of union – represents the ego’s central terror. This is none other than its very own secretly defended wish to suffer, which is its substitute for the immaculate Love of God that we are.

The split mind simply cannot survive without guilt. To ensure that its guilt, as self-attack, is protected and amassed, it must continue to project scenes of conflict, sickness and victimization and bolster the illusion of its separate self-image. The ego then proceeds to “judge” what it has deviously projected onto others, the body, the past and the world. And yet all judgment is separation. Within the dream of separation the leading generator of guilt and suffering is our special relationships. Consequently, the separation’s greatest threat is the undoing of special relating, and the profound healing of the gap which the Holy Relationship delivers.

The false self’s ultimate threat is that we “close the gap” of separation with our brother, through absolute forgiveness. In this most blessed commitment we come to recognize, behold and finally know the innocent Christ in another. As we do so, we will then recognize, behold and know the Christ within. They are the same. Suddenly, we acknowledge that we and our brother do not have separate, private minds with personal, self-seeking agendas. We share just one truly common purpose and that is to witness and uphold each other’s perfect sinlessness. Our Mind, our heart and our will are one! Love beyond the body then, as true communication between us, is continuous and uninterrupted by thoughts of fear and judgment.

What could possibly correct the separation but its opposite, as union? Our split mind heals, becomes whole, and returns to the realm of Knowledge by facing its final obstacle, the fear of God. The fear of Love, which is the love of separation, can only be overcome through healing the mind’s “fear of union.” And this is precisely why the Holy Relationship represents the Holy Grail within the mind’s choice to dream of consciousness apart from God’s realm of Absolute Knowledge.

“Healing reflects our joint will. This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by union. It cannot be overcome by separating. The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly.” T-8.IV.5:1-8

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