Glossary: Terms and Explanations

A Course In Miracles defines and uses many words differently from common usage. Therefore, reading a glossary first can provide a more consistent foundation for further study and application. You might save time (and considerable confusion) by doing an initial read-through of the FACIM glossary and these glossary entries first before delving further.

In particular, ACIM uses many Christian terms but completely redefines them from how they are used in the Christian Bible. These clarifications are not meant to demean or belittle any genuine religious impulse but rather expose how the ego can and will use any and all mechanisms (including religion)—consciously or unconsciously—to support the belief in separation and keep us mindlessly fixated on form, ritual, and dogma at the expense of our peace.

"This course ... does aim at saving time." (ACIM, T-18.VII.4:5)

"I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really free." (ACIM, T-5.IV.2:7)

"... words are but symbols of symbols." (ACIM, M-21.1:9)

A Course In Miracles – a.k.a. ACIM a.k.a. “the Course” is the basis for this entire online website/book. The two sister foundations – Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) is ACIM’s publisher whose mission is to “publish, distribute and discuss” ACIM in over two dozen languages – and the Foundation for A Course In Miracles (FACIM) which continues Dr. Kenneth Wapnick’s profound and extensive legacy of teachings about the Course – are both worthy of every Course student’s familiarity and support; they are invaluable resources.

ACIM is an “undo curriculum” – it corrects the belief in separation by looking at our personal condemning misinterpretations with forgiveness. This "classroom" is one of the Holy Spirit’s countless ways of getting us “home” and minimizing needless suffering. It is hardly the only path – “There are many thousands of other forms, all with the same outcome. ³They merely save time.”(ACIM, M-1.4:2-3) – nor is its specific form meant for everyone. ACIM certainly provides a pure and optimal system of spiritual psychology that expedites the process of forgiving ourselves for the imagined crimes we could never commit in eternity, but only in a dream of separation framed by the belief in space, time, and individuality.

With immense gratitude, this online book draws heavily from FIP’s online “Web Edition” of the Course (introduced in 2021) and links extensively to this superb resource for all Course students and teachers. The full context of each quote from ACIM is instantly available by following the links to these quotes and is highly recommended!

• Publishing History of A Course in Miracles
• Editing History: The History of the Manuscripts of A Course in Miracles
• FACIM YouTube Videos
• ACIM Learning Aids
• Metaphysics of Separation and Forgiveness Reference Charts
• ... and much, much more on both websites!

• Helen Schucman - Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of A Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
• William Thetford - Never Forget To Laugh: Personal Recollections of Bill Thetford, Co-Scribe of A Course In Miracles by Carol Howe
• Kenneth Wapnick - A Symphony of Love: Selections of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick's Writings: Autobiographies, Poetry, Short Stories, Articles by Kenneth Wapnick; edited by Gloria Wapnick
• Judith Skutch Whitson - Double Vision by Tamara Cohen Morgan and Judith Skutch

"Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was." (ACIM, T-1.IV.3:4-7)

"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?" (ACIM, W-135.18:1)

"The Voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you want to serve." (ACIM, T-5.II.8:6-9)

"Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin, and keep the light where it has entered in." (ACIM, T-26.IX.7:1)

"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." (ACIM, T-6.in.1:1-3)

"... 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." (ACIM, M-17.4:1-2)

"... search your mind carefully for situations past, present or anticipated that arouse anger in you. The anger may take the form of any reaction ranging from mild irritation to rage. The degree of the emotion you experience does not matter. You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury." (ACIM, W-21.2:2-5)

"The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating." (ACIM, T-5.II.2:5)

"An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. Yet it is still a thought, and cannot leave the mind that is its source. Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ." (ACIM, T-29.VIII.3:1-5)

"Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance." (ACIM, T-9.III.7:8-9)

"The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because It is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek control. It does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what It reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because It speaks of peace. Peace is stronger than war because it heals. War is division, not increase. No one gains from strife. What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you listen to the wrong voice you have lost sight of your soul. You cannot lose it, but you can not know it. It is therefore “lost” to you until you choose right." (ACIM, T-5.II.7:1-14)

“Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate. ³You are an aspect of knowledge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows you. (ACIM, T-13.VIII.2:2-3)

The recognition and acceptance of the fact that separation is impossible in Truth. Our real Identity resides in Truth, and therefore our erroneous belief in separation from our Creator or each other is impossible (See also forgiveness, salvation, true perception.)

There are four themes in ACIM about Atonement:

• Atonement (undoing the belief in separation through forgiveness of illusion)
• ego’s fear of Atonement
• ego’s strategy against Atonement
• Holy Spirit’s correction (Atonement), using our dreams for awakening rather than going deeper into sleep

“ 'Atoning' means 'undoing.' The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles." (ACIM, T-1.I.26:2-3)

"Atonement restores spirit to its proper place. The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable." (ACIM, T-1.IV.2:10-11)

"The Atonement is the only defense that cannot be used destructively because it is not a device you made. The Atonement principle was in effect long before the Atonement began. The principle was love and the Atonement was an act of love. Acts were not necessary before the separation, because belief in space and time did not exist. It was only after the separation that the Atonement and the conditions necessary for its fulfillment were planned. Then a defense so splendid was needed that it could not be misused, although it could be refused. Refusal could not, however, turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of other defenses. The Atonement thus becomes the only defense that is not a two-edged sword. ⁹It can only heal.

The Atonement was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement is the final lesson."

(ACIM, T-2.II.4:1–5:2)

"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your brother when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger." (ACIM, T-3.III.7:1-3)

"I have spoken of different symptoms, and at that level there is almost endless variation. There is, however, only one cause for all of them: the authority problem." (ACIM, T-3.VI.7:1-2)

"The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is always the Call to awaken, whatever you have been dreaming." (ACIM, T-6.V.4:4-6)

"Your resurrection is your reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it." (ACIM, T-6.I.7:1-2)

There are 69 instances of "awakening" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 24 instances of "dawning" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"What has the body really given you that justifies your strange belief that in it lies salvation? Do you not see that this is the belief in death?" (ACIM, T-19.IV-B.2:6-7)

"You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane." (ACIM, T-9.VII.6:1-4)

Birth and death are events that occur within the belief in space, time, and individuality; ACIM’s non-dual metaphysics maintains that the physical universe is a projection of the ego’s thought system of sin, guilt, and fear, which is undone by forgiveness, ultimately revealing our True Identity as pure, undifferentiated Oneness. Therefore, Life in Spirit (with a capital “L”) is eternal and permanent, unlike life (with a lowercase “l”) in the impermanent form of ephemeral bodies. ACIM is always and only about the mind, particularly the decision-making faculty in our mind that chooses between the Holy Spirit – our connection with Spirit (a.k.a. Our Creator) and ego (the maker of the insane dream of form).

Accordingly, birth and death are flip sides of the same impermanent, illusory coin of existence, from microscopic biological life to galaxies. However, Life in Spirit has no beginning, no end, and no opposite. When the word “death” appears in A Course In Miracles, it may be helpful to expand that word to “birth and death” and keep in mind that bodies that come and go are not now – and could never be – our real, eternal Identity shared by All. Since the mind is the focus of ACIM, oblivion – mindlessness– is a synonym for death; remembrance is a synonym for a renaissance of awareness of our eternal Life. ACIM reminds us of our real Life.

Life outside the dream of space and time continues eternally undiminished, undisturbed, unperturbed, unruffled, undismayed by anything less than perfect peace; it cannot die, and it was never born. We are ALL an intrinsic aspect of that undifferentiated life.

"Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains exactly as it always was." (ACIM, T-30.III.10:2)

"... he is entitled to everything because it is his birthright as a Son of God." (ACIM, W-37.1:6)

"If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your filling it was your creation, without you there would be an empty place in God’s Mind." (ACIM, T-11.I.3:1-4)

"If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All of these illusions, and the many other forms that blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it is. If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. And as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours." (ACIM, T-10.V.12:1-6)

There are 4 instances of "blasphemy" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 5 instances of "blasphemous" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance." (ACIM, T-5.IV.8:1-4)

Denying that we have an ego denies the possibility of correction and restoration of true serenity: “It’s not hot and I’m not here,” says every dreaming denizen of hell. The "bliss-ninny" defense might be considered a third (even deeper) shield of oblivion.

A typical manifestation of bliss-ninnyhood is what Sigmund Freud called a “flight into health” when we believe overcoming ego is trivial to avoid looking at our real resistance to the truth. We think we’re done when we’ve just barely started, denying ego’s enormous resistance to Truth. We need patience and gentle vigilance, avoiding the temptation to skip over steps or any of the numerous permutations of avoidance and denial that can derail the forgiveness process.

As egos, we are all "uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear" (ACIM, T-31.VIII.7:1). If we deny that we're miserable, and that we feel trapped in doomed bodies in a hopeless world, we are depriving the Holy Spirit of the very classroom that will bring the problem to awareness so it can be corrected. We ultimately must expose each specific lament and grievance to the Holy Spirit's light for correction, rather than try to protect it from the help we desperately crave.

"You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy." (ACIM, T-14.II.1:2)

Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But do not judge the lesson that is but begun with this. Seek not another signpost in the world that seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none.” (ACIM, T-31.IV.4:3-6)

"The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial." (ACIM, T-2.IV.3:8-11)

"A tranquil mind is not a little gift." (ACIM, M-20.4:8)

The projection of the erroneous idea of separation from our ego mind onto the world results in the persistent perception of our silly, seemingly separate selves. While our True Identity has nothing to do with our bodily forms, to become peaceful, we must give all the specifics of our bodily worldly experiences (our ego misinterpretations) to the Holy Spirit for deactivation and demilitarization. The specifics are transformed from the ego’s battleground/prison to become the Holy Spirit’s classroom of forgiveness.

ACIM refers to the body as: a shadow, a ridiculous parody on God’s creation (ACIM, W-95.2:1), a little pile of dust and water (ACIM, W-135.6:4), a fence (ACIM, W-pII.5.1:1), a rotting prison (T-26.I.8:3), an engine of destruction (T-26.I.8:3), a theory of yourself (ACIM, T-24.VII.10:1), a travesty on God’s creation (ACIM, T-24.VII.10:9), a dream (ACIM, W-pII.5.3:1), a little barrier of sand (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.2:4), a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.2:9), a little mound of clay (ACIM, T-19.IV-B.4:8), a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay (ACIM, T-28.III.7:5), the unmindful (ACIM, T-2.IV.3:12), a shabby and unsheltering home (ACIM, T-4.I.11:1), an impoverished house (ACIM, T-4.I.11:2), a dismal alcove (ACIM, T-29.VIII.7:4), a mindless piece of stone (ACIM, W-170.8:4), and a limit on love (T-18.VIII.1:2).

The ego uses the body to further guilt. To the Holy Spirit, the body is wholly neutral and its purpose is to communicate innocence. Under the gentle care of our Inner Kindness Teacher, the body becomes a symbol of forgiveness instead of attack.

While the body is the projection of the erroneous idea of separation, scorning, abusing, or ignoring it is not what the Course advises. The body has a vital loving use in our mind's correction; each specific issue we have with our bodies – and the experiences that impinge upon the body from seemingly external sources – are mathematically perfect forgiveness classroom opportunities for us to look at our unconscious minds, see our investment in ego's sinful, guilty, fearful use of the body and forgive ourselves for this deprecating and demeaning opinion of our Identity. ACIM always moves us from masochism to unconditional kindness.

“The body is propaganda for itself.” – Ken Wapnick; “Weeding Our Garden”

"The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial." (ACIM, T-2.IV.3:8-11)

"Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should be your choice." (ACIM, T-31.VI.3:1-2)

"The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication that is an eternal property of mind." (ACIM, T-18.VI.8:3)

"The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing." (ACIM, T-20.VI.5:2)

"The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions." (ACIM, T-18.VI.4:7-8)

While not mentioned explicitly anywhere in ACIM, fear of boredom is a pervasive ego strategy to keep us mindless by claiming that Heaven (Perfect Oneness) is boring, yet eventually, we’ll all realize that ego’s seemingly endless repackaged sin, guilt, and terror – interspersed with an occasional ceasefire in its incessant warfare – is what’s actually boring.

"On this side of the bridge to timelessness you understand nothing." (ACIM, T-16.IV.13:6)

"Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge, which carries him across the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it." (ACIM, T-16.III.8:2-3)

"Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us showing us the way. He fails in nothing. He the End we seek, and He the Means by which we go to Him." (ACIM, W-302.2:1-3)

Looking at ego with Holy Spirit – without condemnation; a metaphor for true forgiveness. When we bring ego's insane thought system of sin, guilt, and fear to Holy Spirit's thought system of eternal innocence, the insanity vaporizes since there was nothing ever there in truth.

Without the Holy Spirit, the ego tries (unsuccessfully) to bring light to darkness, but any and all attempts to make (partial) innocence fit into a thought system of guilt must fail, since these attempts never succeed in making ego nightmares real, despite its insistence otherwise.

"You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. ²And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source." (ACIM, T-18.IX.1:1-2)

Cause is always in the mind. Since "Ideas leave not their source" (ACIM, W-132.5:3), Effect and its cause are not separate. In the pure non-dual realm of Truth, this is self-evident. However, because we believe we are in a physical universe of space and time (a dualistic illusion), ideas seem to leave their source via projection onto the material world.

The split (separated, separating) mind promotes the propaganda that ideas can leave their source. In that delusion, effects seem to be separated from cause by time and space, and ego furthers this mindlessness by maintaining that effect can now become cause, reversing cause and effect. This adds to the level confusion that fosters the unchallenged lie of victimhood by everybody. In the ego mind, the choice at any moment is whether to be a victim or a victimizer, but both are equally unreal since both roles ignore the ego's attempted reversal of cause and effect.

The remedy for this intentional misinterpretation of everything is to question the source of our grievances and blame, assume responsibility for our choice of thought system, and consider that the ego has everything wrong, including the assumption of guilt, which leads to the imagined need for projection in the first place.

"When vision is denied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. ²The purpose now becomes to keep obscure the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to be a cause. ³This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as standing by itself, and capable of serving as a cause of the events and feelings its maker thinks it causes." (ACIM, T-21.II.10:1-3)

"Effects are projected causes." - Ken Wapnick, The Dark Power of Secrecy

If ego is our "god" then we become guilty children of a lie, since belief in a separate ego self is the denial of our innocence, intrinsic sameness, and ultimate Oneness. However, if (when) we are willing to consider we are creation and not Creator, and allow ourselves to be guided by Holy Spirit (the correction of our mistaken identity) then peace becomes not only possible but happily inevitable.

We are childish (rather than childlike in its more positive connotations of innocence) when we are unwilling to accept responsibility for our minds.

"Being uncertain of your true Authorship, you believe that your creation was anonymous. This leaves you in a position where it sounds meaningful to believe that you created yourself." (ACIM, T-3.VI.8:8-9)

"Is not a child of God worth patience?" (ACIM, T-5.VI.11:5)

"The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is the petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause. Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad indeed. Yet they but follow. And it is their cause that follows nothing and is but a jest." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.8:1-7)

See also authority problem.

There are 69 instances of "child" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 8 instances of "childish" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone convinces you of what you want to perceive, and of the reality of the kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to be true. Every brother has the power to release you, if you choose to be free. You cannot accept false witness of him unless you have evoked false witnesses against him. If he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him. You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, you will hear Him." (ACIM, T-11.V.18:1-7)

"Christ is God’s Son as He created Him. He is the Self we share, uniting us with one another, and with God as well. He is the Thought which still abides within the Mind that is His Source. He has not left His holy home, nor lost the innocence in which He was created. He abides unchanged forever in the Mind of God." (ACIM, W-pII.6.1:1-5)

"The First Coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation, for Christ is the Son of God. The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego’s rule and the healing of the mind." (ACIM, T-4.IV.10:1-2)

"This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you." (ACIM, T-15.XI.3:1)

"Creation and communication are synonymous." (ACIM, T-4.VII.3:6)

"When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy." (ACIM, T-1.IV.1:5)

"The mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly they will be healed. Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them. This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship, because this is your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship, because it is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is true communion with the Holy Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to your appreciation, He calls upon you to love God and His creation. You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all thought." (ACIM, T-7.V.11:2-8)

"Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles." (ACIM, T-1.I.41:1)

(See also form.)

There are 110 instances of "content" (or variations of that word) in ACIM (which also includes the connotation meaning happy.)

"Creation knows no opposite." (ACIM, W-138.2:1)

"Creation is eternal and unalterable." (ACIM, W-93.7:4)

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here." (ACIM, W-192.3:1-2)

"One brother is all brothers. ²Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. ³Such is the truth. ⁴Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? ⁵Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? ⁶What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. ⁷The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. ⁸We need to see a little, that we learn a lot." (ACIM, W-161.4:1-8)

"Your creations love you as you love your Father for the gift of creation." (ACIM, T-8.VI.5:7)

"The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. ⁷If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely." (ACIM, T-6.I.4:6-7)

(See also resurrection.)

There are 52 instances of "crucifixion" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

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

"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." (ACIM, T-6.V-A.1:1-2)

"You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God’s Son, and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the undoing of the crucifixion of God’s Son is the work of the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His guiltless Son. Having given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise?" (ACIM, T-11.VI.7:1-7)

"The continuing decision to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but did not emphasize the destructive results of the decision. Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience." (ACIM, T-5.V.8:1-3)

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world." (ACIM, T-12.VII.9:1)

The Decision Maker – the "dreamer of the dream" – is the “decider” or “chooser” or decision-making part of our mind that constantly chooses between ego's insanity – anchoring us further in the dream of guilt ... and Holy Spirit’s sanity –leading us back to the innocence in our mind that continues unabated throughout eternity.

Everyone has the same three parts of their mind: ego (wrong mind), Holy Spirit (right mind or correction) and the Decision Maker; the fact that everyone has those same three elements in their mind is a key foundational idea in the Holy Spirit’s classroom of undoing the belief in differences and in separation.

“The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker.” ( M-5.II.1:7)

“I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.” (ACIM, T-21.II.2:3-4)

"Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." (ACIM, T-31.VIII.1:5)

There is 1 instance of "decision-maker" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 382 instances of "choose" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 314 instances of "choice" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

(See also altar and blue dot.)

Only a divided (split) identity could imagine an "other" that could oppose "us" (or "me") and seem to require defenses to protect the portion that constitutes the alleged separate self (or selves.) The ego strategy to keep us mindless is an endless cycle of perpetual guilt, attack, and defense, seemingly warding off what robs us of our peace, yet actually perpetuating the guilt that seems to warrant further attack and defense.

The decision-making mind’s choice for ego (the belief in separation) produces guilt which then gets projected onto the body and the world. Every use of the body (and what appears to be the world outside the body) to maintain separation, specialness, or differences is a defense against the truth because the body – and the world in apparent perpetual conflict with it – were made as substitutes for oneness. Unwilling to admit its failure to provide peace with its pathetic polarized consolation prize, the ego tries to defend its choice for separation and misuses the projected body and the world outside it for that purpose. Everything made as a defense (attack) against the truth can be used by the Holy Spirit to restore our inheritance of truth through forgiveness.

“It is essential to realize that all defenses _do_ what they would defend." (T-17.IV.7:1)

"If I defend myself I am attacked. But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide." (ACIM, W-135.22:4-5)

"In my defenselessness my safety lies." (ACIM, W-153)

"God’s teachers have learned how to be simple. They have no dreams that need defense against the truth." (ACIM, M-4.VI.1:1-2)

There are 163 instances of "defense" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 20 instances of "defenseless" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

The dictionary defines delusion as "a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions" or "a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary."

ACIM would further add that delusions–like every other ego strategy to distort, divert, and deceive–are intentional; ego drives us literally out of our minds so that we don't recognize our true identity as Spirit in ourselves and others.

We delude ourselves into believing that we are separate, selfish selves. With this faulty premise, sin, guilt, and fear are inevitable ... until we consider the Holy Spirit's gentle correction for our fantasy.

Delusions take neutral illusions and make them into real, sinful, and unsolvable problems.

"When you have an authority problem, it is always because you believe you are the author of yourself and project your delusion onto others." (ACIM, T-3.VI.8:2)

"...nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth. ⁷This point is not debatable except in delusions. ⁸Your ego is never at stake because God did not create it. ⁹Your spirit is never at stake because He did. ¹⁰Any confusion on this point is delusional, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts." (ACIM, T-4.I.7:6-10)

"Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is not a solution; it is a delusion. The delusional believe that truth will assail them, and they do not recognize it because they prefer the delusion." (ACIM, T-8.V.1:1-3)

There are 12 instances of "delusion" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 27 instances of "delusional" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"... the peace of God which passeth understanding ... is totally incapable of being shaken by errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. This is the proper use of denial. It is not used to hide anything, but to correct error. It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error automatically.

True denial is a powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is not a concealment but a correction. Your right mind depends on it. Denial of error is a strong defense of truth, but denial of truth results in miscreation, the projections of the ego. In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the freedom of the will." (ACIM, T-2.II.1:9–2:6)

"Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, or hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is, where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears." (ACIM, W-333.1:1-4)

"Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. Yet this can be corrected and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him. Your denial of Him therefore means that you love Him, and that you know He loves you. Remember that what you deny you must have once known. And if you accept denial, you can accept its undoing." (ACIM, T-10.V.6:1-6)

There are 73 instances of "denial" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 360 instances of "deny" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the 'devil.' ” (ACIM, T-3.VII.5:1)

“The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating.“(ACIM, T-4.VI.4:2)

"Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget." (ACIM, T-10.II.1:1-2)

The ego does everything it can, which is considerable and usually greatly underestimated! – to distract us from the awareness we are not "at home" in our real, eternal Identity by a seemingly endless stream of diversions, distractions, and misdirections, just as magicians do. When we pay attention (with gentle vigilance) to when we're not completely peaceful, we see the ego's distractions for what they are: silly, forgivable, and of no ultimate consequence.

Our distractions often appear as high drama, mindless entertainment, retail therapy, addictions, pet peeves, grievances of every variety, and anything that "gets under our skin" to keep us seduced, polarized, antagonized, and/or mesmerized. It's essential not to feel guilty when we find ourselves misled by ego distractions, but to gently forgive ourselves for still being afraid of the truly fulfilling Love that has nothing to do with our ephemeral dreams of space and time.

As we shift our Identity from our special, separate selves to the same One Eternal Self we all share, we can see the world as a surreal, innocuous comedy instead of a serious tragedy to be taken personally.

"The distractions of the ego may seem to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power to do so. The ego’s voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say 'I am not real.' Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you." (ACIM, T-8.I.2:1-6)

"No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world about him." (ACIM, T-13.VII.6:1)

"Look at the picture.Do not let the frame distract you." (ACIM, T-17.IV.9:1-2)

"Let not the little interferers pull you to littleness. There can be no attraction of guilt in innocence. Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt’s attraction. Would you, for all these meaningless distractions, lay Heaven aside? Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where littleness does not exist. Your purpose is at variance with littleness of any kind. And so it is at variance with sin." (ACIM, T-23.in.4:1-8)

"The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. It is the other part of your mind that functions in the world and obeys the world’s laws. It is this part that is constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain." (ACIM, W-49.1:2-4)

"Do not allow your intent to waver in the face of distracting thoughts. Realize that, whatever form such thoughts may take, they have no meaning and no power. Replace them with your determination to succeed. Do not forget that your will has power over all fantasies and dreams. Trust it to see you through, and carry you beyond them all." (ACIM, W-rII.in.4:1-5)

The "outer shield of oblivion" (a.k.a. "world dream") consists of everything in the world of space and time: the entire material universe, designed by our egos to keep us endlessly and mindlessly preoccupied with myriad, ever-changing problems that demand our attention and keep our "blame-thrower" thinking constantly defending against the onslaught of situations in our lives that seem to challenge our peace.

When we realize that only our interpretations upset us, we breach the outer shield and turn our attention from the physical (effect) realm to the mental (cause) realm. At this point, ego typically goes from "yellow alert" (suspiciousness) to "red alert" (viciousness). Ego does everything it can to keep us distracted by an endless variety of effects (situations) to hide (and maintain) the principle (separation) that is the root of all of them; when we begin to generalize and see how the cause is the same for every seemingly different effect, ego gets panicky, not wanting to see us get closer to "game over" by making the one correction that would undo all problems.

"Every single problem is the same." - Ken Wapnick, The Ark of Peace

The "inner shield of oblivion" (a.k.a. "secret dream") is the entire thought system of sin, guilt, fear, and every thought that supports the belief in separation. Because the guilt in this part of our mind is so unbearable, we are constantly attempting to flee this by projecting guilt onto the world and ego's strategy is to keep us mindlessly focused on the outer dream, avoiding the secret dream where the possibility of realizing that we could choose against ego insanity altogether remains carefully hidden.

The double shield of oblivion is the ego's “full coverage” defense against guilt observation and eradication.

Ken Wapnick suggested that if we only memorized two workbook lessons, #5 & #34 would be sufficient if practiced consistently; we need the Holy Spirit's help with these first two steps of forgiveness:

"Lesson 5: I am never upset for the reason I think." (ACIM, W-5)

This takes us past the outer shield of oblivion into the ego thought system.

"Lesson 34: I could see peace instead of this." (ACIM, W-34)

This takes us past the inner shield of oblivion to the decision-maker who chose the ego thought system. Neither the world (outer shield) nor the ego (inner shield) is the problem; it is our mind's decision to want to believe the ego that is the problem that needs the correction that Holy Spirit offers; healing both aspects of the imaginary guilt: the projected guilt without and the repressed guilt within.

"It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion." (ACIM, W-136.5:1-2)

Graphic credit: "Abe" Abelardo Ramirez

Dreams are an important ACIM metaphor that remind us of the illusory nature of our imagined identities as selves separated from our Source. More prominent in our everyday experience, we also dream that we are separated from each other. Ego propaganda promotes the mindless idea that we are dream figures at the mercy of our nightmares of sin, guilt, and fear. Holy Spirit's correction – while still a dream – uses the merciful, happy dream of forgiveness to undo dreams of separation, freeing us from the tyranny of specialness and substitute identities that can never bring us lasting peace or happiness.

Ego's dreams of separation are all the same: dream a = dream b = dream c … and so on. The forms of each dream may seem mildly or wildly different, but the content is always functionally identical: the separation happened, and we're all "guilty" of this (impossible) crime as a result. Holy Spirit's calm rebuttal sees past the form to the content and softly reminds everyone that "...God’s Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation." (ACIM, M-1.3:5)

"All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." (ACIM, T-18.II.5:12-13)

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence." (ACIM, T-27.VII.15:1)

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.10:5-6)

"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." (ACIM, M-12.6:6-10)

"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. The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. What he fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause. And so it never was." (ACIM, T-28.II.7:1-12)

"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 miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you wanted shown to you." (ACIM, T-28.II.4:1-5)

"You dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but in dreams, while safe at home." (ACIM, T-13.VII.17:6-7)

While the Course doesn't mention duality directly, the ego thought system is the epitome of dualism, divisiveness, fragmentation, polarization, and war, and has no concept of Oneness. It vigorously defends against shared interests and the sameness of identity that leads inevitably back to the awareness of the Perfect Oneness we never left in truth, but seem to have abandoned in dreadful dreams. (See also non-dual metaphysics.)

The "terrible twos" exemplify the childish and disruptive identification with self over "non-self," ignorant of the fact that what we see "outside" is really inside our mind, intentionally misinterpreted to be an alien, foreign, adversarial figure, and not part of a greater shared Identity. Ego is founded on a completely dualistic dream that seems to justify blame, victimhood, comparison, and "righteous" murder. Kenneth Wapnick quipped that if we could translate a newborn's first words into English, we would hear babies shouting, "It's not my fault!"

"Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums, in which you literally scream, 'I want it thus!' And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot escape its origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant the illusion of satisfaction is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your ability to control reality by substituting a world that you prefer is terrifying." (ACIM, T-18.II.4:1-5)

"A separated or divided mind must be confused. It is necessarily uncertain about what it is. It has to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself. This makes its aspects strangers to each other, and this is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack is always possible. You have every reason to feel afraid as you perceive yourself. This is why you cannot escape from fear until you realize that you did not and could not create yourself. You can never make your misperceptions true, and your creation is beyond your own error. That is why you must eventually choose to heal the separation." (ACIM, T-3.IV.3:4-11)

"The time of Easter is a time of joy, and not of mourning. Look on your risen Friend, and celebrate his holiness along with me. For Easter is the time of your salvation, along with mine." (ACIM, T-20.I.4:6-8)

Our eternal reality (our true identity) is peaceful, undivided, innocent, and free; we don't need to do anything to "achieve" that; there's nothing we need to earn or learn. However, we've used our powerful minds to fabricate a fantastic, fraudulent (seemingly) foolproof foe (ego); so we need to unlearn (undo) our overlearned investment in that insane thought system to restore the peace which is our natural inheritance. That is why the Course emphasizes removing the "blocks to the awareness of love’s presence" (ACIM, T-in.1:7): by looking at the ego without condemnation.

The problem isn't the mesmerizing and misleading dream world of space and time that the ego projects. The problem isn't the insane projecting thought system of the ego, either. The problem is that our minds are split, and a part of us wants to be separate; we still want to make a separate self work. However, this goal is futile, and we can and will awaken from that forgivable nightmare choice. Ego's goal for us is planned obsolescence because its purpose is oblivion.

Looking at the ego without condemnation erodes our identification with its insanity. Like the Gollum/Smeagol character in the Lord of the Rings books and movies, protecting his "precious ring of invisibility," the ego never permits any light to reveal the horror of its non-existent identity; whenever we can simply look at the ego clearly and calmly, we're identifying with the Holy Spirit.

"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. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false." (ACIM, T-16.IV.6:1-2)

"...the ego’s basic doctrine (is) 'Seek but do not find.' " (ACIM, W-71.4:2)

"Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit. Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Your self and God’s Self are in opposition. They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot perceive and the ego cannot know." (ACIM, T-4.I.2:6-11)

"It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives, He looks with love on you. His evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of what you are, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation must be in your mind, because He is. The ego is also in your mind, because you have accepted it there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s, because the ego does not love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of everything it perceives because its perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. That is its range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. And it can never go beyond it because it can never be certain." (ACIM, T-9.VII.3:1-10)

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God’s Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?" (ACIM, C-2.6:1-18)

"Ego is the original 'alternative fact'.” - Tim Wise

“There is no ego, but there is a belief in an ego.” - Ken Wapnick; "The Mind: A Giant’s Strength"

On the physical level, we are all different, by design. Ego divides, separates, and makes distinctions with each act of separation or division. Biological life, as we think of it, is a prime example of how our genetic systems (through mitosis and meiosis) perpetuate division and differentiation. Our DNA demonstrates that sameness and equality are constantly mutated to promote a world of incessant change. Reconciliation of our differences is hopeless if we assume that our identity is defined by our spatial and temporal characteristics.

However, on the level of the mind, we are all equal. In Truth, we are all One. Within our dream of separation, each seemingly split mind contains an ego, the Holy Spirit, and the decision-maker that continuously chooses between them. We are equal in this regard, and this realization helps us see our intrinsic sameness and the shared interest of waking up from our dreams of duality.

In another sense, the Course leads us to generalize all aspects of the ego and all aspects of the Holy Spirit; both are "package deals" – when I believe any idea in the ego thought system, I get all of them, and conversely when I embrace the truth in any right-minded thought of the Holy Spirit, I receive the benefit of all healing thoughts and am aligned with the right mind of every being in creation. We are all the same and equal, as is the sane mind we share.

"The miracle is therefore a sign of love among equals. Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality." (ACIM, T-1.II.3:4-5)

"Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both." (ACIM, T-1.III.6:6)

"The ego literally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible." (ACIM, T-4.II.7:1-2)

"Now need you but to learn that both of you are innocent or guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be unlike each other; that they both be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be no secret you are healed." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.13:6-9)

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell, Animal Farm

"Truth will correct all errors in my mind." (ACIM, W-107)

"Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors." (ACIM, M-18.4:6)

"Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors lies in the relinquishment of the ego." (ACIM, T-9.III.2:3)

"Truth cannot deal with errors that you want." (ACIM, T-3.IV.7:2)

(See also sin.)

There are 278 instances of "error" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

Unlike the "sterilization" suggested in this vintage Star Trek clip, correcting the error doesn't require the ego to "self-destruct" since what never happened can be undone merely by waking up from the dream of separation.

"God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while you wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as you are waiting for theirs. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you are in time. Yet your election is both free and alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever." (ACIM, T-5.VI.1:1-7)

"Every loving thought that the Son of God ever had is eternal. The loving thoughts his mind perceives in this world are the world’s only reality. They are still perceptions, because he still believes that he is separate. Yet they are eternal because they are loving. And being loving they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die." (ACIM, T-11.VII.2:1-5)

"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." (ACIM, T-29.V.2:3-4)

"The difference between the ego’s projection and the Holy Spirit’s extension is very simple. The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one." (ACIM, T-6.II.12:1-3)

"... without projection there can be no anger, ... without extension there can be no love." (ACIM, T-7.VIII.1:1)

"God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him." (ACIM, W-132.12:3-4)

(See also projection.)

"Forgiveness is the call to sanity, for who but the insane would look on sin when he could see the face of Christ instead?" (ACIM, S-2.I.8:1)

"Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world." (ACIM, W-122.3:1)

"The veil is lifted through its gentleness, and nothing hides the face of Christ from its beholders. You and your brother stand before Him now, to let Him draw aside the veil that seems to keep you separate and apart." (ACIM, T-25.I.4:5-6)

"The face of Christ has to be seen before the memory of God can return." (ACIM, C-3.4:1)

"The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true." (ACIM, T-3.II.6:1)

Fear is a principal component of the ego's unholy thought system of sin, guilt, and fear, corresponding to misuse of the past, present, and future, respectively.

The consequence of the belief in sin (separation, specialness, substitution) is guilt, which demands punishment, which results in fear. To eliminate fear, we must first acknowledge that we have made a poor (yet forgivable, correctable) choice, then choose against the belief in sin by accepting the Holy Spirit's assessment of our identity, releasing us from impossible crimes.

Fear perpetuates the apparent need to defend, which reinforces the guilt-fear-attack-defense-sin cycle. Fear usually manifests in our desire for fight or flight, denial, repression, and misinterpretations of our projections as cause instead of effect. Fear demands that we identify all bodies as allies or enemies, leaving no room for real friendship but only the despair of unresolved guilt.

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (ACIM, T-in.1:8)

"There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless." (ACIM, T-13.X.10:4)

"Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality." (ACIM, T-16.VI.8:1)

"Those you do not forgive you fear." (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.11:6)

“Do not despair, then, because of limitations. It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them.” (ACIM, M-26.4:1-2)

Feelings, emotions, and thoughts are usually about things external to the mind, contrasted with awareness of the eternal. There is nothing “wrong” with feelings such as nostalgia, discouragement, depression, euphoria, excitement, exhilaration, and other popular emotions and feelings. But these unhappy feelings reflect choosing against the counsel of our Inner Kindness Teacher.

The Course doesn't aim for any feeling that can change since the sane foundation the Holy Spirit offers is 100% trustworthy and will never alter or disappoint us. Our egos want to substitute emotional feelings for the sustainable awareness that Holy Spirit offers us: an unchanging, peaceful, easy feeling.

"When you feel tired, it is because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone, it is because you have judged him as unworthy. When you laugh at yourself you must laugh at others, if only because you cannot tolerate the idea of being more unworthy than they are. All this makes you feel tired because it is essentially disheartening. You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourself. The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished." (ACIM, T-3.VI.5:1-7)

"Seek not to appraise the worth of God’s Son whom He created holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit." (ACIM, T-14.III.15:1-2)

Forgiveness undoes the belief in separation; it corrects the erroneous idea that sin, guilt, and fear are inevitable and even possible. Workbook Lesson 23 describes the three steps of forgiveness in one terse sentence: the "3 R's of forgiveness":

"This change (forgiveness) requires, first, that the cause be identified (we Reveal to ourselves that our upset isn't caused by the world, but rather our decision to believe in ego's propaganda) and then let go (we Release ourselves just as we release the world from our projections of guilt), so that it (guilt) can be replaced (we let Holy Spirit Replace the torment of condemnation with the soothing awareness of all-inclusive innocence.)" (ACIM, W-23.5:2)

(See also Atonement, salvation, true perception.)

"You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness." (ACIM, T-1.VI.1:1)

"Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation." (ACIM, T-3.V.9:1)

"Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you." (ACIM, T-17.II.1:1-5)

"Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can be forgiven, and then they disappear. Forgiveness is release from all illusions, and that is why it is impossible but partly to forgive. No one who clings to one illusion can see himself as sinless, for he holds one error to himself as lovely still. And so he calls it “unforgivable,” and makes it sin. How can he then give his forgiveness wholly, when he would not receive it for himself?" (ACIM, T-24.III.1:1-6)

"Pardon is always justified. It has a sure foundation. You do not forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a real attack that calls for punishment." (ACIM, T-30.VI.2:1-3)

"To forgive is to overlook." (ACIM, T-9.IV.1:2)

"God does not forgive because He has never condemned. And there must be condemnation before forgiveness is necessary. Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions. Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them. As you condemn only yourself, so do you forgive only yourself." (ACIM, W-46.1:1-5)

"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 that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God." (ACIM, W-pII.1.1:1-7)

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances 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." (ACIM, W-pII.1.4:1-5)

"Good can withstand any form of evil, as light abolishes forms of darkness." (ACIM, T-3.I.7:7)

"... a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. ⁴In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained." (ACIM, T-7.II.4:3-4)

"He opposes the idea that differences in form are meaningful, emphasizing always that these differences do not matter." (ACIM, T-7.II.5:3)

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding has been obscured." (ACIM, T-22.III.6:7-8)

Within the dream of separation, there seem to be almost unlimited choices, yet each unforgiving choice that makes ego's world "real" keeps me on the (horizontal) "un-merry-go-round" of sin, guilt, and fear. The only real alternative (freedom of choice) is the (vertical) decision to look at the cause of my projections onto the world of form and forgive myself for what has had no effect on our eternal being. Only when my will is aligned with the Holy Spirit's classroom of forgiving everything and everyone in my mind for what seems to change will I realize the true freedom I want; freedom from the tyranny of ego's constantly morphing nightmares of separate interests.

Like the "prime directive" (of non-interference) in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek TV show, free will in ACIM honors our individual decision to choose either ego or Holy Spirit, since the happily inevitable outcome for all will be abandoning ego's dualistic dreams in favor of the peace of our eternally shared Identity. This explains the Holy Spirit's "infinite patience" (ACIM, T-5.VI.11:6) and utter lack of concern with our delaying tactics, knowing that we all will eventually choose peace above all else. Only the ego makes demands; Holy Spirit merely reminds, appreciating that our free will ultimately will enable us to see the insanity of separating thoughts and choose against them.

"The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. This may appear to contradict free will because of the inevitability of the final decision, but this is not so. You can temporize and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from your Creator, Who set the limits on your ability to miscreate. An imprisoned will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way." (ACIM, T-2.III.3:1-6)

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world." (ACIM, T-12.VII.9:1)

"If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way." (ACIM, T-2.VII.1:4-9)

"You made neither yourself nor your function. You made only the decision to be unworthy of both. Yet you cannot make yourself unworthy because you are the treasure of God, and what He values is valuable." (ACIM, T-8.VI.5:11-13)

"Our function is to work together, because apart from each other we cannot function at all." (ACIM, T-8.VI.8:4)

"The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release yourself to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is His." (ACIM, T-18.IV.6:5-8)

"Forgiveness is the only function meaningful in time." (ACIM, T-25.VI.5:3)

"The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. It is not a two-way battle. The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. He knows what your function is. He knows that it is your happiness." (ACIM, W-66.2:1-6)

"The correction of fear is your responsibility." (ACIM, T-2.VI.4:1)

"Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge, which carries him across the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it." (ACIM, T-16.III.8:2-3)

"The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself in place of eternity, for like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, under its direction, is the only purpose the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in its own continuity can occur. Its continuity, then, would keep you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you from it." (ACIM, T-13.IV.8:1-3)

"You who believe there is a little gap between you and your brother, do not see that it is here you are as prisoners in a world perceived to be existing here. The world you see does not exist, because the place where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is nothing. And there are no awesome secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death. Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself, when you have lost the fear of recognizing love." (ACIM, T-28.V.7:1-6)

Many dualities don’t factor into the Course’s jargon. Gender is one of these. Love has no gender. Truth has no gender. Eternity has no gender. The language of the Course uses iambic pentameter, Shakespearean blank verse, an archaic writing style, and masculine pronouns. These reflect the background and interests of the scribe, Helen Schucman, and literary conventions when ACIM was written.

If we take issue with the wording (form) of the Course, it can often provide an opportunity to look at the resistance to letting the content into our minds. We can see that our objections aren't really about the form at all. Our resistance to the content (meaning) often surfaces when re-reading a portion of the Course (that we previously glossed over) and having it seem like someone added "new material" since our last reading! The ego has enormous resistance to the ideas in this curriculum that would undo its very foundation in our minds. Fortunately, our true heart's desire to awaken from the dream is more powerful than all the ego's resistance methods combined.

"You need not fear the Higher Court will condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God’s creations is bearing false witness to God Himself. Appeal everything you believe gladly to God’s Own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. The case may be fool-proof, but it is not God-proof." (ACIM, T-5.VI.10:1-6)

Gradually, we learn that every attribute of the ego is the same in content, and every attribute of the Holy Spirit is the same in content; the only difference that really matters is which of the two we choose, each and every moment. Choosing the sanity of forgiving ourselves (often starting with forgiving our projections) more and more consistently, we observe that we are more and more consistently peaceful. We generalize our lessons to see that all problems are the same and are resolved by the same solution of true forgiveness.

The first miracle principle epitomizes this vital understanding that unfolds as we see beyond the myriad forms of the dream to the singular content underlying every form:"There is no order of difficulty in miracles." (ACIM, T-1.I.1:1)

The holographic "domino effect” of forgiving one person completely brings the recognition that there is only one mind that needs healing: mine.

"You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness." (ACIM, T-1.VI.1:1)

"The ego’s definitions of anything are childish, and are always based on what it believes the thing is for. This is because it is incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees with the function it ascribes to it." (ACIM, T-8.VIII.1:2-3)

"Problems are not specific but they take specific forms, and these specific shapes make up the world.And no one understands the nature of his problem.If he did, it would be there no more for him to see.⁴Its very nature is that it is not.And thus, while he perceives it he can not perceive it as it is.But healing is apparent in specific instances, and generalizes to include them all.This is because they really are the same, despite their different forms." (ACIM, T-27.V.8:1-7)

"The purpose of the workbook is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world. The exercises are planned to help you generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is equally applicable to everyone and everything you see." (ACIM, W-in.4:1-2)

"The only general rules to be observed throughout, then, are: First, that the exercises be practiced with great specificity, as will be indicated. This will help you to generalize the ideas involved to every situation in which you find yourself, and to everyone and everything in it." (ACIM, W-in.6:1-2)

"To learn that giving and receiving are the same has special usefulness, because it can be tried so easily and seen as true. And when this special case has proved it always works, in every circumstance where it is tried, the thought behind it can be generalized to other areas of doubt and double vision." (ACIM, W-108.6:1-2)

"Because he has valued what is really valueless, he will not generalize the lesson for fear of loss and sacrifice. It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful." (ACIM, M-4.I-A.4:4-5)

Since we still believe we pulled off the impossible crime of separation, we are encouraged to be as gentle, patient, tolerant, harmless, gracious, merciful, and kind to ourselves as possible – and everyone we interact with or think about. The Course has no coercion, force, or meanness, so if we use ACIM to bludgeon ourselves or anyone else, we're missing the whole point of the curriculum.

We must also learn to not beat up on ourselves when we notice that we're still choosing ego and therefore engaging in the brutal, murderous practice of dualistic, polarizing thought. Holy Spirit's rebuttal (to ego's indignant propaganda) gently reminds us that our Real (eternally, totally shared) Identity can never be compromised by anything that seems to happen within the dream of space and time, so gentleness to – and patience with – ourselves and everyone else is always appropriate. The correction process gently eliminates pressure, stress, and anxiety as we generalize everyone's true innocence, unlearning the ego's propaganda of universal guilt.

The needy, compulsive, fidgety ego mind is like a proverbial “bull in a china shop,” so looking at our noisy, chaotic mind with the calm, patient, gentle, quiet, peaceful mind of our Inner Kindness Teacher helps us "go slow to go fast.” This is never about trying to change behavior or what the body is doing or not doing; it is always about merely looking (without condemning or blaming anyone) at attack thoughts, grievances, and divisive judgments that keep us agitated. True forgiveness gently undoes our identification with the thought system that disturbs our peace with "raucous screams and senseless ravings (ACIM, T-21.V.1:6); with "raucous shrieks and sick imaginings" (ACIM, W-49.4:3).

"Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? ⁶Do 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."

(ACIM, W-122.1:5–2:1)

"How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now." (ACIM, T-6.V.2:1-3)

"The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in His gentleness He would release from fear and re-establish the reign of love. The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify nor suffer crucifixion." (ACIM, T-14.V.10:8-9)

"Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition." (ACIM, T-16.VI.8:2)

There are 27 instances of patience (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 16 instances of tolerant (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 9 instances of harmless (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 67 instances of merciful (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 16 instances of kindness in ACIM.

There are 83 instances of grace (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 18 instances of gracious (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being offered at the altar of God, because of the value of the altar itself. It was created perfect and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God and His creations are completely dependent on Each Other." (ACIM, T-2.III.5:4-6)

"To think you can oppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own “will” as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all.God has given you a gift that you both have and are." (ACIM, T-7.IV.6:1-6)

"A tranquil mind is not a little gift." (ACIM, M-20.4:8)

See also wish and idol.

"If paying is associated with giving it cannot be perceived as loss, and the reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving will be recognized." (ACIM, T-9.II.10:3)

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same." (ACIM, W-121.9:1)

"Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son." (ACIM, W-234.1:4)

"The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (ACIM, T-in.1:6-8)

"This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God." (ACIM, T-in.2:1-4)

"You do not find it difficult to believe that when another calls on God for love, your call remains as strong. Nor do you think that when God answers him, your hope of answer is diminished. On the contrary, you are more inclined to regard his success as witness to the possibility of yours. That is because you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith in Him is strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your Father, you are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself completely, wholly without loss and only with gain. Herein lies peace, for here there is no conflict." (ACIM, T-15.VI.4:1-7)

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say 'God is,' and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There are no lips to speak them, and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. (ACIM, W-169.5:1-5)

"The Son is still, and in the quiet God has given him enters his home and is at peace at last." (ACIM, C-ep.5:6)

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore you are in a state of grace forever." (ACIM, T-1.III.5:4-6)

"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. Do you, then, offer grace and blessing to your brother, for you stand at the same altar where grace was laid for both of you. And be you healed by grace together, that you may heal through faith." (ACIM, T-19.I.13:1-5)

"You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would be helpless in God’s Presence, and you would save yourself from His Love because you think it would crush you into nothingness.You are afraid it would sweep you away from yourself and make you little, because you believe that magnitude lies in defiance, and that attack is grandeur.You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would.Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego’s foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there.And it is this that frightens you." (ACIM, T-13.III.4:1-5)

"The path becomes quite different as one goes along. Nor could all the magnificence, the grandeur of the scene and the enormous opening vistas that rise to meet one as the journey continues, be foretold from the outset. Yet even these, whose splendor reaches indescribable heights as one proceeds, fall short indeed of all that wait when the pathway ceases and time ends with it. But somewhere one must start. Justice is the beginning." (ACIM, M-19.2:5-9)

"Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. It is without hope because it is not real. It is an attempt to counteract your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is real. Without this belief grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly want it. The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness, because it always involves attack. It is a delusional attempt to outdo, but not to undo." (ACIM, T-9.VIII.2:1-6)

"I do not need gratitude, but you need to develop your weakened ability to be grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. He does not need your appreciation, but you do." (ACIM, T-6.I.17:1-2)

"Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him." (ACIM, T-10.V.7:7)

"In the holy instant, where the Great Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given you." (ACIM, T-15.IX.3:1)

Grievances are ego's currency and seem to sustain its fleeting and pathetic existence. We traffic in grievances and have elaborate rituals and rules by which we wage war on ourselves; we pretend that the poison we're making for others in our mind's laboratory doesn't lead to our own sickness.

Our investment in ego thinking throttles our experience of peace to almost nothing; we futilely try to micro-manage the world to keep our minds occupied with meaningless minutiae to avoid the Meaning of Eternal Love. This often manifests in countless grievances, annoyances, irritations, vendettas, and even outright wars. However, the form or the magnitude is irrelevant, since the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" all have the same erroneous premise: We split Perfect Oneness apart, feel horribly guilty about that on a level of our mind we're almost completely oblivious to, and now use each and every challenging issue the world seems to present to us as justification for our upset and righteous cause for retaliation.

We dismiss the voice for peace in our mind that whispers that – from the perspective of eternity – hangnails and holocausts are all equally forgivable.

"Without exception, these relationships have as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the other, and of yourself. This is why you see in both what is not there, and make of both the slaves of vengeance. And why whatever reminds you of your past grievances attracts you, and seems to go by the name of love, no matter how distorted the associations by which you arrive at the connection may be." (ACIM, T-17.III.2:3-5)

"Love holds no grievances. You who were created by love like itself can hold no grievances and know your Self. ²To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. ³To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. ⁴To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death. ⁵Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your mind. ⁶It seems to split you off from your Source and make you unlike Him. ⁷It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become, for no one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself." (ACIM, W-68.1:1-7)

"It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image, as it is certain that God created them like Himself, and defined them as part of Him. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt, as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are, as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.

Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so? Perhaps you do not think you can let your grievances go. That, however, is simply a matter of motivation. Today we will try to find out how you would feel without them. (ACIM, W-68.3:1–4:4)

"My grievances hide the light of the world in me. I cannot see what I have hidden. Yet I want to let it be revealed to me, for my salvation and the salvation of the world." (ACIM, W-69.9:4-6)

"We have shouted our grievances so loudly that we have not listened to His Voice. We have used our grievances to close our eyes and stop our ears." (ACIM, W-72.10:11-12)

"Let me realize today that the problem is always some form of grievance that I would cherish. Let me also understand that the solution is always a miracle with which I let the grievance be replaced. Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution. The problem is a grievance; the solution is a miracle. And I invite the solution to come to me through my forgiveness of the grievance, and my welcome of the miracle that takes its place." (ACIM, W-90.1:2-6)

Guilt is the central pillar in ego's unholy trinity of (past) sin, (present) guilt, and (future) fear; in ego's kangaroo court, everyone is guilty because "... each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death." (ACIM, T-23.II.4:1)

We (as ego) push guilt down (from our insane mind) and then out (onto the world by projecting onto others in ego's prison of battling forms); that’s when we feel “down and out” ... Holy Spirit’s peace-restoring solution is the complete reversal of thought; we reel in our projected guilt which reverses the external blame game as we realize that we're "never upset for the reason we think" (Lessons 5.) We also see that blaming ourselves for the impossible crime of separation is equally silly and forgivable, as Workbook Lesson 34 reminds: "I could see peace instead of this." (ACIM, W-34)

Guilt and shame are siblings in the ego thought system. Typically, guilt is associated with behavior – doing (or not doing) something; whereas shame is usually about being wrong with no possibility of "bail or parole," yet both are impossible crimes and easily corrected by the Holy Spirit's forgiveness practice.

Without the belief in separation, there is no "other" to be either victim or victimizer, nor motive since no need or lack is possible; therefore, when we shift our mind to the Holy Spirit's jurisdiction, we see guilt as causeless and only innocence remains. Jesus judges rightly and gently dismisses all of the cases brought to his "courtroom" of forgiveness:

"You need not fear the Higher Court will condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God’s creations is bearing false witness to God Himself. Appeal everything you believe gladly to God’s Own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. The case may be fool-proof, but it is not God-proof." (ACIM, T-5.VI.10:1-6)

"The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look on guilt at all." (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.10:1)

"When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. ⁶In understanding this you are saved." (ACIM, W-70.1:5-6)

"Of one thing you were sure: Of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was not among them. Nor did you in any way request them for yourself." (ACIM, T-27.VII.7:4-5)

The first three Laws of Chaos correspond to sin, guilt, and fear respectively.

To restore our minds to their natural state of unassailable peace, we must consistently ask for help from our Inner Kindness Teacher and practice true forgiveness over and over, until we change our default response from ego to Holy Spirit. Eventually, our choice for the correction becomes second nature (automatic) and we don't have to belabor each decision. We gradually transition from "hobbyist level" to "Olympic level" forgivers by practice, practice, practice!

Each step in developing this implicit trust is "heavily reinforced" (ACIM, M-4.I-A.7:9) by slowly, gently, patiently increasing our sensitivity to the discomfort of choosing the ego's painful thought system when we resist making the choice for sanity.

"Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary." (ACIM, T-1.I.5:1)

"The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away. The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort. Side with me consistently against this deception, and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you back. The disheartened are useless to themselves and to me, but only the ego can be disheartened." (ACIM, T-4.IV.7:1-4)

"... together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. They are not new to you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. So now we need to practice them awhile, until they are the rules by which you live. We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready for whatever need." (ACIM, T-30.in.1:5-8)

"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. 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.Believe them not and they are gone.And all you need to do is recognize that you did this.Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you are released from them.One thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held they disappear.Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose that they serve?"

(ACIM, T-20.VIII.7:1–8:7)

"The world you see is a vengeful world, and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance. Each of your perceptions of 'external reality' is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts. One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a better word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result?" (ACIM, W-23.3:1-4)

"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. Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge." (ACIM, T-13.VII.9:1-5)

"No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so." (ACIM, T-29.VII.2:1-2)

"At this point, the equality of having and being is not yet perceived. Until it is, having appears to be the opposite of giving." (ACIM, T-6.V-B.3:4-5)

"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle." (ACIM, T-1.I.20:1-2)

"All healing is essentially the release from fear." (ACIM, T-2.IV.1:7)

"Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation, because it induces separation. Healing always produces harmony, because it proceeds from integration." (ACIM, T-7.V.6:1-6)

"Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture." (ACIM, T-8.IV.4:5-8)

"... you may believe you are afraid of nothingness, but you are really afraid of nothing. And in that awareness you are healed." (ACIM, T-10.III.9:1-2)

"It is in the instant that the therapist forgets to judge the patient that healing occurs." (ACIM, P-3.II.6:1)

"It is hard to understand what “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word “within” is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement; a message which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts." (ACIM, T-4.III.1:1-6)

"Why wait for Heaven? It is here today." (ACIM, W-131.6:1-2)

"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." (ACIM, W-188.1:1-4)

"You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of yourself, the little thought that seems split off and separate, the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God’s keeping, and needs no guide. Yet this wild and delusional thought needs help because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery. This is the little part you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it off, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it." (ACIM, T-18.IX.1:1-10)

"... neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. Your definition of Heaven is hell and oblivion, and the real Heaven is the greatest threat you think you could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas that you made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours." (ACIM, T-13.IV.2:1-3)

"The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal." (ACIM, T-15.I.4:1-4)

"Brother, 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 all this undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? Quite easily. How do you feel? Is peace in your awareness? Are you certain which way you go? And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? If not, you walk alone. Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go." (ACIM, T-23.II.22:1-13)

"We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell." (ACIM, W-182.3:1-7)

"What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function, and does nothing. For it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed, and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God’s beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes are true, a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more, while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure; love and fear?" (ACIM, W-200.6:1-6)

"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. The power of his decision offers it to him as he requests. Herein lie hell and Heaven. The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. It is enough. His words do not matter." (ACIM, M-21.3:1-9)

"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. The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion that you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One to Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit’s guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you." (ACIM, M-29.3:1-11)

"God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness.The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness." (ACIM, T-1.V.4:4-5)

"How holy are the healed! For in their sight their brothers share their healing and their love. Bringers of peace,—the Holy Spirit’s voice, through whom He speaks for God, Whose Voice He is,—such are God’s healers. They but speak for Him and never for themselves. They have no gifts but those they have from God. And these they share because they know that this is what He wills. They are not special. They are holy. They have chosen holiness, and given up all separate dreams of special attributes through which they can bestow unequal gifts on those less fortunate." (ACIM, S-3.IV.1:1-9)

There are 321 instances of "holiness" in ACIM.

There are 1852 instances of "holy" (or variations of that word, including "holiness") in ACIM.

"The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. It is the recognition that all minds are in communication. It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything." (ACIM, T-15.IV.6:5-8)

"In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness or your own." (ACIM, T-15.II.3:6)

"The holy instant is the opposite of the ego’s fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the past. In the holy instant it is understood that the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has been uprooted and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of now enfold you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone except the truth." (ACIM, T-16.VII.6:3-6)

"The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep." (ACIM, T-15.IV.9:1-2)

"This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace. And if I need a word to help me, He will give it to me. If I need a thought, that will He also give. And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him. He is in charge by my request. And He will hear and answer me, because He speaks for God my Father and His holy Son." (ACIM, W-361-365.1:1-5)

"The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this world. Like everything about salvation, the holy instant is a practical device, witnessed to by its results. The holy instant never fails. The experience of it is always felt. Yet without expression it is not remembered. The holy relationship is a constant reminder of the experience in which the relationship became what it is. And as the unholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise of its maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the Redeemer of relationships." (ACIM, T-17.V.1:1-7)

"Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you." (ACIM, T-20.VIII.2:1-4)

"When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. ⁴As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself." (ACIM, T-8.III.4:1-5)

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes both God’s creations and your illusions. He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive totally rather than selectively." (ACIM, T-1.I.38:1-3)

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception. He came into being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the Atonement principle at the same time. Before that there was no need for healing, for no one was comfortless. The Voice of the Holy Spirit is the Call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind." (ACIM, T-5.I.5:1-4)

"The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go." (ACIM, T-5.II.1:4)

"The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because It is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek control. It does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what It reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because It speaks of peace." (ACIM, T-5.II.7:1-7)

"The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense." (ACIM, T-5.II.3:7)

"Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the spirit. ³Spirit is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance and gladly sheds its light everywhere." (ACIM, T-4.I.12:2-3)

"I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing. And I am His Son." (ACIM, T-31.VIII.5:2-4)

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me." (ACIM, W-rVI.in.3:3-5)

"God wills you learn what always has been true: that He created you as part of Him, and this must still be true because ideas leave not their source." (ACIM, T-26.VII.13:2)

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought." (ACIM, W-132.10:3)

"There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level." (ACIM, T-2.VI.9:13-14)

You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God’s Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself. (ACIM, T-27.VII.13:1-3)

"You judge effects, but He has judged their cause.And by His judgment are effects removed.Perhaps you come in tears.But hear Him say, 'My brother, holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur.'And you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother’s joined with His." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.9:4-8)

"The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward." (ACIM, T-20.VI.11:1)

"Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place." (ACIM, T-29.VII.1:1-4)

"What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power that they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.

Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality."

(ACIM, T-29.VIII.1:1–2:2)

Because we have removed ourselves from wholeness, what we perceive with our very limited physical senses results from our fragmenting projections based on the belief in separation. Our egos are incapable of understanding totality (innocence), and our brains also are profoundly constrained to only think in terms of separate parts or duality. With our staggeringly incomplete perspective, we are disturbed by our misinterpretations which can in no way comprehend our undifferentiated, undivided true identity, which is eternally peaceful and unchanging.

Practicing true forgiveness gradually reveals to us the realization that all illusions are the same in content, affirming the belief that separation happened, yet varying wildly in form. So, despite the enormous differences, from the world's perspective, between one specific (illusion) and another, from above the battleground of ego's rampant misinterpretations, every illusion is the same;

illusion A = illusion B = illusion C = ... ad infinitum.

Even though the alleged meaning of this material world is completely based on our interpretations and is also completely illusory because we see minuscule and distorted fragments devoid of wholeness, we still need to bring every specific interpretation into our "forgiveness classroom" to Holy Spirit to correct our distorted dreams, restore our ability to generalize, and retrieve our minds from the hell of specialness. So reciting "mantras" like "It’s just an illusion" actually reinforces error and keeps us dream-bound. When we attempt to "shout down" the ego, do a bliss-ninny bypass, or otherwise avoid looking at our insane thought system without condemnation, we're merely keeping illusion intact rather than dispelling it.

Optical illusions are good examples of how our brains “fill in the gaps” and misinterpret our perception of the projected world, but these illusions are trivial in comparison with the huge illusion of separation!

"Miracles honor you because you are lovable. They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity." (ACIM, T-1.I.33:1-4)

"Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them." (ACIM, T-3.III.2:6)

"Illusions are investments." (ACIM, T-7.VII.4:1)

"Illusions are deceptions." (ACIM, T-9.VIII.7:7)

"No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth." (ACIM, T-11.V.1:1-4)

"Illusions battle only with themselves." (ACIM, T-23.I.7:4)

"No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so." (ACIM, T-29.VII.2:1-2)

"God is not the author of fear. You are. You have chosen to create unlike Him, and have therefore made fear for yourself. You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty function that you are not meeting. Your ego has chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it. When you awaken you will not be able to understand this, because it is literally incredible. Do not believe the incredible now. Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable. The word “inevitable” is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you." (ACIM, T-4.I.9:1-11)

There are 81 instances of "inevitable" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

See also Last Judgment.

"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." (ACIM, T-3.I.6:1-3)

"The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, and evil does not exist." (ACIM, T-3.I.7:1-4)

"The innocent are safe because they share their innocence." (ACIM, T-23.in.3:2)

"The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence." (ACIM, W-60.1:3-4)

Judging without the Holy Spirit's help is the cause of misinterpretation and gets us in trouble. This is true because ego always starts from the idea (however unconscious it may be) that we are separate from our Source. When we judge with the ego, it will keep the form but change the content to reinforce the idea of a separated and guilty self-image.

Ego reactionary interpretation takes totally neutral perceptual data from our senses and intentionally, although mostly unconsciously, distorts, filters, and manipulates this into what seems to be "good" or "bad" for my "self" to reinforce the belief in separation and justify the guilt it assumes is real. This mechanism makes illusion seem real by insisting on judgments that either condemn or elevate to make "big deals" of specialness. We also don’t often apply what we learn about optical illusions to help us question the interpretations of our senses.

Our interpretations reflect our values, ideas, beliefs, and self-concepts, and when they are based on temporary, self-serving "me first" foundations, they can only lead to a lack of peace; forgiveness allows us to undo our faulty interpretations, releasing the burdensome belief in guilt we carry in our split minds.

"The world of perception, on the other hand, is the world of time, of change, of beginnings and endings. It is based on interpretation, not on facts. It is the world of birth and death, founded on the belief in scarcity, loss, separation and death. It is learned rather than given, selective in its perceptual emphases, unstable in its functioning, and inaccurate in its interpretations." (ACIM, Preface.3:1-4)

"Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly." (ACIM, T-5.VI.4:3)

"The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that part of the mind that made it is against it. It interprets this as a justification for attacking its maker." (ACIM, T-6.IV.4:1-2)

"When attack in any form enters your mind you are equating yourself with a body, since this is the ego’s interpretation of the body. You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation." (ACIM, T-8.VII.1:2-3)

"Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless." (ACIM, T-14.X.11:4)

"There are no facts; only interpretations." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it." (ACIM, T-10.III.3:2-3)

"That is why the recognition of your own invulnerability is so important to the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack has no effect." (ACIM, T-12.V.2:1-2)

"You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past only through guilt." (ACIM, T-13.I.8:1-2)

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." (ACIM, W-26)

See also Holy Spirit.

"The name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. But it stands for love that is not of this world. It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray. It becomes the shining symbol for the Word of God, so close to what it stands for that the little space between the two is lost, the moment that the name is called to mind. Remembering the name of Jesus Christ is to give thanks for all the gifts that God has given you. And gratitude to God becomes the way in which He is remembered, for love cannot be far behind a grateful heart and thankful mind. God enters easily, for these are the true conditions for your homecoming." (ACIM, M-23.4:1-7)

"The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God.So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God.The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do.Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are?Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true." (ACIM, C-5.2:1-5)

"It is this one intent we seek today, uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it. With Help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us?" (ACIM, W-185.14:1-2)

"The ego joins with an illusion of yourself you share with it. And yet illusions cannot join.They are the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, being nothing.The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself." (ACIM, T-23.I.3:5-10)

"Our minds are joined." (ACIM, W-221.2:5)

"You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two." (ACIM, T-7.X.3:4)

"The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him." (ACIM, T-10.V.1:1-2)

"Joy is eternal. You can be sure indeed that any seeming happiness that does not last is really fear. Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change. But sorrow can be turned to joy, for time gives way to the eternal." (ACIM, T-22.II.3:4-7)

"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." (ACIM, W-131.7:1)

"The principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the Call to joy. This Call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at Its sound. That is why you must choose to hear one of 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." (ACIM, T-5.II.3:1-6)

Judgment is looking with condemnation at what appears in our experience of space, time, and individuality instead of seeing (with the Holy Spirit’s help) that nothing happened in Truth–in eternity. For example, if I demonize demonizers, then I'm a demonizer too! If I hate hatemongers, I'm ignoring that there must be something in my mind that I can't tolerate that I'm projecting onto others. I forget that their acting out is "their call for help" (lovingkindness); going deeper, I realize that if this upsets me in any way, their call for help is my call for help, too.

I need Holy Spirit's help to see that I'm never upset for the reason I think (my unconscious condemnation of what seems external) and also that I could see peace instead of this (the guilt that I perceive is in my mind) is unfounded and based on a forgivable misunderstanding. The ego misinterprets everything with loathing judgments, including any assessment that makes differences important. Unsubstantiated sin, ungrounded guilt, and unfounded fears lead to unjustified judgments.

"Judgment always involves rejection. It never emphasizes only the positive aspects of what is judged, whether in you or in others." (ACIM, T-3.VI.2:4-5)

"Vision or judgment is your choice, but never both of these." (ACIM, T-20.V.4:7)

"Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you where to go. Why should you guess?" (ACIM, T-21.I.2:5-6)

"In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects.How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely?He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while.You judge effects, but He has judged their cause.And by His judgment are effects removed.Perhaps you come in tears.But hear Him say, 'My brother, holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur.'And you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother’s joined with His." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.9:1-8)

"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness." (ACIM, W-190.9:4)

"When you feel tired, it is because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone, it is because you have judged him as unworthy. When you laugh at yourself you must laugh at others, if only because you cannot tolerate the idea of being more unworthy than they are. All this makes you feel tired because it is essentially disheartening. You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourself. The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished. Yet if you wish to be the author of reality, you will insist on holding on to judgment. You will also regard judgment with fear, believing that it will someday be used against you. This belief can exist only to the extent that you believe in the efficacy of judgment as a weapon of defense for your own authority." (ACIM, T-3.VI.5:1-10)

"You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment. When you recognize what you are and what your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them. All uncertainty comes from the belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need judgment to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourself. In the presence of knowledge all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to replace perception." (ACIM, T-3.VI.3:1-6)

I become aware of true justice when I completely release all condemning thoughts from my mind and forgive myself for every projection into my distorting dreams of victims and victimizers.

In the ego's cruel courtroom of the split mind, everybody must pay dearly and suffer since criminality is an unchallenged assumption; a "law" of chaos: "... each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death." (ACIM, T-23.II.4:1.)

In the Holy Spirit's courtroom of gentle correction, eternal justice is a given and crime is impossible, since there are no separate parts to "commit crimes" against what can never be apart from itself.

"There is a kind of justice in salvation of which the world knows nothing. To the world, justice and vengeance are the same, for sinners see justice only as their punishment, perhaps sustained by someone else, but not escaped. The laws of sin demand a victim. Who it may be makes little difference. But death must be the cost and must be paid. This is not justice, but insanity. Yet how could justice be defined without insanity where love means hate, and death is seen as victory and triumph over eternity and timelessness and life?" (ACIM, T-25.VIII.3:1-7)

"Without love is justice prejudiced and weak. And love without justice is impossible." (ACIM, T-25.VIII.11:7-8)

"Forgiveness is this world’s equivalent of Heaven’s justice." (ACIM, T-26.IV.1:1)

"Justice, like its opposite, is an interpretation. It is, however, the one interpretation that leads to truth." (ACIM, M-19.2:1-2)

"The kindness of his sight rests on himself with all the tenderness it offers others. For he would only heal and only bless." (ACIM, T-25.VI.1:6-7)

"To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you." (ACIM, T-31.VIII.8:4-7)

"Kindness created me kind." (ACIM, W-67.2:4)

There are 16 instances of "kindness" in ACIM.

There are 219 instances of "kind" (or variations of that word) in ACIM (including instances related to type or class).

"Knowledge is timeless, because certainty is not questionable. You know when you have ceased to ask questions." (ACIM, T-3.III.2:10-11)

"Knowledge is always stable, and it is quite evident that you are not. Nevertheless, you are perfectly stable as God created you." (ACIM, T-3.V.3:3-4)

"Knowledge transcends the laws governing perception, because partial knowledge is impossible. It is all one and has no separate parts. You who are really one with it need but know yourself and your knowledge is complete." (ACIM, T-3.V.8:6-8)

"Knowledge cannot deceive, but perception can. You can perceive yourself as self-creating, but you cannot do more than believe it. You cannot make it true." (ACIM, T-3.VII.4:5-7)

"Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the veil, not to be lost but found; not to be seen but known. And knowing, nothing in the plan God has established for salvation will be left undone. This is the journey’s purpose, without which is the journey meaningless. Here is the peace of God, given to you eternally by Him. Here is the rest and quiet that you seek, the reason for the journey from its beginning." (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.19:1-5)

"The Last Judgment is one of the most threatening ideas in your thinking. This is because you do not understand it. Judgment is not an attribute of God." (ACIM, T-2.VIII.2:1-3)

"The term 'Last Judgment' is frightening not only because it has been projected onto God, but also because of the association of 'last' with death. This is an outstanding example of upside-down perception. If the meaning of the Last Judgment is objectively examined, it is quite apparent that it is really the doorway to life. No one who lives in fear is really alive. Your own last judgment cannot be directed toward yourself, because you are not your own creation. You can, however, apply it meaningfully and at any time to everything you have made, and retain in your memory only what is creative and good." (ACIM, T-2.VIII.5:1-6)

"You who believed that God’s Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God’s Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God’s saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity." (ACIM, W-pII.10.3:1-2)

"I have said that the last step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, and nothing that is true need be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this last step." (ACIM, T-7.I.6:3-6)

"Perfect perception, then, has many elements in common with knowledge, making transfer to it possible. Yet the last step must be taken by God, because the last step in your redemption, which seems to be in the future, was accomplished by God in your creation." (ACIM, T-13.VIII.3:1-2)

We experience non-derisive, harmless, humorous levity as we complete each forgiveness lesson, retracting our projections of guilt from the world when we let that needless suffering be undone for us. Ego laughs cruelly at the expense of others.

By contrast, the Holy Spirit laughs gently at the absurdity of maintaining the silly belief in "otherness" – absolutely not mean-spirited, but lightly lampooning our silly decision for ego's fanatical insistence on choosing a separate idea. “Fun” at someone else’s expense is really sadism, which is actually masochism when seen through the eyes of non-duality.

"Join him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and tortured mind. Help him to lift the heavy burden of sin you laid upon him and he accepted as his own, and toss it lightly and with happy laughter away from him. Press it not like thorns against his brow, nor nail him to it, unredeemed and hopeless." (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.16:4-6)

"In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears. But hear Him say, 'My brother, holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur.' And you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother’s joined with His." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.9:1-8)

"This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen." (ACIM, W-156.6:1-4)

There are 18 instances of "laughter" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 24 instances of "laugh" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 3 instances of "silly" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but you have not." (ACIM, T-4.IV.5:1)

"The Holy Spirit is the Translator of the laws of God to those who do not understand them." (ACIM, T-7.II.4:5)

"Nothing but the laws of God has ever been, and nothing but His Will will ever be." (ACIM, T-10.IV.5:5)

When we attempt to elevate the effects of our dreams (both nighttime dreams and daytime "waking" dreams) to the level of cause, we reinforce the lie of victimhood by denying our mind's ability to change teachers from insanity to sanity.

The ego's use of level confusion is purposive because, despite the agony of experiencing ourselves as "...betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn," (ACIM, T-6.I.9:2) and persecuted, we seem to retain a separate self, the insane, unspoken goal of each individual. We remain mindless when we reverse cause and effect and ascribe causality to effect so that we can appear to be innocent victims of a cruel and heartless world that actually exists only in our split minds.

"Sickness or “not-right-mindedness” is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another. We have referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, for all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur." (ACIM, T-2.IV.2:2-3)

"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." (ACIM, T-2.V.5:4-5)

"Fear cannot be controlled by me, but it can be self-controlled. Fear prevents me from giving you my control. The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind. This removes them from my control, and makes you feel personally responsible for them. This is an obvious confusion of levels. I do not foster level confusion, but you must choose to correct it. You would not excuse insane behavior on your part by saying you could not help it. Why should you condone insane thinking?" (ACIM, T-2.VI.1:4–2:3)

"Miracles honor you because you are lovable. They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity." (ACIM, T-1.I.33:1-4)

"Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the 'scarcity' belief, from which only error can proceed." (ACIM, T-1.IV.3:1-3)

"Light cannot penetrate through the walls you make to block it, and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have made." (ACIM, T-4.III.7:3)

"How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come?" (ACIM, T-6.V.2:1)

"Offer your brother the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love and not the “gift” of fear. You stand beside your brother, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them." (ACIM, T-20.I.2:5-7)

"Offer him lilies and it is yourself you free. ... I have great need for lilies, for the Son of God has not forgiven me." (ACIM, T-20.II.3:9–4:1)

"Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love." (ACIM, W-pII.13.3:4)

"Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is its function. 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." (ACIM, T-18.V.2:1-8)

"We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. It is the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything; the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to resurrection." (ACIM, T-21.II.1:1-2)

"Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a little wish that what is true be true; a little willingness to overlook what is not there; a little sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world that death and desolation seem to rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to replace the world you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness but a willingness that truth be true?" (ACIM, T-26.VII.10:1-3)

Looking with the Holy Spirit at our ego insanity (and its projections onto the world) without condemnation is a vital part of the forgiveness process. We recognize and accept that we have attack thoughts and need healing (Atonement). These murderous thoughts have had no effect on our eternal reality; therefore, they are not evil, sinful, or wicked, but merely silly. Ego's mantra is "don't look," so when we calmly observe the insanity of the split mind without the need to damn and punish, it is the Holy Spirit guiding our decision-making mind, since there are only two thought systems.

Looking at the devastation of the ego is an essential Course practice! Because it exposes the ego's rotten underpinnings and our mostly unconscious investment in them, it is one of the scariest and difficult things to do. However, we will be in denial until we learn to look dispassionately at what seems to run our lives and minds. True lasting peace is impossible until we remove the "blocks to the awareness of love’s presence." (ACIM, T-in.1:7) As our trust develops, the act of looking becomes easier and less scary because we begin to feel the strength of the Holy Spirit as part of who we are... and eventually the looking becomes automatic and second nature.

"A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false." (ACIM, W-pII.13.1:1-3)

"To forgive is to overlook. Look, then, beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds." (ACIM, T-9.IV.1:2-3)

"No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth." (ACIM, T-11.V.1:1-6)

"It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. ²Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them." (ACIM, T-15.X.5:1-2)

Practicing ACIM's true forgiveness—the undoing of fear—brings us to the threshold of All-encompassing, eternal, unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable love (ACIM, C-ep.2:6), our real Identity.

Since ego doesn’t have the vocabulary or understanding of real love, its version of “love” (always either special hate or special love, which is actually special hate) is based on the assumption of fundamental differences and separate interests. The euphoria of special love is just a temporary “cease fire” – a thin veneer of civility covering the default state of warfare intrinsic to special hate. Ego always pushes real love away, not because ego has a clue about what that is, but because it is threatened by anything that would undo its tiny mad identity – a separate, insane, heavily defended personal self that was made as an attack on Love.

If you KNEW – beyond ANY doubt – that you were COMPLETELY loved and COMPLETELY loving, would you be concerned about anything in this world? Would your public (or private) “bucket list(s)” still be important? And what if you realized that this loved and loving experience was a choice available in your mind, and it was not only possible but (happily) inevitable?

“Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente, in which a clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact.” (ACIM, T-29.I.3:9)

"The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (ACIM, T-in.1:6-8)

"Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love." (ACIM, T-6.III.4:9)

"The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it believes it can destroy love, and therefore does not understand what love is. If it does not understand what love is, it cannot perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being, induces feelings of unreality and results in utter confusion. Your thinking has done this because of its power, but your thinking can also save you from this because its power is not of your making." (ACIM, T-7.VI.2:1-5)

"Every loving thought is true." (ACIM, T-12.I.3:3)

"What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack." (ACIM, T-23.IV.1:10-11)

"You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego’s foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you." (ACIM, T-13.III.4:3-5)

In ACIM, magic ascribes any material (non-mental) cause to a material effect, in denial and ignorance of anything mental. The belief in separation (sickness of mind) is the cause of all distress, upset, and dis-ease, regardless of what seems to appear in our bodies or on the level of form. Magicians use misdirection to divert attention from the cause on the level of form, and egos use the same strategy of deception on the level of content in the mind.

Medicine is the magic we (in the world) use to attempt to “heal” most ailments because we don’t want to recognize that we (as a decision-making mind) are the ones making the choice for health or sickness. The body is seen as being the recipient (victim) of disease or health via the agent of germs, or many other “causes” outside our mind. Using magic can seem to relieve our distressing symptoms, but it is just a substitute for forgiveness, which fully undoes the cause (set up) of our upset in the mind.

Magic in the Course is a very general term and includes all varieties of special relationships: oxygen, food, money, clothing, shelter, companionship, acknowledgment, and anything we believe brings us peace or healing from the world in which we appear to live. The remedy for any effect we do not take responsibility for will be some form of magic. By denying accountability for our ego choice, magic serves as a “stand-in” that seems to have the power to temporarily minimize or treat the effect of this limiting choice.

Importantly, we're not responsible for what others (including viruses, bacteria, other human bodies, and physical forces) do "to us" as bodies. However, we are responsible for how we think about these events and circumstances.

Equally important, there is no "sin" in using medicine or other physical modalities to relieve physical symptoms, and we would be silly not to do whatever provides relief since we are still strongly identified with our bodies. There isn't anything "wrong" with magic, and the Course doesn't discourage being normal, but just reminds us that any magical solution (changing something in the world of space, time, and bodies) is temporary at best and will not restore the peace of God to our awareness.

ACIM merely asks us to look at why we choose everything and ask ourselves if we are trying to find a solution to the problem of unconscious, unfounded guilt in our mind by using something within our dream to fix our dream; we really just need to awaken from the dream of separation (sickness).

"The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects." (ACIM, T-28.II.11:7)

"The acceptance of sickness as a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and he recovers. If he decides against recovery, he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only the mind of the patient himself. The outcome is what he decides that it is. Special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his own choice. He chooses them in order to bring tangible form to his desires. And it is this they do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all. The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, 'I have no use for this.' There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once." (ACIM, M-5.II.2:1-13)

"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." (ACIM, T-1.I.14:1-3)

"How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come?You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now."(ACIM, T-6.V.2:1-3)

"The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the mind. This situation, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic always involves the belief that healing is harmful. This belief is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly." (ACIM, T-7.V.3:5-7)

"All magic is an attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable." (ACIM, T-10.IV.1:1)

"Magic imprisons, but the laws of God make free." (ACIM, W-76.7:5)

"... magic of any kind, in all its forms, simply does nothing." (ACIM, M-16.9:7)

"Maladaptive solution to a non-existent problem" is Kenneth Wapnick's brilliant phrase. The "maladaptive solution" describes the material world and the countless magical bodies that appear to inhabit it. The "non-existent problem" that our decision-making mind erroneously appears to choose is the entire fabricated ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, and death. Rather than simply correct this mistake, the ego – which dreams it has "burned the bridge" to that original, ontological choice in favor of a split identity based on duality – attempts (unsuccessfully) to hide from the guilt of this insane decision (to be separate from our Creator and each other) by making a world to project this horrific guilt from its impossible crime.

This solution is maladaptive (ineffective) because the awful guilt remains in our split ego mind, no matter how frantically we try to eliminate it by projection: we blame the deficiency of the ego's incomplete and unfulfilling strategy on the world, but never actually get rid of the shameful cause of deep unworthiness; our belief in separation. The material world ego made isn't the problem, but neither is the thought system of separate interests that made it up.

"If we could accept responsibility for our suffering, our suffering would stop." - Ken Wapnick, "The Conductor and the Orchestra The Music of Forgiveness"; 1:30:55

Another excellent related metaphor Ken Wapnick draws from is "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen. The emperor is naked (nothing in the world soothes our unconscious, unfounded guilt), and – sillier yet – there's no emperor (ego) either!

Related workbook lessons: "Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved." (ACIM, W-79) and "Let me recognize my problems have been solved." (ACIM, W-80)

"One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual." (ACIM, T-1.I.12:3)

"Since the separation, the words 'create' and 'make' have become confused. When you make something, you do so out of a specific sense of lack or need. Anything made for a specific purpose has no true generalizability. When you make something to fill a perceived lack, you are tacitly implying that you believe in separation." (ACIM, T-3.V.2:1-4)

"You still believe you are an image of your own making. Your mind is split with the Holy Spirit on this point, and there is no resolution while you believe the one thing that is literally inconceivable. That is why you cannot create and are filled with fear about what you make." (ACIM, T-3.VII.4:10-12)

There are 16 instances of "make and create" (or variations of those words) in ACIM.

There are 1317 instances of "make" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go beyond itself. ⁵By reaching out, the mind extends itself." (ACIM, T-8.VII.10:4-5)

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations." (ACIM, T-12.VII.4:1)

"The second obstacle that peace must flow across, and closely related to the first, is the belief that the body is valuable for what it offers. For here is the attraction of guilt made manifest in the body, and seen in it." (ACIM, T-19.IV-B.1:3-4)

"The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real use for it because it is not an end. You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something." (ACIM, T-8.VIII.2:3-7)

"The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is not divided and the means and the end are in complete accord." (ACIM, T-12.V.9:3)

"You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes the body an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this always means you still find sin attractive." (ACIM, T-18.VII.1:1-3)

"Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us showing us the way. He fails in nothing. He the End we seek, and He the Means by which we go to Him." (ACIM, W-302.2:1-3)

"Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory." (ACIM, T-10.II.2:4)

"You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it, and rejoice that it is not so." (ACIM, T-12.VIII.5:1-5)

"You are not really afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption. ... Under the ego’s dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid." (ACIM, T-13.III.1:10–2:1)

"The memory of God comes to the quiet mind." (ACIM, T-23.I.1:1)

"A pseudo-question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself." (ACIM, T-27.IV.5:1-3)

"By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity." (ACIM, T-1.I.33:4)

"Whatever is true is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters." (ACIM, T-1.V.5:1-3)

"This is a course in mind training." (ACIM, T-1.VII.4:1)

"You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind’s miscreations." (ACIM, T-2.VI.4:6)

"The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away. The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort." (ACIM, T-4.IV.7:1-2)

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer." (ACIM, T-5.V.5:1)

"The body is the ego’s home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, since the body’s vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly. Yet the ego hates the body, because it cannot accept it as good enough to be its home. Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed. Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the body is its protector, the mind is also told that the body cannot protect it. Therefore, the mind asks, 'Where can I go for protection?' to which the ego replies, 'Turn to me.' The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there is none, but it does have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind’s awareness. Once out of awareness the question can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked." (ACIM, T-4.V.4:1-11)

"By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided." (ACIM, T-8.V.1:7-8)

"You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God." (ACIM, T-9.VIII.10:1)

"God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity." (ACIM, T-10.V.10:6-9)

"The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (ACIM, T-13.in.2:1-2)

“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.” (ACIM, C-4.8:1)

A miracle is a mental change that accepts the Holy Spirit's forgiving correction and demonstrates awareness of our all-inclusive reality in the Mind of the Creator, denying the ego's belief that there is another reality besides God’s Love. Miracles transcend the hell of dualistic thought by questioning its foundation and quietly, gently refusing to believe in ego propaganda. This happens naturally when we choose to step back in the recognition that we do not know the Truth and ask that the Truth be shown to us.

Miracles always demonstrate that the idea of separation is not true and that only God’s Love is true. Miracles restore peace of mind because we allow the sameness of our shared identity to replace conflicting wishes and separate interests that make peace impossible. Miracles shift from the wrong mind to the right mind, correcting mistakes. Revelations shift from the right mind to the One mind, transcending mistakes.

See 50 Principles of Miracles of A Course in Miracles for a detailed explanation of the qualities, characteristics, and mechanisms of the Miracle.

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal." (ACIM, T-1.I.1:1-4)

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself." (ACIM, T-2.V.5:1)

"The miracle is always a denial of this error and an affirmation of the truth." (ACIM, T-2.V-A.14:1)

"I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true." (ACIM, T-2.VII.1:5-8)

"The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth." (ACIM, T-12.II.1:5)

"A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness." (ACIM, W-pII.13.1:1-4)

"The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the realization that you have betrayed God’s Son by condemning him to death. You do not even suspect this murderous but insane idea lies hidden there, for the ego’s destructive urge is so intense that nothing short of the crucifixion of God’s Son can ultimately satisfy it. It does not know who the Son of God is because it is blind. Yet let it perceive guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy it because it is afraid." (ACIM, T-13.II.3:1-5)

"To the ego sin means death, and so atonement is achieved through murder." (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.17:3)

"You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you are asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent. And it is this you fear, and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be of equal truth." (ACIM, T-23.IV.1:7-12)

"The Name of God’s Son is one, and you are enjoined to do the works of love because we share this Oneness. Our minds are whole because they are one." (ACIM, T-8.IX.7:3-4)

"Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality. The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has one Name, one meaning, and a single Source which unifies all things within Itself. Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you.

God has no name. And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end." (ACIM, W-184.11:1–12:2)

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace." (ACIM, T-7.XI.1:6-8)

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal." (ACIM, T-1.I.1:1-4)

"To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient." (ACIM, P-3.II.9:4)

While the Course doesn't use the phrases "non-dual" or "metaphysics", its purely non-dualistic metaphysical teachings exemplify the profound Truth of our real, all-inclusive Identity. The uncompromising non-duality in this curriculum acknowledges that: “The Truth is true and nothing else is true.” In the ego thought system, we always have polarized opposites such as hot/cold, free/bound, and love/hate.

In Truth, there are no opposites; God’s Love is the only Truth, and hate does not exist. If God had created hate, cruelty, sin, sacrifice, guilt, fear, death, suffering, or any other ego idea, duality would be real, and we would never know the lovingkindness of unchanging Peace. Fortunately, every divisive dream of dualism can be – and will ultimately be – undone by our (happily) inevitable choice to forgive ourselves for what never happened in eternity.

Because ACIM meets us where we believe we are, it uses dualistic language to train our minds to transcend that ego misunderstanding. Our language is inherently dualistic, so while the form isn't consistent, the pure non-dual content behind the words is completely consistent.

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (ACIM, T-in.1:8)

There aren't any instances of "non-dual" or "metaphysics" in ACIM; however, there are numerous instances of related words, such as only (1754), whole (339), complete (401), total (147), all (2791), none (67), every (541), always (424), never (631), utter (10), absolute (4), entire (87), everyone (303), no one (314), everything (526), and nothing (922).

These frequently occurring words remind us that we are all the same and that our acceptance of our sameness (the denial of superficial, temporal, and spatial differences) and trust in the corrective guidance in our minds that the Holy Spirit represents leads us back to the Perfect Oneness that is synonymous with Pure Non-duality.

By default, if we are mindlessly choosing the ego thought system, our attention is riveted on the world and ego's interpretation of everything in it (including our bodies and everybody else) as sinful and uncorrectable which not only makes error real, but further adds the undoable condemnation of the impossible crime of sin – a double whammy of guilt and fear secretly locked into our mental prison; a.k.a. the double shield of oblivion.

When we ask Holy Spirit for help to fix our broken world, we evaluate our assumed (ego) problems on our own – the authority problem – and this automatically makes errors seem real and therefore hopeless.

Noticing when we’re determined to enforce any hierarchy of differences in our mind or evaluate based on past (dreamt, misinterpreted) experience, we make errors seem real far more often than we realize. Making anyone or anything better or worse (special love or special hate) also makes error seem real. Holy Spirit's vision sees the sameness of all problems, all with the same solution: forgiveness.

"You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything." (ACIM, T-12.I.1:1-3)

Ego made time and misuses it to imprison by assuming we sinned in the past, are guilty now, and should therefore fear the future. Holy Spirit can use anything the ego made for correction; it cancels the sin of separation with the Atonement principle which affirms that separation never happened. Therefore there is no cause for guilt now or fear of the future.

Ego's nightmarish, guilty use of now always denies truth, which denies peace; Holy Spirit's happy dream of forgiveness in each present moment denies ego's denial of truth, returning to the eternal timelessness of innocence and restoring all in our mind as equal children of our Creator.

"If you can accept this one generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons." (ACIM, T-3.I.7:10)

"Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state. ¹⁰It is as true now as it ever was or ever will be, because it implies no change at all." (ACIM, T-4.II.11:9-10)

"... now is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers." (ACIM, T-13.IV.7:5)

"What you made can always be changed because, when you do not think like God, you are not really thinking at all." (ACIM, T-5.V.6:12)

"... neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. Your definition of Heaven is hell and oblivion, and the real Heaven is the greatest threat you think you could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas that you made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours." (ACIM, T-13.IV.2:1-3)

"Perhaps God’s Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion, and go the way you chose without your Self." (ACIM, W-166.9:4-6)

There are 11 instances of "oblivion" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

See also death and the double shield of oblivion.

"... only One-mindedness can be without confusion." (ACIM, T-3.IV.3:3)

"Salvation is nothing more than “right-mindedness,” which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achieved before One-mindedness is restored." (ACIM, T-4.II.10:1)

The "one or the other" conundrum is intrinsic to dualistic thinking and the epitome of the ego's insane separate interests. There are no choices needed in pure non-duality, but in our dualistic dreams, there are incessant choices among illusions.

In this world, we seem to be making important choices among illusions (seemingly endless "horizontal choices") – yet the Course maintains that the only meaningful choice is against the insanity of the ego – the single "vertical choice" that makes all the difference.

When we see that all illusions are the same, and all our siblings (all beings beyond space, time, and duality, yet seemingly within it) are equally innocent in truth, we lose interest in making trivial choices among things that don't matter. We generalize to see that our choice for sanity is the only crucial choice, and making a "big deal" about choices among illusions is just silly and forgivable.

"It is essential that you realize your thinking will be erratic until a firm commitment to one or the other is made." (ACIM, T-3.II.1:5)

"I said before that what you project or extend is up to you, but you must do one or the other, for that is a law of mind, and you must look in before you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing. And then you look out and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek." (ACIM, T-12.VII.7:1-4)

"My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are." (ACIM, W-54.1:6-8)

Our true Identity is perfect Oneness; the awareness of Unity with God and all Creation. There is no sense of a difference between the Self and our Creator. They are one thing because God created all as a perfect extension of the undifferentiated All. There is no point at which the Creator ends and the Creation begins.

Our intrinsically dualistic language doesn't do justice to the reality of our eternal, all-inclusive being, which is beyond words, symbols, and concepts. The Course gives us inspiring words that hint at the Universal Oneness we all share, but since that is almost impossible to understand in the split, fragmented and disoriented condition of our dualistic minds, it emphasizes our sameness and the importance of shared interests and forgiving ourselves for the silly mistake of believing that separate interests could ever bring us peace.

"The Sonship in its Oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing." (ACIM, T-2.VII.6:3-4)

"Only the oneness of knowledge is free of conflict. Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world." (ACIM, T-3.VII.6:8-9)

"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." (ACIM, T-18.VI.1:5-6)

"All this takes note of time and place as if they were discrete, for while you think that part of you is separate, the concept of a Oneness joined as One is meaningless. ²It is apparent that a mind so split could never be the Teacher of a Oneness which unites all things within Itself." (ACIM, T-25.I.7:1-2)

There are 76 instances of "oneness" in ACIM.

There are 2260 instances of "one" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

Ego overlooks (looks past or ignores) Holy Spirit and vice-versa, since they are completely mutually exclusive thought systems. Both are completely consistent within themselves, yet ego is 100% insane and Holy Spirit 100% sane. The ideas of shared interests and complete inclusion of all in eternal innocence do not appear in the ego's mental vocabulary and are therefore totally overlooked by it. Ego overlooks any possibility of sameness, forgiveness, consistency, compassion, kindness, appreciation, trust, honesty, tolerance, gentleness, joy, defenselessness, generosity, patience, faithfulness, or open-mindedness.

Holy Spirit overlooks sin, guilt, fear, and the entire murderous thought system of duality that seems to give rise to the births, ephemeral lives, and deaths of innumerable mortal dream figure bodies limited to time and space, which seem to prove the material world is real.

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to overlook." (ACIM, T-9.IV.1:1-2)

"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." (ACIM, T-9.IV.4:4-6)

"... you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way to peace. The reason is very simple, and so obvious that it is often overlooked. The ego is afraid of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. Yet you cannot overlook it unless you are not looking. It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives, He looks with love on you." (ACIM, T-9.VII.2:5–3:1)

"If you overlook love you are overlooking yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself." (ACIM, T-11.V.10:5)

"Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit’s help.⁴That is His function." (ACIM, T-18.V.2:3-4)

Pain is the experience that results from thinking: "I exist, but it’s not my fault." Pain and pleasure are flip sides of the same ego coin that buys us identification with a separate self, and specifically a special body that is at the mercy of countless circumstances over which we appear to have no control. As long as our peace seems to be at the mercy of the world and all of its inhabitants, we are unable to offer mercy to anyone, including ourselves.

The physical and psychological sensations of pain may be beyond our direct control, but our choice to suffer, which depends solely on which of two teachers we listen to, is not.

"Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way." (ACIM, T-2.III.3:5-6)

"We have said that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart?" (ACIM, T-8.II.5:1-4)

"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." (ACIM, T-10.V.9:9-10)

"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." (ACIM, T-27.I.4:5-7)

"Pain is a mental process, not a physical one." - Gary Renard, Disappearance of the Universe

There are 325 instances of "pain" (or variations of that word) in ACIM. Ouch!

See also suffering.

Total non-resistance to graciously accepting the being God created us to be. This tranquility is achieved through forgiveness, bringing our dreamt darknesses to the Holy Spirit’s light for healing.

Ego’s (pseudo) “peace” is just a seeming cease-fire in its ceaseless war. Holy Spirit returns us to genuine peace "above the battleground" of the duality of separate interests.

"Stop for a moment now and think of this: Is conflict what you want, or is God’s peace the better choice? Which gives you more? A tranquil mind is not a little gift. Would you not rather live than choose to die?" (ACIM, M-20.4:6-9)

"When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy." (ACIM, T-1.IV.1:5)

"You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness." (ACIM, T-1.VI.1:1)

"You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment." (ACIM, T-3.VI.3:1)

"To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It" (ACIM, T-6.V-B)

"If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned God’s lesson, and not your own." (ACIM, T-14.XI.5:2)

Any object, person, event, etc. that I perceive can be interpreted with the fearful ego as my teacher (false perception) or the Holy Spirit’s Love (true perception). Ego's divisiveness will always see something that justifies belief in differences, while Holy Spirit’s guidance will help us reconsider ego’s (mis)interpretations, which are incapable of peace, and see the sameness of everyone's essence. Perceived properly, we all have the same ego, the same Holy Spirit, and the same decision-making mind that chooses between these two thought systems.

(See also projection.)

"Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition." (ACIM, T-21.in.1:1-5)

"Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. ⁹Understanding the lesson of the Atonement they are without the wish to attack, and therefore they see truly." (ACIM, T-3.II.5:8-9)

"We have been emphasizing perception, and have said very little about knowledge as yet. ²This is because perception must be straightened out before you can know anything." (ACIM, T-3.III.1:1-2)

"What happens to perceptions if there are no judgments and nothing but perfect equality?" (ACIM, T-3.V.8:1)

Sometimes associated with the "dark night of the soul," there are times in our spiritual path where our deepest beliefs and cherished self-concepts (in particular our seemingly separate selfhood) are being overturned or challenged at our core. These periods may or may not be accompanied by physical changes in our circumstances.

The stark contrast between the utter failure of the pathetic self we made and the promise of our real Identity helps us remember that we do not know anything. The turmoil, confusion, uncertainty, and terror of this profound cognitive dissonance eventually impel us to implicitly and totally trust the Holy Spirit. This is the fifth stage in the Development of Trust (ACIM, M-4.I-A).

"The next stage is indeed 'a period of unsettling.' Now must the teacher of God understand that he did not really know what was valuable and what was valueless. All that he really learned so far was that he did not want the valueless, and that he did want the valuable. Yet his own sorting out was meaningless in teaching him the difference. The idea of sacrifice, so central to his own thought system, had made it impossible for him to judge. He thought he learned willingness, but now he sees that he does not know what the willingness is for. And now he must attain a state that may remain impossible to reach for a long, long time. He must learn to lay all judgment aside, and ask only what he really wants in every circumstance. Were not each step in this direction so heavily reinforced, it would be hard indeed!" (ACIM, M-4.I-A.7:1-9)

The discouraging tone of "... may remain impossible to reach for a long, long time" is overcome by the gentle reminder that we need to trust more consistently until it becomes an automatic habit to ask for help to see everyone and everything with the forgiving eyes of the Holy Spirit in our mind; the last two sentences in the quote above give us explicit instructions: we need to be patiently vigilant against the temptation to indulge in grievances which is not what we really want. The contrast between the ego's "gift" of guilt and the Holy Spirit's gift of peace becomes the heavy reinforcement for each step in our daily lives.

There is 1 instance of a "period of unsettling" in ACIM.

"If you believe in truth and illusion, you cannot tell which is true.To establish your personal autonomy you tried to create unlike your Father, believing that what you made is capable of being unlike Him.Yet everything true is like Him." (ACIM, T-11.VII.3:6-8)

"It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be." (ACIM, T-12.I.5:1-2)

"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here. In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to make your brothers seem different. Without the values from the past, you would see them all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be when you perceive only the present." (ACIM, T-15.V.8:1-5)

"And it is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing." (ACIM, T-18.IV.7:4-6)

There are 57 instances of "personal" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 4 instances of "impersonal" in ACIM.

There are no instances of "transpersonal" in ACIM, which would be closely related to impersonal.

When we believe we're separate, we pray for what we think we lack. When we finally undo our belief in separation – the scarcity principle (ACIM, Preface,7:3), prayer becomes a communion of gratitude with all we dreamt we had forsaken.

Praying = voting = channeling = choosing (either completion or incompletion) = deciding (for peace or war).

"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." (ACIM, T-3.V.6:1-5)

"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." (ACIM, M-21.1:1-4)

"Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart, and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you, He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language." (ACIM, M-29.6:1-5)

"The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need." (ACIM, S-1.I.4:1)

The Holy Spirit’s process of forgiveness involves consistently looking without condemnation at the contents of guilt in our mind to undo our identification with the ego thought system to achieve the Atonement, undoing the belief in separation. This requires patience, trust, and persistence; it doesn’t happen quickly because we have overlearned identification with insanity (ego’s denial of truth); now we need to overlearn sanity (Holy Spirit’s correction) to undo that ego default and make forgiveness automatic instead of condemnation.

The Holy Spirit guides us gently and lovingly through our individualized curricula, always aware of the best way to teach us. We always have the Holy Spirit’s care and guidance; when we trust His counsel, we expedite the process without skipping over steps.

ACIM is NOT a “weekend workshop” but requires lifelong study and practice to develop the complete and unambiguous trust that leads to unassailable peace.

"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." (ACIM, T-3.VI.2:1-2)

"The first step in the reversal or undoing process is the undoing of the getting concept." (ACIM, T-6.V-B.3:1)

"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. ⁴If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible." (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:3-4)

"The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation." (ACIM, W-23.5:1-3)

We attempt to rid ourselves of the guilt in our minds by seeing it in someone or something else. Repression and blame are motivations for projection. The guilt we feel for rejecting God’s Love is enormous, and we can’t stand to see it in ourselves. When we experience any form of guilt, we reinforce the belief in a “crime” that can never be accomplished in truth. Yet because we believe we're criminals, we project it outward – to make someone (or something) else the culprit.

Projection adheres to the erroneous belief that ideas can leave their source. It is the ego's lying counterpart of the Holy Spirit's extension of Truth. Because the lie is still in the mind, the problem (choosing the thought system of untruth) still needs correction (forgiveness).

Projections involve expectations (fear) based on misinterpretations (guilt) based on false assumptions (sin) based on the impossible crime of duality. The ego is continuously searching for outside "guilty parties" to project blame away from its self-incriminating identity and will gerrymander its political landscape of heroes and villains quickly to ensure a steady supply of scapegoats. When we project our grievances (unconscious, unfounded guilt) onto specific individuals (icons for separation), we shatter inner peace and push our real power away.

We're not responsible for other people's projections, but we definitely are responsible for our reactions or responses to their projections. What you think of me is none of my business, but what I think about you and your behavior is absolutely my concern and will determine my peace or lack thereof. If I see you through the eyes of Christ, I will stop projecting my guilt onto you because I want to see you innocent rather than sinful, reflecting how I want to see myself.

"No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately by projecting. The inappropriate use of extension, or projection, occurs when you believe that some emptiness or lack exists in you, and that you can fill it with your own ideas instead of truth." (ACIM, T-2.I.1:6-7)

"Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it." (ACIM, T-13.V.3:5)

"Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one’s own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others." (ACIM, T-6.in.1:2)

"What you project or extend is real for you." (ACIM, T-7.II.2:4)

"An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?" (ACIM, W-pII.1.2:1-4)

“What you project from, you will forget; what you project to you will identify with and remember.” – Ken Wapnick, “The Dark Power of Secrecy”

"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Walt Kelly, Pogo

The purpose we ascribe to every choice we make – the "why" – is everything. Since ACIM isn't about behavior or form, what we do in this world isn't the Course's emphasis, but why we do what we do is vitally important to recognize, since that reveals which thought system is our guide at every moment.

Like so many vital ideas in ACIM, despite the vast variety of forms that purpose can take, each choice in our mind distills to just two content options: the ego's purpose of maintaining the belief in separation ... or the Holy Spirit's purpose of undoing that erroneous, forgivable, correctable belief.

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness." (ACIM, T-1.IV.3:6)

"You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough." (ACIM, T-2.VII.1:1-7)

"Since the separation, the words “create” and “make” have become confused. When you make something, you do so out of a specific sense of lack or need. Anything made for a specific purpose has no true generalizability. When you make something to fill a perceived lack, you are tacitly implying that you believe in separation. The ego has invented many ingenious thought systems for this purpose. None of them is creative." (ACIM, T-3.V.2:1-6)

"The holy instant is the Holy Spirit’s most useful learning device for teaching you love’s meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely." (ACIM, T-15.V.1:1-2)

"Fantasies change reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different." (ACIM, T-17.I.1:8-10)

"Forgiveness removes only the untrue, lifting the shadows from the world and carrying it, safe and sure within its gentleness, to the bright world of new and clean perception.There is your purpose now.And it is there that peace awaits you."(ACIM, T-18.IX.14:3-5)

"One thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held they disappear. Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose that they serve? This world seems to hold out many purposes, each different and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again there is no order; only a seeming hierarchy of values.

Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see." (ACIM, T-20.VIII.8:6–9:3)

"The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness." (ACIM, T-30.V.1:1)

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But 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. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His. That is the ultimate purpose of these exercises." (ACIM, W-12.5:1-9)

"Purpose is meaning. Today’s idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore, it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means." (ACIM, W-25.1:1-6)

“The ego may ask, ‘How did the impossible occur?’, ‘To what did the impossible happen?’, and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience.” (ACIM, C-in.4:3-4)

"God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His light because His light is what your mind is. This is totally beyond question, and when you question it you are answered. The Answer merely undoes the question by establishing the fact that to question reality is to question meaninglessly. That is why the Holy Spirit never questions. His sole function is to undo the questionable and thus lead to certainty. The certain are perfectly calm, because they are not in doubt. They do not raise questions, because nothing questionable enters their minds. This holds them in perfect serenity, because this is what they share, knowing what they are." (ACIM, T-7.III.5:1-8)

“I said before that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the Answer to everything, because He knows what the answer to everything is. The ego does not know what a real question is, although it asks an endless number. Yet you can learn this as you learn to question the value of the ego, and thus establish your ability to evaluate its questions.” (ACIM, T-8.IX.1:1-4)

“I have said that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know, and this produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. Not to question your littleness therefore is to deny all knowledge, and keep the ego’s whole thought system intact. You cannot retain part of a thought system, because it can be questioned only at its foundation. And this must be questioned from beyond it, because within it its foundation does stand." (ACIM, T-9.VII.7:1-5)

"Your question should not be, 'How can I see my brother without the body?' Ask only, 'Do I really wish to see him sinless?' " (ACIM, T-20.VII.9:1-2)

“In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved.” (ACIM, T-27.IV.1:1)

Although "reaction formation" doesn't appear in ACIM, it is a helpful term from Freudian psychology. It describes the ego's attempts to deny its woeful inadequacy to provide what we really want (peace) by overcompensating in a futile attempt to prove its legitimacy. Reaction formation occurs when we act in a way that is opposite to the way we really feel; the entire material universe is a reflection of this futile strategy of attempting to use the ego's ineffective remedy of changing the effect without looking at the cause.

Reaction formation, as "The Who" described it, is an "eminence front."

Our egos attempt to mask the pain of our belief in separation–from ourselves and our Creator–by making thousands of special substitutes elevated to dominance, but none of these "consolation prizes" could possibly satisfy our deepest longing for unchanging peace and eternal innocence.

False certainty – "certainty to destroy" proclaims: “I (ego) know I’m right.” This is really reaction formation: fake certainty (whistling in the dark), attempting to hide the enormous doubt we have in the ego’s ability to restore peace.

Ego's resistance to being undone by Truth – the “strength” of our addictions, obsessions, and seeming inability to mindfully reject insanity – is an example of reaction formation against the real strength of the Holy Spirit.

There are 17 instances of "reaction" (or variations of that word) in ACIM, but no instances of "formation."

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore you are in a state of grace forever." (ACIM, T-1.III.5:4-6)

"Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself about it. This deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart it is a deception, and you exert enormous efforts to establish its reality. The miracle sets reality where it belongs. Reality belongs only to spirit, and the miracle acknowledges only truth." (ACIM, T-1.IV.2:1-4)

"Fantasy is an attempt to control reality according to false needs. Twist reality in any way and you are perceiving destructively." (ACIM, T-1.VII.3:4-5)

"Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness of it needs your help, because it is your choice. Listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs you see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid. You will experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. 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. For this will be your faith. But never believe because it is your faith it makes reality." (ACIM, T-21.V.2:1-8)

The real world is the acceptance of ourselves as completely forgiven. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the outside world. The world that is spoken of in the Course is the world of our mind. As we forgive our ugly, fragmented self-concepts, dropping ego misinterpretations of guilt over impossible separation, we accept the Holy Spirit’s beautiful thoughts and experience peace reflected in our transformed perception of the world. The real world is a symbol for the completion of the forgiveness (Atonement) process in my mind.

See also The Borderland.

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself. You can know God because it is His Will to be known. The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is only what is true." (ACIM, T-11.VII.4:7-9)

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel." (ACIM, T-13.in.3:1)

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made." (ACIM, W-pII.8.1:1-2)

"It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask." (ACIM, T-4.II.1:1-2)

"You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. You cannot be as you believed you were. Your guilt is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. And this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. He would remove only illusions." (ACIM, T-13.X.10:5-9)

"Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tells you now the ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit’s purpose was accepted by the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did you." (ACIM, T-21.IV.4:3-6)

"You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has interfered with reason." (ACIM, T-21.V.4:1)

When we identify with the ego's insane and intolerable thought system of sin, guilt, and fear, we repress those thoughts, leading to projection, which makes perception. Forgiveness observes these toppling dominoes without condemnation.

The term "repression" doesn't appear in ACIM, although denial could be considered a synonym. The unacceptable, unconscious, unfounded guilty self-concept we repress or deny gets projected "out" onto the world of our space-time experience as bodies; yet none of this really ever leaves our (ego) mind. Fortunately, the ego is made up, too, and when we completely forgive ourselves for the impossible crime of separation (seeing that its insane premise is unfounded), the ego ultimately disappears as well.

Ego opposes, blocks, avoids, and abhors any attempt at mindfulness, both consciously and unconsciously, which would render it redundant and reveal that it is a pathetic substitute for the Holy Spirit's gentle correction. Resistance is the psychoanalytic term attributed to Sigmund Freud that explains the almost universal paradox of the split mind; how one part of our mind (Holy Spirit) guides us to learn and practice the Course's principles, while another part of our mind (ego) does anything and everything to minimize the possibility of successfully looking at ego's abysmal track record of never delivering peace.

The Course illuminates the purpose of this sabotaging tendency as the desperate clinging to a silly, seemingly separate self at all costs. We (as egos) will do almost anything to deny, distract, repress, inhibit, censor, or divert attention away from the decision-making part of our mind that has the power to render the ego meaningless, revealing its insanity and total inability to bring us happiness. This diversionary ego strategy to resist sanity includes hesitation, equivocation, and secret evasion.

The projected world is the ego's first line of defense to thwart any attempts to return to our minds. Ego tries to keep us mindlessly unaware that we can choose lovingkindness instead of the murderous and divisive tyranny of ego's dualistic thought system. The inner citadel is heavily defended by the abhorrent nature of looking at our unconscious, unfounded guilt for the impossible crime of separation, which is why we need the Holy Spirit's unfaltering strength, steadfastness, and gentle correction of seeing the utter absurdity of ego's sin, guilt, fear, and death beliefs. With help from our Inner Kindness Teacher, we can go past the resistance to overcoming these outer and inner shields of oblivion.

"The ultimate purpose of projection is always to get rid of guilt. Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get rid of guilt from its viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants to retain guilt you find it intolerable, since guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong that you cannot resist it." (ACIM, T-13.II.1:1-2)

"No part of nothing can be more resistant to the truth than can another." (ACIM, T-23.II.3:6)

"It is the invitation to God’s Word to take illusion’s place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.” (ACIM, W-pII.9.1:3)

"The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did." (ACIM, T-3.I.1:2)

"The resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth." (ACIM, T-3.I.7:6)

"Your resurrection is your reawakening." (ACIM, T-6.I.7:1)

"The crucifixion cannot be shared because it is the symbol of projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of sharing because the reawakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its Wholeness. Only this is knowledge." (ACIM, T-6.I.12:1-2)

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death." (ACIM, M-28.1:1)

“Knowledge comes from the altar within and is timeless because it is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as to know it.” (T-3.III.5:12-13) “Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated.” (T-1.II.2:1)

"Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles are thus a means and revelation is an end." (ACIM, T-1.I.28:2-3) "Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear." (ACIM, T-1.II.1:1) "Revelation unites you directly with God." (ACIM, T-1.II.1:5)

"Sickness or “not-right-mindedness” is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another. (ACIM, T-2.IV.2:2)

"... miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness." (ACIM, T-2.V.3:1)

"Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ’s vision sees the real world in its place." (ACIM, C-1.5:2)

Sacrifice is the masochistic notion that we must give up something we want to get something we “should” like, but we don’t. The ego doesn’t realize that every (special, separate, substitute) thing it wants is a sacrifice of peace. Believing that the world of space, time, and bodies can make us happy is a needless sacrifice. Sacrifice – based on the belief in duality – always involves some sort of "one or the other" compromise that the recognition of our true non-dual nature dissolves.

Ego's false perception (constrained by separate interests and blinded by intrinsic lack) says: "I am giving up everything (which I see as separate) and (separately) I am gaining nothing." Holy Spirit's true perception (based on the real abundance of shared interests) says: "Having and being everything, I (completely) give all to all so all have everything and all are complete."

Holy Spirit uses what we consider to be adversity to help us transfer our faith in illusion to faith in the eternal, which is happy and sane Stoicism, not sacrifice or needless suffering. The only thing ACIM asks us to "sacrifice" is the belief in sacrifice.

"Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear, and frightened people can be vicious." (ACIM, T-3.I.4:1-2)

"What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be no conflict." (ACIM, T-7.X.3:6-11)

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

"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." (ACIM, T-15.X.5:8-9)

"Of your ego you can do nothing to save yourself or others, but of your spirit you can do everything for the salvation of both." (ACIM, T-4.I.12:1)

"Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but part of what you want; to take a little and give up the rest. Salvation gives up nothing." (ACIM, T-23.III.3:1-3)

"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. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.10:1-6)

"Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true." (ACIM, W-152.3:1)

"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one." (ACIM, C-4.3:6)

"Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the 'scarcity' belief, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was." (ACIM, T-1.IV.3:1-7)

There are 9 instances of "scarcity" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 31 instances of "principle" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

Because we believe we have disconnected from our eternal, unchanging Source, we experience a dream of bodies moving and changing within space and time, and the drama of the lives we seem to live appears to happen within a script that we have little control over. However, ACIM reminds us that we can and do choose constantly either for the Holy Spirit's forgiveness that leads to peace ... or for the ego's grievances that lead to fear.

Although our ability to significantly physically change our material world is negligible, our ability to change our experience, with exactly the same "script" playing out on the level of form–by changing how we think about our projected world–is profound beyond our imagination! When we trust the Holy Spirit to heal our perception by questioning and ultimately completely abandoning the ego's misinterpretations of everything, we restore our minds to the peace that always awaits our acceptance.

"The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with one purpose, changelessly established. And no situation can affect its aim, but must be in accord with it. For only if its aim could change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation which is different every time you think of it. You add an element into the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that happens now means something else. You take away another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.

What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day should be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain and loss.These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns.The fact they have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by the ease with which these labels change with other judgments, made on different aspects of experience."

(ACIM, T-30.VII.1:4–2:4)

"Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by." (ACIM, W-158.4:1-5)

"In love was I created, and in love will I remain forever. What can frighten me, when I let all things be exactly as they are?" (ACIM, W-268.1:5-6)

"The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego’s rule and the healing of the mind." (ACIM, T-4.IV.10:2)

"The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego’s time is “borrowed” from your eternity. This is the Second Coming that was made for you as the First was created. The Second Coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful?" (ACIM, T-9.IV.9:1-5)

"Christ’s Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity." (ACIM, W-pII.9.1:1)

"The gap between reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world and what you dream in secret. They are one. The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both. Yet was it started by your secret dream, which you do not perceive although it caused the part you see and do not doubt is real. How could you doubt it while you lie asleep, and dream in secret that its cause is real?" (ACIM, T-27.VII.11:4-8)

“According to this insane plan, any perceived source of salvation is acceptable provided that it will not work.” (ACIM, W-71.3:2)

" 'Seek and ye shall find' does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize." (ACIM, T-4.V.5:2)

"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: 'Seek and do not find.' " (ACIM, T-12.IV.1:1-4)

"You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something." (ACIM, T-8.VIII.2:5-7)

"Denial of Self results in illusions, while correction of the error brings release from it." (ACIM, T-1.VII.1:6)

"Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict." (ACIM, T-3.VII.5:8)

"You cannot separate your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His Being with you." (ACIM, T-7.V.6:15)

"All attack is Self attack." (ACIM, T-10.II.5:1)

"Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in your own. It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know. Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this." (ACIM, W-139.8:1-5)

The quintessential false concept held by the ego is that we are separate from our Source and separated from each other. This may appear factual in the world of "things" – symbols of time and space – but separation cannot be the Truth, as God created us. Without our desire to believe in separation, which provides us with an individual identity – the ego would cease to seem to be (ACIM, M-14.2:12), along with everything that this fraudulent thought system has projected from the split mind: the entire material universe.

This Creation (the Christ) is a perfect extension of everything that God is. There is no place where God ends and the Christ Mind (His Son) begins. In Truth, we are not separate from our Creator or anyone or anything else. We never abandoned our Creator, but we persist in dreaming that our Creator abandoned us. We haven't been exiled, isolated, excommunicated, segregated, dissociated, fragmented, or divided except in a silly, forgivable nightmare from which we are encouraged to awaken by the Holy Spirit.

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality." (ACIM, T-10.I.2:1)

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct." (ACIM, T-1.VI.2:1)

"Before the separation the mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist." (ACIM, T-2.III.2:2)

"Perception did not exist until the separation introduced degrees, aspects and intervals." (ACIM, T-3.IV.1:5)

"Unlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose." (ACIM, T-14.III.18:3)

"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?" (ACIM, T-8.VIII.3:2-3)

"Wholeness heals because it is of the mind. All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." (ACIM, T-8.IX.3:1-2)

"Sickness and perfection are irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you are perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you have placed other gods before Him. God is not at war with the god of sickness you made, but you are." (ACIM, T-10.IV.1:3-6)

"The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. ⁷The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects." (ACIM, T-28.II.11:6-7)

"Sickness is a defense against the truth." (ACIM, W-136)

"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." (ACIM, T-14.II.2:1-3)

This is the Course quote in the website header for SFACIM: "The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity." (ACIM, T-14.II.6:4)

"Today we pass illusions, as we seek to reach to what is true in us, and feel its all-embracing tenderness, its Love which knows us perfect as itself, its sight which is the gift its Love bestows on us. We learn the way today. It is as sure as Love itself, to which it carries us. For its simplicity avoids the snares the foolish convolutions of the world’s apparent reasoning but serve to hide.

Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

(ACIM, W-189.6:1–7:5)

There are 12 instances of "simplicity" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 12 instances of "simply" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 154 instances of "simple" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

Sin is a false idea that I irretrievably, irreversibly shattered Perfect Oneness, and ego insists this ultimate crime (which is actually impossible from the eternal perspective of Truth) is uncorrectable. This mistaken notion implies that God’s Love for me and my love for God could be revoked by my actions, thoughts, or feelings – by my forgivable belief that I made a thought apart from the awareness of our eternal shared Being. See also guilt, fear, separation, substitution, specialness, and sickness.

The non-dual God of ACIM – unaware of our divided/dividing/divisive dreams as a loving parent doesn't know what their children are dreaming – contrasts sharply with the Biblical (projected ego) god that reacts to our dreams, enters into them, and gets upset when “we sin,” seemingly confirming that this world of separation is real, demanding punishment.

"Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love." (ACIM, T-1.IV.3:1)

“...you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken.” (ACIM, T-10.V.6:1)

"Punishment is always the great preserver of sin, treating it with respect and honoring its enormity." (ACIM, T-19.III.2:4)

"Sin is insanity." (ACIM, W-pII.4.1:1)

"Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting a 'just' attack." (ACIM, T-31.III.1:4-6)

(See also error.)

There are 674 instances of "sin" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 160 instances of "sinless" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready." (ACIM, T-11.V.1:3)

There is 1 instance of "skip" in ACIM.

There are 222 instances of "step" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"... the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up.” (ACIM, T-2.I.3:6) …

"The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps." (ACIM, T-2.VI.9:5-6)

"Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking." (ACIM, T-5.II.10:4)

"Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining." (ACIM, T-8.IX.3:6)

"The special relationship is your determination to keep your hold on unreality, and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it." (ACIM, T-18.II.5:19-20)

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping." (ACIM, W-167.9:1)

"When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. God is not partial. All His children have His total Love, and all His gifts are freely given to everyone alike." (ACIM, T-1.V.3:1-3)

"... awe is inappropriate in connection with the Sons of God, because you should not experience awe in the presence of your equals." (ACIM, T-1.VII.5:2)

"Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his spirit into the Hands of his Father." (ACIM, T-3.II.5:1)

"God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind it does not see whom it attacks. Yet it always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is you." (ACIM, T-11.III.1:6-8)

"God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself." (ACIM, W-132.12:3)

See also Christ and decision-maker.

There are 434 instances of "Son of God" in ACIM.

By contrast, the source of our false, divided self is the ego, the "god" of duality, conflict, chaos, confusion, and mindlessness. Being completely made up, the ego's source is non-existent, and therefore, everything projected or generated from that psychotic source is a guilty hallucination.

Since the Holy Spirit represents the Atonement principle that the separation never happened, it reminds us that our true Identity has never left its Source in Mind. Since ego denies the Atonement and insists that it has pulled off the impossible crime of separation, when we believe its propaganda, we experience a sense of profound loneliness, agony and isolation resulting from the erroneous idea that we could leave our true Source and each other; the source of the ego is the thought of death or oblivion.

"Ideas leave not their source." (ACIM, W-132.5:3)

"When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for they must stand for something other than themselves. Their meaning cannot lie in them, but must be sought in what they represent. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the idea which they reflect. Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not." (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.11:1-5)

"Listen,—perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you.

 

The notes are nothing. Yet you have kept them with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you remembered how dear it was to you. You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then. And yet you know that nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as this. Listen, and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since."

(ACIM, T-21.I.6:1–7:5)

"What is Heaven but a song of gratitude and love and praise by everything created to the Source of its creation? The holiest of altars is set where once sin was believed to be." (ACIM, T-26.IV.3:5-6)

" ... Christ ... looks past time, and sees eternity as represented there. He hears the sounds the senseless, busy world engenders, yet He hears them faintly. For beyond them all He hears the song of Heaven, and the Voice for God more clear, more meaningful, more near." (ACIM, W-164.1:3-6)

"While you wait in sorrow Heaven’s melody is incomplete, because your song is part of the eternal harmony of love." (ACIM, S-3.IV.8:3)

"The specialness of God’s Sons does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special." (ACIM, T-1.V.3:5-6)

"You were at peace until you asked for special favor." (ACIM, T-13.III.10:2)

"Sin is but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would preserve all errors and make them sins." (ACIM, T-22.III.4:5-6)

"Such is the Holy Spirit’s kind perception of specialness; His use of what you made, to heal instead of harm. 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." (ACIM, T-25.VI.4:1-3)

"Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The content is the same. The form is suited to your special needs, and to the special time and place in which you think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place and time, and all that you believe must limit you." (ACIM, T-25.VII.7:1-3)

"Without your special function has this world no meaning for you." (ACIM, T-26.I.5:2)

"Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies in looking at it." (ACIM, T-16.IV.1:1)

"For enemies do not give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to share the things they value. ⁷And what your enemies would keep from you must be worth having, because they keep it hidden from your sight." (ACIM, T-23.II.9:6-7)

"Special" love is our unconscious, unfounded guilt–for an impossible crime–projected onto things, people, events: anything. Did you notice that this wording is the same as the special hate glossary entry? That’s because they are the same; flip sides of the same fraudulent coin of ego's realm!

Special love objects are idols we’ve convinced ourselves will make us happy; they merely seem to substitute for God’s Love, but never satisfy. We are impressed when we engage in the "set-up" of in-fat-uation of special love only so that we can be depressed and have a scapegoat for the "up-set" of in-thin-uation of special hate later.

The same motivation to make separation seem real underlies all special hate and special love relationships; it is the same expensive ego coin of "damned if you do" and "damned if you don't" applied to our attachments and aversions which cover every category of our involvements in this world.

Fortunately, the Course doesn't ask us to give up (or sacrifice) any special love (or hate) relationships; it merely asks us to allow forgiveness to transform them so that we no longer (either overtly or covertly) demand or manipulate anyone or anything in the world because we realize the world is an effect of our choice of teacher, and not a cause at all.

"If you would love unlike to God, Who knows no special love, how can you understand it?³To believe that special relationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is salvation." (ACIM, T-15.V.3:2-3)

"Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and always obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son." (ACIM, T-15.VII.1:1)

"The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt." (ACIM, T-16.IV.3:1)

"The special love relationship is the ego’s chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven." (ACIM, T-16.V.2:3)

There are 15 instances of "special love" in ACIM.

The fifth "law" of the Laws of Chaos corresponds to special love.

“The special love relationship is the ego’s chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven.” (ACIM, T-16.V.2:3).

"Because of guilt, all special relationships have elements of fear in them. This is why they shift and change so frequently. They are not based on changeless love alone. And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In His function as Interpreter of what you made, the Holy Spirit uses special relationships, which you have chosen to support the ego, as learning experiences that point to truth. Under His teaching, every relationship becomes a lesson in love." (ACIM, T-15.V.4:1-6)

"The ego wishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become." (ACIM, T-15.VII.4:3-6)

"If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature, nor of the guilt it must entail, nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole religion of separation, and of the total context in which it is thought to occur." (ACIM, T-16.V.10:1-3)

"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, aimed at raising the form to take the place of God at the expense of content. There is no meaning in the form, and there will never be. The special relationship must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? If it were possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You cannot change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of God have any influence at all upon it." (ACIM, T-16.V.12:1-11)

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever.

Your reality is only spirit.

Therefore you are in a state of grace forever."

(ACIM, T-1.III.5:4-6)

"... spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction." (ACIM, T-2.V.1:8)

Spirit is the (unalterable) Thought of God which He created like Himself.The unified spirit is God’s one Son, or Christ." (ACIM, C-1.1:3-4)

"Spirit is the part (of the split mind) that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part as well." (ACIM, C-1.3:1)

Upon the impossible occurrence of “leaving” Heaven, our Mind/Self/Christ seemed to be part of duality and no longer One with the Creator. This seemingly split mind has both the ego and the Holy Spirit thought systems, each completely consistent, yet diametrically opposite. Holy Spirit–God’s gift to us to make sure we would make it Home–and ego are apparently at odds with each other, yet the Holy Spirit never fights what it knows to be unreal.

The ego and the Holy Spirit both perceive; the ego perceives falsely by misinterpreting everything as a cruel prison denying and projecting its own guilty complicity, while the Holy Spirit perceives truly by translating everything into a forgiveness classroom gently correcting every ego error, restoring the inevitable intrinsic innocence of our eternal being.

"Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator. Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego." (ACIM, T-3.IV.2:1-2)

"Your mind is one with God’s. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father." (ACIM, T-4.IV.2:7-9)

"The separation is merely another term for a split mind. The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace." (ACIM, T-5.III.9:3-4)

"Yet projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem 'better' than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack." (ACIM, T-6.II.3:1-5)

"If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son are the world’s reality, the real world must be in his mind. His insane thoughts, too, must be in his mind, but an internal conflict of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. A split mind is endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses completely opposed thoughts within itself is intolerable. Therefore the mind projects the split, not the reality. Everything you perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation." (ACIM, T-12.III.7:1-5)

A symbol of guiding light within our mind. Ancient mariners navigated by the stars because their location in the heavens did not seem to change. They were not a part of the Earth and could always be counted on to be there unless the weather was bad. But this did not mean they had vanished. The stars themselves were still there, just like the Holy Spirit.

An earthly equivalent metaphor is the lighthouse, which steadfastly shines to safely guide lost sailors to safe harbor. Our Inner Kindness Teacher (the Holy Spirit) is the "star to every wand'ring bark" in our mind. (See also Sonnet 166 by William Shakespeare at the end of the glossary entry for truth. The Lighthouse was also the name of a newsletter published by the Foundation for A Course In Miracles, now in book form.)

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky." (ACIM, T-30.III.8:4)

"It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there." (ACIM, T-30.III.9:4-5)

"The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself." (ACIM, T-31.VI.7:4)

"The ego literally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible. The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it. That is why the concept of 'getting' arose in the ego’s thought system. Appetites are 'getting' mechanisms, representing the ego’s need to confirm itself." (ACIM, T-4.II.7:1-5)

"The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack. Unaware that the belief cannot be established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat." (ACIM, T-11.V.13:4-6)

"Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute is much too poor a gift to satisfy you." (ACIM, T-15.III.2:2-3)

"This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. ⁴It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. ⁵There are no satisfactions in the world." (ACIM, W-133.2:3-5)

"How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal." (ACIM, T-5.IV.8:1-6)

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer." (ACIM, T-5.V.5:1)

"God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you. That is why He has given you the means for undoing it." (ACIM, T-8.III.7:5-7)

"It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt." (ACIM, T-15.VI.1:1)

"The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this perception. If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of any kind you see your own concealed desire to kill." (ACIM, T-31.V.15:7-10)

ACIM has Platonic roots and reminds us that symbols merely stand for what they represent, but should never be confused with their source or origin. By (ego) default, the material world and all bodies in it are symbols of the idea of separation, yet can be used by the Holy Spirit to undo the belief in separation by the process of forgiveness.

There are no symbols in Heaven; no subjects or objects. To return to that peaceful state of unconditional Union, eternal ecstasy, and celestial certainty where no symbols (or substitutes) are needed, we must use the Holy Spirit's symbols of shared interest to undo the ego's use of symbols of separate interests.

"I have made every effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but it is always possible to twist symbols around if you wish." (ACIM, T-3.I.3:11)

"The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state your mind knows God, for God is not symbolic; He is Fact." (ACIM, T-3.I.8:1-2)

"Images are symbolic and stand for something else. The idea of 'changing your image' recognizes the power of perception, but also implies that there is nothing stable to know." (ACIM, T-3.V.4:7-8)

"The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the spirit. His ability to deal with symbols enables Him to work with the ego’s beliefs in its own language. His ability to look beyond symbols into eternity enables Him to understand the laws of God, for which He speaks. He can therefore perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes, not by destruction but by understanding." (ACIM, T-5.III.7:1-4)

"Perception derives meaning from relationships. Those you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. The separation is merely another term for a split mind. The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. You may let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions." (ACIM, T-5.III.9:1-6)

"... truth is beyond semblance of any kind." (ACIM, T-14.XI.1:8)

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s." (ACIM, M-1.1:1-2)

"There is a course for every teacher of God. The form of the course varies greatly. So do the particular teaching aids involved. But the content of the course never changes. Its central theme is always, 'God’s Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation.' " (ACIM, M-1.3:1-5)

"There is no one from whom a teacher of God cannot learn, so there is no one whom he cannot teach." (ACIM, M-3.1:3)

"The simple presence of a teacher of God is a reminder." (ACIM, M-5.III.2:2)

"No teacher of God should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received." (ACIM, M-6.2:7)

"It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot." (ACIM, M-10.2:1)

Because we're always teaching and learning 24/7/365, there isn't anything special about being a teacher or a learner as we are always both all the time; the only important difference is the content: whether we are teaching (and therefore learning) Holy Spirit's curriculum of true forgiveness ... or the ego's misleading propaganda of specialness, substitution and separation.

The teacher we choose to follow at any moment teaches the collective mind of the Sonship that our chosen teacher is real, whether it is real in Truth or not. By following the ego, we teach that the ego is truth, although there is no real sense of certainty to it. By choosing the Holy Spirit, we recognize that it is the truth because of the certainty we feel.

"I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal."

(ACIM, T-2.V-A.18:2-6)

"Your worth is not established by teaching or learning. Your worth is established by God. ³As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority." (ACIM, T-4.I.7:1-3)

"As you teach so shall you learn." (ACIM, T-6.I.6:1)

"Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you." (ACIM, T-6.III.3:9)

"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." (ACIM, M-in.2:5)

"This is the world of opposites. And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you. Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom. Let it then be clear to you exactly what forgiveness means to you, and learn what it should be to set you free." (ACIM, S-2.I.10:1-4)

“Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else’s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else?” (ACIM, T-26.X.4:1-3)

"When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace. This you know well. When they occur leave not your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle instead of murder." (ACIM, T-23.IV.6:1-5)

"The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved." (ACIM, W-79.4:1)

"Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits of your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one." (ACIM, W-130.10:1-3)

"When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception. Ask instead, “Would I accuse myself of doing this?' ” (ACIM, W-134.9:2-3) "Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter. Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that needs forgiveness when Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created and which You love. Amen." (ACIM, T-16.VII.12:1-7) ... Dr. William Thetford describes how Helen and he received what he called the Course’s version of the “Lord’s Prayer”. He recites the excerpt of the Course’s version of “Lord’s Prayer” from memory in this historic film clip.

"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." (ACIM, T-11.VI.8:1-2)

"Offer him thorns and you are crucified. Offer him lilies and it is yourself you free." (ACIM, T-20.II.3:8-9)

"A major source of the ego’s off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the Thoughts of God. Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego, because they clearly point to the nonexistence of the ego itself. The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them. It cannot, however, make them cease to be. It therefore tries to conceal not only “unacceptable” body impulses, but also the Thoughts of God, because both are threatening to it." (ACIM, T-4.V.2:1-5)

"Only the Thoughts of God are true." (ACIM, T-17.III.9:7)

"We know that an idea leaves not its source. And death is the result of the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is the result of the Thought of God." (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.2:14-15)

"The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time." (ACIM, W-136.13:3)

"Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who really understands its laws, and Who will guarantee that they remain unviolated and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply what He has taught you to yourself, and He will do the rest. And it is thus the power of your learning will be proved to you by all the many different witnesses it finds. Your brother first among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more. Each one may seem to have a problem that is different from the rest. ⁶Yet they are solved together. And their common answer shows the questions could not have been separate." (ACIM, T-27.V.10:1-7)

"A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware." (ACIM, T-1.I.45:1-2)

There are 199 instances of "many" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 2 instances of "multitude" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 5 instances of "hundred" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 36 instances of "thousands" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 2 instances of "millions" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning." (ACIM, T-1.I.15:1-4)

"In time we exist for and with each other. ⁷In timelessness we coexist with God." (ACIM, T-2.V-A.17:6-7)

"I have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another.So it is with the ego and the Holy Spirit; with time and eternity.Eternity is an idea of God, so the Holy Spirit understands it perfectly.Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which is the ego’s domain, accepts it without question.The only aspect of time that is eternal is now." (ACIM, T-5.III.6:1-5)

"Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you are in time. Yet your election is both free and alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever." (ACIM, T-5.VI.1:3-7)

"The tiny tick of time in which the first mistake was made, and all of them within that one mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and all of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave answer to is answered and is gone." (ACIM, T-26.V.3:5-7)

"Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by." (ACIM, W-158.4:1-5)

"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects." (ACIM, T-28.I.1:1-9)

"The word “inevitable” is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit." (ACIM, T-4.I.9:10)

"The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad idea of corruption that can be corrected. For God has answered this insane idea with His Own; an Answer which left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of every mind which heard His Answer and accepted It." (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.5:2-7)

"Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself and done to him. 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. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time." (ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:1-5)

“The ‘big bang’ is when the mind chooses the ego.” - Ken Wapnick, The Experience of A Course In Miracles, ~5:49:30

There are 2 instances of "tiny, mad idea" in ACIM.

There is 1 instance of "joke" in ACIM.

(See also laughter.)

"The Holy Spirit’s vision is no idle gift, no plaything to be tossed about a while and laid aside. Listen and hear this carefully, nor think it but a dream, a careless thought to play with, or a toy you would pick up from time to time and then put by. For if you do, so will it be to you." (ACIM, T-20.II.6:5-7)

"The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children’s toys." (ACIM, T-30.IV.2:1)

"We are not concerned with intellectual feats nor logical toys. We are dealing only in the very obvious, which has been overlooked in the clouds of complexity in which you think you think." (ACIM, W-39.1:3-4)

"The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will." (ACIM, T-3.II.5:4-5).

"Only the Levels of the Trinity are capable of unity. The levels created by the separation cannot but conflict. This is because they are meaningless to each other." (ACIM, T-3.IV.1:7-9)

"Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly. More simply, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does." (ACIM, T-3.II.2:5-6)

"Misperceptions produce fear and true perceptions foster love, but neither brings certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is not knowledge. True perception is the basis for knowledge, but knowing is the affirmation of truth and beyond all perceptions." (ACIM, T-3.III.1:8-10)

"If true perception has been achieved in connection with any person, situation or event, total transfer to everyone and everything is certain. On the other hand, one exception held apart from true perception makes its accomplishments anywhere impossible." (ACIM, W-in.5:2-3)

"Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet.The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception.It will not endure.But for the time it lasts it comes to heal.For true perception is a remedy with many names.Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one.They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves.True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist.And it is this that true perception sees." (ACIM, C-4.3:1-9)

Trusting the Holy Spirit reminds us that God’s Love is real and will not abandon us. Trust provides a feeling of support that arises from even momentary recognition of the Truth in our mind, motivates us to deepen our trust in what never changes. The ego cannot trust anyone, anything, or itself because it is based on lies. Deep down, the ego feels that it deserves retaliation for the self it thinks it stole from God. Since the ego can't forgive itself (for a crime that it could only commit in dreams), it will ALWAYS feel that it deserves punishment and therefore will never be able to trust. Trusting the Holy Spirit is the opposite of fearful thrashing with ego in a mad, fugitive attempt to escape from made-up guilt.

ACIM is not a “weekend workshop” but a process that requires lifelong study and practice to develop the complete and unambiguous trust that leads to unassailable peace.

The motto of ego's currency is “In dust we trust.”

"The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real means are already provided, and do not involve any effort at all on their part." (ACIM, T-2.III.5:1-3)

"You have very little trust in me [Holy Spirit or Jesus] as yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of to your ego for guidance. The results will convince you increasingly that this choice is the only sane one you can make. No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing." (ACIM, T-4.VI.3:1-3)

"The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond question." (ACIM, T-7.X.6:1-2)

"Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them you would not need the holy instant." (ACIM, T-18.IV.2:1-6)

"If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious and fearful." (ACIM, W-47.1:1)

Beyond words or definition, Truth is unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable (ACIM, W-190.6:5) – the Unalterable and the Eternal. It has no opposite aspect that can change or diminish it. Since it can never change, it is always available regardless of our state of mind. The corrective thought system of the Holy Spirit reflects what is true. It is always available to guide us through sameness back to Oneness until that correction is no longer needed.

Illusion has opposites and is relative; hot/cold, free/bound, euphoric/sad, etc. Illusion (the ego’s thought system based on separation) is ever-changing and can never find an absolute perspective upon which to rest. As long as we choose ego, our mind will not find peace. See also illusion.

"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth." (ACIM, T-1.I.20:1)

"Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable." (ACIM, T-1.III.5:1-2)

"A pure mind knows the truth and this is its strength. It does not confuse destruction with innocence because it associates innocence with strength, not with weakness." (ACIM, T-3.I.5:5-6)

"Truth cannot deal with errors that you want." (ACIM, T-3.IV.7:2)

"Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized." (ACIM, T-7.IV.1:1)

"Truth is God’s Will." (ACIM, T-7.X.2:5)

"The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. I 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." (ACIM, T-8.VI.9:6-11)

"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." (ACIM, T-14.II.2:1-3)

"The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth.Truth is.It can neither be lost nor sought nor found.It is there, wherever you are, being within you.Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to you.If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because you hid it and surrounded it with fear." (ACIM, T-14.VII.2:1-6)

"There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you. Such is the truth." (ACIM, T-14.VIII.4:1-5)

“I am in need of nothing but the truth." (ACIM, W-251) … the WHOLE Truth, and nothing but the TRUTH!

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

"There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the universe, or from God Who is the universe?" (ACIM, T-11.I.2:3-4)

"Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it [Truth] and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality." (ACIM, T-11.V.15:2-4)

Vengeance is an insane (masochistic disguised as sadistic) ego strategy intended to project guilt onto something or someone "outside" the mind by "getting even" for (impossible in Truth) crimes committed against a made-up self, in complete ignorance of the fact that attack assumes that it is possible to inflict pain or damage on another without imposing the same penalty on one's self. This insanity propagates guilt while claiming to serve justice without recognizing how twisted this assumption must be; it promotes ceaseless war in defiance of the eternal logic of peace.

When we project (our unconscious, unfounded guilt), we fear those projections will seek vengeance on us, retaliating back at us what we believe we first did to them; frequently conveniently forgetting we made the first attack... and as long as we believe in separation, make continuous attacks on the Universe! Even if the other person didn't attack first on the level of form, we all believe on some deep level that we attacked Perfect Oneness, even though that is impossible. Recognition of this impossibility (via forgiveness and trusting the Holy Spirit) is our only hope. We only dreamt we abandoned (attacked) God, but we need not fear our Creator (who knows nothing of our savage dreams), nor need we fear reprisal from everyone and everything in the world once we stop projecting guilt onto our dream.

"Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego’s drive for vengeance on the past. It is completely savage and completely insane. For the ego remembers everything you have done that has offended it, and seeks retribution of you. The fantasies it brings to its chosen relationships in which to act out its hate are fantasies of your destruction. For the ego holds the past against you, and in your escape from the past it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes you so justly merit. Yet without your alliance in your own destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past." (ACIM, T-16.VII.3:1-6)

"It is these shadow figures that would make the ego holy in your sight, and teach you what you do to keep it safe is really love. The shadow figures always speak for vengeance, and all relationships into which they enter are totally insane. Without exception, these relationships have as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the other, and of yourself. This is why you see in both what is not there, and make of both the slaves of vengeance. And why whatever reminds you of your past grievances attracts you, and seems to go by the name of love, no matter how distorted the associations by which you arrive at the connection may be. And finally, why all such relationships become attempts at union through the body, for only bodies can be seen as means for vengeance. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident. Your own experience has taught you this. But what you may not realize are all the reasons that go to make the relationship unholy. For unholiness seeks to reinforce itself, as holiness does, by gathering to itself what it perceives as like itself." (ACIM, T-17.III.2:1-10)

"This is the host of God that you have made. And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode that harbors hate, and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence and death. This thing you made to serve your guilt stands between you and other minds. The minds are joined, but you do not identify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate prison, removed and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You hate this prison you have made, and would destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leaving it unharmed, without your guilt upon it." (ACIM, T-18.VI.7:1-7)

"Vengeance is alien to God’s Mind because He knows of justice. To be just is to be fair, and not be vengeful. Fairness and vengeance are impossible, for each one contradicts the other and denies that it is real. It is impossible for you to share the Holy Spirit’s justice with a mind that can conceive of specialness at all." (ACIM, T-25.VIII.5:5-8)

"If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love." (ACIM, W-190.3:3-5)

"Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little to protect your right mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then protect this belief at the cost of truth?" (ACIM, T-4.III.10:3-4)

"The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness, and this is not the way a balanced mind holds together. The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from your awareness, and raises control rather than sanity to predominance. The ego has every reason to do this, according to the thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego, and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation." (ACIM, T-4.V.1:3-6)

"Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom" (ACIM, T-6.V-C)

"Because God’s equal Sons have everything, they cannot compete. Yet if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it." (ACIM, T-7.III.3:3-5)

"From Vigilance to Peace" (ACIM, T-7.VI)

"The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain." (ACIM, T-9.III.1:1)

"Be vigilant. Do not forget today." (ACIM, W-95.14:5-6)

Seeing as the Holy Spirit sees. This does not have anything to do with the body’s eyes. It has to do with the understanding given to the Mind by resting in the Holy Spirit’s Presence…our Real Self.

"Spiritual vision literally cannot see error, and merely looks for Atonement. All solutions the physical eye seeks dissolve. Spiritual vision looks within and recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled and needs to be repaired and protected. Perfectly aware of the right defense it passes over all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the strength of its vision, it brings the mind into its service. This re-establishes the power of the mind and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay, realizing that it only adds unnecessary pain. As a result, the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort." (ACIM, T-2.III.4:1-7)

"The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal." (ACIM, T-13.VII.2:1-5)

"You have the vision now to look past all illusions. It has been given you to see no thorns, no strangers and no obstacles to peace." (ACIM, T-20.II.7:1-2)

There are 310 instances of "vision" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 924 instances of "look" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 13 instances of "notice" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 12 instances of "observe" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 1986 instances of "see" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

There are 93 instances of "watch" (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

"If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior. Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save. Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ." (ACIM, T-4.IV.1:1-5)

"The Voice for God is always quiet, because It speaks of peace." (ACIM, T-5.II.7:7)

"You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for God beside it. They speak a different language and they fall on different ears." (ACIM, T-24.II.5:1-2)

"Peace is stronger than war because it heals. War is division, not increase." (ACIM, T-5.II.7:8-9)

"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." (ACIM, T-8.I.3:1-2)

"In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he demanded everything and found nothing." (ACIM, T-13.III.11:1-2)

Initially we are encouraged to practice a little willingness to consider that perhaps there is a better use of our mind than blindly and slavishly cowing to ego's cruel propaganda of sin, guilt and fear. ... Perhaps ... there truly is a sane, real, viable alternative and we just need to give it a try! As we learn that this Voice for sanity guides us out of the self-inflicted pain and self-convicted prison of projected guilt and back to our true peaceful identity, we become more able, convinced, eager, and inspired to follow the Holy Spirit's gentle correction for the tiny mad idea of separation.

Eventually, we realize that the only way out of dualistic insanity is to completely abandon the crazy ego thought system. Our willingness fuels our motivation, which results in increasing mental tranquility, and we reverse the ego's vicious cycle – we ascend from the arrogant, gloomy littleness of specialness to the joyous, certain magnitude of total inclusion: our eternal Home in Spirit.

"Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them you would not need the holy instant." (ACIM, T-18.IV.2:1-6)

"Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher." (ACIM, T-11.VIII.3:7-8)

"Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind.That is its function.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." (ACIM, T-18.V.2:1-5)

"We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. It is the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything; the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to resurrection." (ACIM, T-21.II.1:1-2)

"To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. There is no substitute for peace. What God creates has no alternative." (ACIM, T-24.in.2:1-8)

"The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. The goal is clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. The speed by which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step. Each one will help a little, every time it is attempted. And together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. They are not new to you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. So now we need to practice them awhile, until they are the rules by which you live. We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready for whatever need." (ACIM, T-30.in.1:1-8)

There is a way in which escape is possible. It can be learned and taught, but it requires patience and abundant willingness." (ACIM, M-17.8:3-4)

"To think you can oppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own “will” as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift that you both have and are. When you do not use it, you forget that you have it." (ACIM, T-7.IV.6:1-7)

"You are the Will of God.Do not accept anything else as your will, or you are denying what you are.Deny this and you will attack, believing you have been attacked.But see the Love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere." (ACIM, T-7.VII.10:1-4)

"Creation is the Will of God." (ACIM, T-8.VI.6:8)

"The Will of God can fail in nothing." (ACIM, T-13.XI.6:9)

"The Holy Spirit’s purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. And that little is a limit you would place upon the whole." (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.3:1-4)

"... what you seek for is a source of joy as you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so. Wishing makes real, as surely as does will create. The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love extend itself. Except that one deludes; the other heals." (ACIM, T-24.V.1:5-10)

"Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true perception instead of defending themselves against it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement they are without the wish to attack, and therefore they see truly." (ACIM, T-3.II.5:8-9)

"The ego is a wrong-minded attempt to perceive yourself as you wish to be, rather than as you are." (ACIM, T-3.IV.2:3)

"The ego wishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become." (ACIM, T-15.VII.4:3-6)

"Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes.It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal.It is the wish to make it that is incredible." (ACIM, T-18.II.8:1-3)

"Your question should not be, 'How can I see my brother without the body?' Ask only, 'Do I really wish to see him sinless?' " (ACIM, T-20.VII.9:1-2)

"'Seek but do not find' remains this world’s stern decree, and no one who pursues the world’s goals can do otherwise." (ACIM, M-13.5:8)

When "Word" is capitalized in ACIM, it is not a literal combination of letters in a particular alphabet, but a symbol of some aspect of the Holy Spirit’s correction: that nothing happened to disturb or dissect the eternal peace of Perfect Oneness. Note that the Course "meets us" where we believe ourselves to be and uses language poetically to comfort and reassure us; often the phrase "God's Word" appears when "Holy Spirit's Word" would be technically more correct, since God's pure non-dual nature does not acknowledge any aspect of duality.

"Hear Him today, and listen to the Word which lifts the veil that lies upon the earth, and wakes all those who sleep and cannot see. God calls to them through you. He needs your voice to speak to them, for who could reach God’s Son except his Father, calling through your Self? Hear Him today, and offer Him your voice to speak to all the multitude who wait to hear the Word that He will speak today." (ACIM, W-106.5:1-4)

<"He has not waited until you return your mind to Him to give His Word to you." (ACIM, W-125.5:1)

<"The Bible says, 'The Word (or thought) was made flesh.' Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical." (ACIM, T-8.VII.7:1-4)

<"My word, which is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass away because life is eternal. You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is." (ACIM, T-1.III.2:2-4)

" 'I think I see a fearful world, a dangerous world, a hostile world, a sad world, a wicked world, a crazy world,' " (ACIM, W-12.3:2) ... " 'But I am upset because I see a meaningless world.' What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But 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. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His." (ACIM, W-12.4:4–5:8)

"I am as God created me. Let us declare this truth as often as we can.This is the Word of God that sets you free." (ACIM, W-110.11:4-6)

"What is the Word of God? 'My Son is pure and holy as Myself.' And thus did God become the Father of the Son He loves, for thus was he created. This the Word His Son did not create with Him, because in this His Son was born. Let us accept His Fatherhood, and all is given us." (ACIM, W-276.1:1-5)

“The world is too much with us.” - William Wordsworth

"The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief." (ACIM, T-1.VI.4:1)

"Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world. Only in this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits." (ACIM, T-3.VII.6:9-11)

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (ACIM, T-13.in.2:2)

"Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept. Rather it is a distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have preferred." (ACIM, T-18.II.1:1-4)

"From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind that made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true." (ACIM, T-18.IX.3:1-2)

"... seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." (ACIM, T-21.in.1:7)

"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. Ideas leave not their source. This central theme ... must be borne in mind if you would understand... It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.

But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. 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."

(ACIM, W-132.5:1–7:1)

"This world you seem to live in is not home to you." (ACIM, W-182.1:1)

"Beyond this world there is a world I want." (ACIM, W-129)

"How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality, and close upon the truth. This is awareness that you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself." (ACIM, W-151.3:1-7)

"Never confuse right- and wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of error with anything except a desire to heal is an expression of this confusion." (ACIM, T-2.V-A.13:1-2)

"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." (ACIM, C-1.6:1-3)

While the word "x-ray" isn't anywhere in ACIM, it does seem that Jesus of the Course or Holy Spirit has a sort of x-ray vision that sees into the ego thought system to observe that the sin, guilt, and fear it made up doesn't exist. In fact, when Holy Spirit looks at the entire insane thought system, it is completely empty!

As Ken Wapnick points out, Jesus isn't hiding anything from us, so that means the onus is on us to stop hiding our "secret sins and hidden hates" (ACIM, T-31.VIII.9:2) from Him.

"Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for. Be very honest with yourself in this, for we must hide nothing from each other." (ACIM, T-4.III.8:1-2)

Holy Spirit's "x-ray" vision sees clearly into ego's nothingness, while ego's blindness to Truth makes the correction seem impossible since the imaginary wall of separation it has fabricated between everyone and everything appears opaque and hopelessly impenetrable. Yet to Holy Spirit, the body and the world are simply the outer defense and equally illusory as the thought system that made them to avoid deeper inquiry.

Because the body is the "poster child" of the ego, it becomes the first line of defense against any idea that might threaten its individual separate existence:

"The body will remain guilt’s messenger, and will act as it directs as long as you believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the illusion that seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego’s thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light behind it. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light.