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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VIII.The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 5. 5-23-14

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 5
5 Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. Do not project the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from an attempt to project responsibility for your own errors. But having accepted the errors as yours, do not keep them. Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Sonship as a whole.

The first sentence is in italics. I take the hint that this is important. I have no reason to fear the ego. I made it and it derives its power from my mind. It cannot exist unless I choose that it exists. The moment belief is withdrawn from ego, it ceases to exist. How can I fear something that is powerless against me?

The second very important point that Jesus is making in this paragraph is that I am responsible for the ego. I am responsible for the world and everything I see in the world. I am responsible, though not guilty, for all that I see, hear and feel. This tells me that if it is in my awareness it is there for me to heal it.

I am reminded of Dr. Hew Lin who healed an entire institution for the criminally insane through an ancient Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono. His use of this practice is a little different than the traditional method, but he proved that it worked. He healed these people without even seeing them. He read their files and healed within himself what he saw there.

This is what Wikipedia says about it:  It is based on Len’s idea of 100% responsibility,[41] taking responsibility for everyone’s actions, not only for one’s own. If one would take complete responsibility for one’s life, then everything one sees, hears, tastes, touches, or in any way experiences would be one’s responsibility because it is in one’s life.[42] The problem would not be with our external reality, it would be with ourselves. To change our reality, we would have to change ourselves. Total Responsibility, according to Hew Len, advocates that everything exists as a projection from inside the human being.[43] As such, it is similar to the philosophy of solipsism, but differs in that it does not deny the reality of the consciousness of others. Instead, it views all consciousness as part of the whole, so using parts of the idea of holism: any error that a person clears in their own consciousness should be cleared for everyone.

The prayer that Dr Lin uses to clear is this:

“I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”

You can read about this in Zero Limits, co-authored with Joe Vitale. There is a lot about it on the web and I write about it on my website at this link: http://www.forgivenessisthewayhome.org/index.php/articles/on-healing/53-hooponopono.html.

I agree with Dr. Hew Lin. I am solely responsible for my life and everything in it. I gladly take the next step in which as I notice what needs healing anywhere in my world, I quickly give it over to Spirit to be healed so that it will vanish from our mind.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7,VIII.The Unbelievable Belief P 4

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 4

4 You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. The belief that it can, an error the ego always makes, underlies its whole use of projection. It does not understand what mind is, and therefore does not understand what you are. Yet its existence is dependent on your mind, because the ego is your belief. The ego is a confusion in identification. Never having had a consistent model, it never developed consistently. It is the product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power.

The ego is the product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power. That is an excellent definition of ego. We are powerful and we exist under the laws of God, but through our power we have misused these laws and so have distorted our minds. We think we have done the impossible. We think our minds have been fragmented.

Everything we see with the body’s eyes is a reflection of a thought in the mind. So the separate bodies we see are a reflection of the thought of fragmentation. We look out from these bodies and think what we see proves our belief when actually all it proves is that we believe something that isn’t true. In believing we can fragment the mind we believe we have attacked God.

This belief in attack is reflected in the world as attack on our brothers and defense from our brothers, thus further distorting our oneness. This belief in fragmentation extends to ourselves as well. We like this about ourselves and hate that. We sometimes love ourselves and sometimes hate ourselves.

I have started a love campaign. I love myself. I love my body regardless of how it looks or feels. I love my personality even when it seems off kilter. I love my mind even when it is split. I love the food I eat without regard to any meaning I have ever given it. I love the environment regardless of temperature or weather or my comfort level with it.

I love the people I meet every day whether they respond to me in a positive or negative way. I love the person who checks me in at the hotel even when he puts me in the wrong room. I love the clerk who talks to her friend while I wait to be checked out. I love the banker who puts my money in the wrong account. I love my customer who chooses to buy from someone else.

The illusion of fragmentation causes fear and guilt and the solution to fear and guilt is perfect love. Perfect love is the Atonement. I ask for and receive the Atonement. My campaign of love is preparing my mind to accept the Atonement in every situation. I am learning consistency through loving consistently. My campaign of love is helping me remember what I am.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VIII.The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 3. 5-20-14

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 3

3 There are two major errors involved in this attempt. First, strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected because it cannot be shared. Any attempt to keep part of it and get rid of another part does not really mean anything. Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is limited by his confusion. The second error is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by giving it away. Giving it is how you keep it. The belief that by seeing it outside you have excluded it from within is a complete distortion of the power of extension. That is why those who project are vigilant for their own safety. They are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. Believing they have blotted their projections from their own minds, they also believe their projections are trying to creep back in. Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constant activity in order not to recognize this.

Continuing from yesterday’s idea that I can get rid of something I don’t want by projecting it onto someone else, today Jesus explains the two major errors involved in this attempt. First he says that we can’t really share conflict so it can’t be projected. Not literally. And this sounds confusing to me because the Course talks about projecting all the time. But I think what he is saying to me is that I can only try to project, but actually nothing is happening.

I try to get rid of what I don’t want by seeing it in someone else instead. I try to give it to them, but I don’t really give it away. I can’t really give it to them, I can only see it as if it were in them. And that brings us to the second error, which is that in projecting it away from us we are left in a constant state of anxiety because we are afraid the projection is trying to creep back in.

What is actually happening is that there is a level at which we know what is going on. We know that we accomplished nothing in our effort to project. We know that what we wanted to be rid of is still in our mind and we combat this awareness by keeping ourselves very busy and distracted. Our minds are in a state of constant activity, and we reflect this in our lives as well. 

Everyone I talk to who has begun spiritual work has had the experience of feeling like things got a lot worse before they got better. The ego does not want to admit that what it tried to get rid of is really still there in the mind, so it redoubles its efforts to distract through sickness, disasters, and all sorts of fearful situations. It also uses new jobs, falling in love, winning the lottery and all sorts of exciting pleasantries to distract. It doesn’t matter the nature of distraction as long as it keeps us from looking within.

I think the most important sentence for me is the one that says that giving is how I keep something. So if I think that I can be rid of a bad feeling by making it someone else’s fault, I have just reinforced it in my own mind. Today, I will remember to give only what I want to keep.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VIII.The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 2. 5-19-14

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 2

2 The ego’s use of projection must be fully understood before the inevitable association between projection and anger can be finally undone. The ego always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious in devising ways that seem to diminish conflict, because it does not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will insist on giving it up. The ego therefore tries to persuade you that it can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself. Using its own warped version of the laws of God, the ego utilizes the power of the mind only to defeat the mind’s real purpose. It projects conflict from your mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of the problem.

We can accept a lot of conflict, but there is a limit to how much conflict we are willing to endure. The ego’s plan to limit conflict, at least to reduce it to a level we are willing to tolerate, is to project the conflict from our mind to other minds. If you have been studying the Course for very long, you probably understand the idea of projection, though if you are like me, you may have been unwilling to acknowledge the frequency of this strategy in your own life.

I have been very vigilant for projection in my own mind for several years now, but I still catch myself doing it. I noticed recently that I was projecting my anxiety at work onto a co-worker. I noticed just a while back that I did this with family members. But it also occurs in little ways that I barely notice. I went to the road to get my trash can and noticed the garbage man had accidentally thrown away the lid along with the garbage. I felt angry with them knowing I would have one more thing to take care of Monday morning.

Why did I feel angry? I doubt that they tore off the lid and threw it into their truck on purpose. I am aware that I am never angry for the reason I think so I tried to do a little detective work on this. I felt angry. I felt angry at the garbage men because their carelessness was causing me to use my time to fix this problem. I don’t have enough time. I see the belief in lack is still in my mind. I am sick of that problem and sick of giving it to Spirit for healing only to take it back. It is the garbage man’s fault that I feel like this.  The proof is clear; he was careless and now I am inconvenienced. Nice little mental trick.

What I noticed as I did this is that the closer I got to the real problem, the more intense the anger. It seemed like a minor annoyance, a bit of inconvenience, but there was intense rage behind the veil I drew over the situation. In asking the Holy Spirit to help me understand this better, I became aware of guilt. I want the garbage man to be guilty because I am damn sick of being the guilty one all the time. Thinking about it makes me grind my teeth and fight back tears. There is fear in there as well as guilt.

Well, there. That was a surprise. Who would have thought that such a minor incident could have been hiding all of that.

I love how Jesus inserts this really important sentence in the middle of the paragraph. He says this:

“The ego therefore tries to persuade you that it can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself.”

Lest I give up the ego and free myself. He says that so casually as if it was the easiest solution ever and I could just decide to give up the ego. I could just decide to free myself. I can stop fooling around with the ego half measures that are no longer working for me anyway, just go right to the heart of the matter, kick the ego out, and free myself. It sounds crazy. After all, I have been trying to do this for a long time. How could it be that easy? I don’t know, but would Jesus say it if he didn’t mean it? He said he would never ask me to do anything I could not do.

I am now very aware of when I project. I understand why I do it. After this mornings little exercise, I understand somewhat the depth of the anger, fear and guilt that is involved. I have even practiced withdrawing my projections and accepting full responsibility, and it didn’t destroy me. I know I want to be free, and Jesus says I can be, and apparently it is not all that hard. I just quit wasting time following ego strategies, give up the ego altogether and free myself.

I accept that, Jesus.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VIII.The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 1. 5-16-14

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, Paragraph 1
1 We have said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without extension there can be no love. These reflect a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one that always operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law that unifies the Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a means of getting rid of something it does not want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your mind. To the Holy Spirit it is the law of extension. To the ego it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it. This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you to decide whether or not you will utilize the law. Every mind must project or extend, because that is how it lives, and every mind is life.

I am always projecting separation thoughts or I am extending love. I must do one or the other in every moment. It is a law and it is not possible to ignore it. My choice is how to use the law. I have had some physical challenges lately and I notice the thinking mind wants to project. It is constantly trying to find the cause of the problem. It wants place blame on something in the environment or someone who “gave” it to me, or something I ate.

The ego doesn’t particularly care where I project, as long as I project. The ego insists that I make someone or something else guilty so that I don’t appear guilty. To the ego mind this is salvation. What really happens, though, is that when I project I make the idea of sickness real in my mind, and I reinforce the belief in guilt. I scare myself as I make the world a dangerous place that threatens my very life with all kinds of sickness.

On my phone I have a local news app and one of the daily announcements is called, “What’s going around.” Just in case people are not nervous enough about catching something, it lets you know what you are probably going to catch. It warns everyone not to get too close to others because they might make you sick. This is perfect ego projection, always promoting fear and separation, always encouraging the belief in weakness and vulnerability.

I keep reminding myself that I don’t care where my sickness seems to have originated because that is just an illusion anyway. In truth, sickness of the body comes from sickness of the mind. All sickness is a defense against God and a choice I make. The only way to heal the body is to heal the mind that chose the sickness. It is in this way that I withdraw my projections and accept responsibility for the problem.

As I accept responsibility, I make a new choice. Instead of projecting blame, I ask for healing. A healed mind then extends love, which is all that is left to give once the mind is healed. When the mind is healed of the belief in separation, there is no fear or guilt and no reason or desire to project. Without the ego belief in separation there is only love and love flows unimpeded through us and to our brothers, because this is the nature of love. It extends itself.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 11. 5-15-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 11

11 Perceive any part of the ego’s thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as wholly real, wholly perfect and wholly desirable. Wanting this only you will have this only, and giving this only you will be only this. The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you. They will always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved Sons, who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His.

I accept that the ego thought system is wholly insane, delusional and undesirable. And I don’t. I (my ego self) keeps slipping back into insanity and this can only happen if I see some value in it. No matter how many times I do this, I am going to choose again until I want only the Kingdom. Actually, I have come a long way and hardly ever slip all the way back into it. I have moments when I think someone is guilty and then I see what is happening and remind myself of the only truth there is: we are innocent.

This remembering of innocence is the gift I give to God, and what I give to the Kingdom I give to myself. Yesterday toward the end of the day, I found myself on that slippery slope again. I don’t even know what it was that attracted me to the ego. Here is what it feels like to me. I see a thought that attracts my attention and I decide to follow it. I get lost in the thought and all the thoughts that are triggered by that one.

It is like being in a dense jungle or a thick fog. I know I’m lost but I can’t remember how to get out of it. Which means I can’t remember the truth, or the words that will lead me to the truth. Then doubt and uncertainty confuse me further. Paying attention to the ego thought and believing the thought are my gifts to ego, and in return, ego gives me grief. It gives me doubt and fear and guilt.

I’ve been doing this work too long to stay in ego long, and when I come up for air, I remember the truth, and like happened today, I can’t even remember what was so important to me yesterday.

The ego wants me to disbelieve all this metaphysical stuff and wants me to disbelieve that Jesus gave us these words and that Holy Spirit is in our mind just waiting for our permission to wake us up. It takes every opportunity to reinforce the separation thought, and to discourage true thoughts. It is up to me to pay attention and make a better choice when needed.

So, I can believe what Jesus is telling me in A Course in Miracles, be vigilant for my ego thoughts and willing to let them be corrected and in return I get peace and joy. Or I can listen to ego and believe that I am alone and guilty and suffer life after life. Hmm. I wonder which choice I should make.

I think that the main way ego holds my attention for more than brief moments at a time is through its gift of guilt. I spend too much time in judgment and then I feel guilty and start to be afraid I will never wake up. So the way to short circuit this ego plan is to remind myself, immediately, that I cannot be guilty. I see what the ego does, but I am not the ego. I was created innocent, I am innocent, I will always be innocent. Remembering this is my gift to God and He treasures my gifts because He treasures me.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 10.5-14-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 10
10 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. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him with them. They are part of you, as you are part of God. You are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him. The peace of God is understanding this. There is only one way out of the world’s thinking, just as there was only one way into it. Understand totally by understanding totality.

The sentence which means the most to me is the last one. “Understand totally by understanding totality.” I will know peace and love and joy when I accept that I am not alone and separate. I am part of a whole. My brother is myself. I am part of God and part of all there is and the same is true for everyone else.

This is the simple truth that I have been able to avoid so far. I became angry with my co-worker because he seemed a threat to me. How could this be? He is my counter-part. He is a different version of me. He is me playing the part of a young man with a particular personality. But in reality, in truth, he is me and we are God.

How could I be in conflict with him without being in conflict with myself and with God since we are all part of the same Wholeness. If I think I am at war with my brother and we are both part of God, then I must, in part of my mind, believe I am at war with God. No wonder I am not at peace. I am never upset for the reason and this is why. I tell myself that my brother attacks me, but in my confusion I must think that this means I am attacked by myself and by God.

How could I be attacked or harmed in any way? I am part of God, in God and safe from harm and since I am part of all that is, what is there to harm me? If I feel threatened, I must be dreaming. The threat can only be an illusion. Can the Son of God be threatened by an illusion? There is a way out of this confused and insane thinking.

A Course in Miracles offers me the path out and the way Home. I accept that I am God’s Son, part of Him always. Nothing else is possible and nothing else is my desire. I know that I am part of all that is. I know that my brother is part of the same Wholeness. We are One. We are innocent. There are no exceptions to this.

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