31 Aug 2013 Comments Off on No Projection, No Perception
No Projection, No Perception
Jesus told Helen and Bill, while they were scribing A Course in Miracles, that they needed to let themselves know how much they hated each other in order to find the Love beyond that hatred.* Finding the Love within us is an undoing project. Undoing is accomplished by looking within with the Holy Spirit.
When we dare to look within ourselves, we discover everything we’ve been covering up and that can be painful, mortifying, and even intolerable. Yet, somehow, we must look, because if we don’t, we are doomed to unconsciously choosing the ego as our teacher for a very, very, very long time.
Many feelings will arise, and they must be felt; not to indulge them, but to observe and release them. When you discover that feelings move through you, are impermanent and impersonal, you will also discover that feelings are not facts. The only fact is that God is formless Love, and this formless Love is the real You.
“Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. Again and again have you attacked your brother, because you saw in him a shadow figure in your private world. And thus it is you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others you are literally attacking what is not there.” (T-13.V.3:5-8)
Seeing shadow figures only happens in the ego’s dream. God’s Mind is Light and there are no shadows Here. The ego casts shadows when it tries to cloak its true identity in darkness. First, we lash out at God–that is the initial ego attack. Then, the ego pulls a fast one and shouts that it was God who struck first! This is the beginning of how the human personality works.
We lash out at our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our children, our pets, and the people around us. Depending on your personality, you lash out overtly, covertly, or some combination of both. You may find it acceptable to shout, curse, and weep when you’re alone at home, in the privacy of your car, or some other safe place. You may prefer suppression and the silent treatment. Either way, you are trapped within the personality. In the Course, Jesus explains that there are only two emotions, love or fear. Extension is how God’s Mind works–joining us forever in creating Love. Projection is the splitting mechanism that distorts extension and leads to perception and fear.
“Behold the great projection, but look on it with the decision that it must be healed, and not with fear. Nothing you made has any power over you unless you still would be apart from your Creator, and with a will opposed to His.” (T-22.II.10:1-2)
Find out what you are withholding. Don’t act out your unconscious feelings by leaking or exploding them onto others, or repressing them and imploding within yourself. Instead, admit to yourself with God** as your witness what you are really thinking and feeling! This is the undoing process. This clarifies the statement, “Projection makes perception.” This is how you bust the ego and remove your self-imposed handcuffs.
Noticing the perceiving process leads you back to the perceiver. This perceiver is the choosing point in the Mind, before it chose the ego and its dream of separation. This perceiver can choose again, and with the Holy Spirit’s guidance it does choose again. The Holy Spirit replaces ego perception with true perception–the reflection of God’s Love to help you awaken to your true Identity while you believe you are still a body in the world.
The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice to stop projecting. The choice to stop projecting removes the obstacles to the awareness of Love’s presence. Rest assured that “Ideas leave not their source, and their effects [bodies] but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected out, and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source.” (T-26.VII.4:7-9) It is impossible for the unified Oneness of God’s Mind to separate from Itself.
“Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with him, and not apart. … Although [forgiveness] falls far short of giving you your full inheritance, it does remove the obstacles that you have placed between the Heaven where you are, and recognition of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. Yet facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known before they were denied.” (T-26.VII.9:1-2; 5-7)
* Ken Wapnick mentions this on one (or more) of his audio recordings–sorry, but I don’t remember which one.
** Jesus, Holy Spirit, God, Buddha–use any Name you like. Just make sure to look with Spirit and not with the ego. You will know the difference because there will be non-judgment, neutrality, perhaps relief, a healthy sense of detachment and the freedom that comes with it.
If you enjoyed this piece, watch Projection Makes Perception for further insight into this ACIM principle.
Copyright © 2013 Amy Torres. All rights reserved worldwide.
It was so liberating, empowering, and relaxing to choose to appreciate in any given moment that “this is the best moment of my life.” For the obvious moments, like watching a sunset, the beauty of the moment was enhanced. For the less obvious moments, like sickness of a loved one, a quiet strength and unexpected calm emerged in me, transforming the atmosphere with shining, unspoken, Love.
Q: I think I’m having a little crisis. How does God know what is best for us if he doesn’t even know we are here? How can I have trust/faith with this notion? Another ACIM teacher told me “But the Holy Spirit knows you are here.” What do you think, Amy?
A: It is true that A Course in Miracles explains that God doesn’t know we’re here. Many ACIM students find this scary and even devastating. It begins to make sense, and actually feel comforting and liberating, when we realize that God doesn’t know we’re “here” because we’re not “here” — we’re with Him in Heaven.
“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.” (T-15.V.8:1)
We start on the personal level, looking within the ego self we think we are, working with what seems to be our individual sense of sin and guilt (even if it seems the “other guy” is guilty–not us). Little by little, as we learn to practice forgiveness, and clear the guilt from our personal relationships, we discover there is nothing personal to forgive. First it seems as though we draw our projections back into our personal selves, like a spider devouring its own web. This leads to a miraculous shift in perception and we realize that “I” is one ego mind, all-inclusive of every single brother in the whole wide world.
As a child, I felt terrified at the idea of death. No one had spoken with me about death, and no one close to me had died. Yet there was a 
As I faced my fear of death, spiritual wisdom came my way. Rather than comforting myself reading novels about lonely people, I started reading mystical literature. “If there is any death, it is that of death itself, for life will not die,” said the great Sufi teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Such elegant logic. How can life die?
. If God is Loving, how could He create death? But what did “if God created bodies” mean? Where did bodies come from, if not God?
Australian Aboriginals believe in “dreamtime,” an infinite spiritual belief about the time of creation. The “Dreaming” is eternal and life exists before a person is born and after the individual person ends.
And you may be interested in my Facebook page devoted to body issues:
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