How can this world be an illusion?

There are two schools of thought which fight against the recognition of the illusion, or the Maya as it is called in Hinduism. The first most common complaint is that shit happens and we feel it. How can it be an illusion? 

The second far less common but perhaps even stronger complaint is that God is everywhere, therefore nowhere can be apart from God, therefore nowhere can be untrue--so none of this can be illusion.

But consider that God is eternal and infinite. If we accept that, and if we accept that we are of God, expressions of the Oneness that we call God, then how can we ever die? How can anything ever die?

It can't. Not if we know we are of God. So then, what is happening all around us? How is the universe expanding and slowly dying? How can a person die, or a sun, or a galaxy? 

They couldn't, of course, if they were real. So then . . . they must not be real. The illusion of death is all part of our projection of reality. 

But what's the point of knowing that?

The point is that knowing the world is an illusion allows us to forgive and to accept everything we seem to experience in it. We no longer fight, and by not fighting, we slowly wear down duality toward oneness. By not fighting, we no longer create good and evil and so we return to eden, to paradise, to the state before man tasted the forbidden fruit and "knew of good and evil."

Nothing real can be threatened

Nothing unreal exists.

This (from A Course in Miracles) just means that what we are, God, can not be anything but God. So death, suffering, disease, lack, worry, competition, decay . . . life. None of these are real. What is real is our nature as Spirit. When we understand that we can be at peace.

There is a way that all things can seem illusory and yet be wonderful at the same time. You think this world is a dream--and you are correct--but that does not mean the world is 100% error. It is your perception of the world as all there is which causes it to become 100% error. 

The first foot set on the path toward atonement leads you into the grace of the Holy Spirit. There His gentle guidance accelerates your step, and His love transmogrifies the dream. When you see the world as wondrous, joyful, full of love and light, then you are seeing the corrected version of the world. In the corrected version, all things are possible, because you know it is only a construct, and you know it is an amicable construct. The Holy Spirit allows your way in the world to be soft. Be easy, life is not meant to be so serious.