VII. Looking Within, P 7
7 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. What you want in yourself you will make manifest, and you will accept it from the world because you put it there by wanting it. When you think you are projecting what you do not want, it is still because you do want it. This leads directly to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals, each perceived in a different place; separated from each other because you made them different. The mind then sees a divided world outside itself, but not within. This gives it an illusion of integrity, and enables it to believe that it is pursuing one goal. Yet as long as you perceive the world as split, you are not healed. For to be healed is to pursue one goal, because you have accepted only one and want but one.
Journal
What I project or extend is up to me but I must do one or the other. That is a helpful sentence. I cannot sit on some kind of neutral ground and do nothing. I cannot look at the world and say someone else did it. What I see when I look outward comes from my mind, not from something outside me as there is nothing outside me. Let us say that I go to work today and I walk in on one of my co-workers stealing something.
I first go within to choose an interpreter. I don’t say to myself I am going to do this. It is not a conscious decision, but it is one that is made. If I choose the ego as my interpreter I will see a guilty person. There will probably be a lot of thoughts in my mind about this according to what I have learned about this kind of behavior. Choosing ego as interpreter is deciding on projection. I project onto the person doing the stealing judgments that come from my mind. I give their behavior all the meaning it has for me.
If I choose the Holy Spirit as my interpreter, I will have different thoughts about the person. When this kind of thing has happened to me in the past, I have seen a call for love. This person thinks they cannot be happy without having the thing being stolen. Perhaps they think they cannot be happy unless they have what they covet of another person, not so much the object, but just the idea of having what they think others have and they don’t.
There is no reason to judge. There is never a reason to judge. There is only the understanding that the person is confused about what happiness is and how to achieve it. There is no reason for pity. Confusion is not truth and so it is not real. They will overcome their confusion. That is what we do here. We look at our confusion and we choose against it. Eventually.
If the person’s behavior upsets me it is only because they trigger in me something that upsets me. It has nothing to do with them or their behavior or their confusion. It is about my confusion. I see in another only what is in my mind. All judgment of another is judgment of self as seen in another.
As I look at this person who is stealing, and I look with Holy Spirit, I see only a need for love and so I give love. I may not say a word, but in my heart I know the person for who they are, not what they fear. I know they are the Son of God and lack nothing. I am not fooled by their confusion. This is extension.
When I choose projection, I suffer because projection causes suffering. No one believes they want to suffer, but if we suffer it is because we have chosen suffering. There is nothing in our life we did not choose. We chose suffering through choosing the ego interpretation, which leads to projection and suffering. So we did it to ourselves.
Saying we don’t want to suffer when clearly, that was our choice, is having two goals. The mind is split. We have chosen to leave the Kingdom all over again. I suppose there is no other way we could see ourselves separate from God now unless we choose separation now. Having two goals is separation. So in every moment we are deciding to separate ourselves from God or deciding to know our Self as one with God. It is the original “sin” all over again, over and over.
In the moment I see with Christ’s Vision this person who is stealing, I have extended Love. I have returned to God. In the next moment when I am faced with the choice between extension and projection, I might find myself projecting and so I experience myself as outside the Kingdom. More and more often, the joy of extension motivates me to that choice and eventually, it will be the only choice I make. Then I will be awake in the world, seeing only what Love sees, being in joy all the time.
This is why I choose the peace of God as my only goal. When I forget and choose something else as my goal, then I change my mind and return to my goal. If I think that people should not steal, then I have a different goal. If I think that people should not be grandiose and arrogant, I have a different goal. The ego sees many goals in the world, but I don’t have to embrace those goals as mine. I am free to return as quickly as possible to my one goal as I remember that the peace of God is everything I want.
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