II. The Guiltless Son of God
1 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. On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to retain guilt, as the ego insists, you cannot be you. Only by persuading you that it is you could the ego possibly induce you to project guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind.
Journal
What I want, what I really want, is God, and guilt keeps me from God. I want to get rid of guilt once and for all. So why don’t I? It is not real, and I made it up. So getting rid of it should be as simple as changing my mind, and it is. But still I don’t do it. Why is that?
The ego wants to keep guilt. Guilt keeps the story going and keeps the idea of separation (ego) alive in my mind. Ridding the mind of guilt leaves it vulnerable to God and the ego cannot tolerate that idea. If we open our hearts to God we will never look back at the ego. It would cease to exist. And yet, if we accepted the guilt that ego claims for us, and accepted it fully, we could not stand it and would find a way back to God
It seems to me that the ego’s solution to this is to, first, convince us that we are the ego. This makes the idea of losing the ego sound like total annihilation. If we believe we are ego and then embrace the idea of releasing that belief, it is going to create a lot of fear in us. Then, secondly, the ego offers us some relief from guilt so as not to push us so far that we do something about the ego anyway.
The solution the ego offers is to project guilt onto others. We make everything someone else’s fault and thus see ourselves as a little less guilty, thus making guilt tolerable. At the same time, seeing guilt anywhere, in ourselves or in others, strengthens the belief that guilt is real.
The problem with the ego’s solution is that it doesn’t work very well. The thought of God is still in our mind. This thought of God cannot be eradicated, it will always be there calling us home. So there is no way ego can succeed in keeping us forever in its thrall. We continue the separation story only as long as we can tolerate it, and then we turn to the Voice for God rather than the ego.
As we do this, we discover that guilt has to go. We cannot know ourselves and know God if we continue to believe in guilt. I think of it this way; I cannot bring guilt into God, so guilt has to go. The biggest shift occurred for me when I began to realize that I was not just letting go of the idea that someone or something was guilty, but letting go of the belief in guilt itself.
I began to understand that seeing another brother as guilty was just an effect of believing in guilt. Now when I think someone is guilty it is an indication that I still think guilt is a valid belief in my mind. I ask that this false belief be healed while giving the story of a guilty brother as little of my attention as possible. I am not so interested in doing anything about the story; I want the source of the problem to be undone, and the source is my belief that guilt is real. Guilt is not real because God did not make guilt. It is just a part of the separation idea, a part of the ego. When we undo guilt, we have undone the ego. Do you see how important it is that we let the belief in guilt be healed?
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