ACIM Chapter 7.VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 7.VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, P 1, 2. We have said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without extension there can be no love.

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, P 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 at 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 ego wants to project. It is constantly trying to find the cause of the problem. It wants to 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.

I have a local news app on my phone, 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 will probably 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. In this way, 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.

VIII. The Unbelievable Belief, P 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 minds to other minds. If you have been studying the Course for a 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 it still happens.

Just as when I was at work, I projected my anxiety onto coworkers, at home I projected onto the family. Those are easy to catch because they have immediate and unfortunate effects. But it also occurs in little ways that I barely noticed. An example would be when 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 intentionally tore off the lid and threw it into their truck. 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 at the garbage men because their carelessness was causing me to use my time to fix this problem. I don’t have enough time. In doing this inquiry, I saw the belief in lack was still in my mind. I was 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 if reducing the stress but not ending it is my goal.

As I did this, I noticed 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 wanted the garbage man to be guilty because I was damn sick of being the guilty one all the time. Thinking about it made me grind my teeth and fight back tears. There was 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? In doing inquiry and forgiving what I found in my mind, I got to where I am now. This seldom happens anymore, and when it does, I don’t worry about it. I don’t feel guilty for the thoughts in my mind. These thoughts are meaningless, just as we learn in the early lessons. But meaningless does not mean they are without effect, so I am quick to forgive them.

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. My reaction when I first read this years ago was incredulity.

He says that so casually.

It is 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 could stop fooling around with the ego half-measures that no longer worked for me. This helped me to go right to the heart of the matter, kick the ego out, and free myself. It sounded crazy. After all, I had been trying to do this for a long time. How could it be that easy? I didn’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.

This encouraged me to become more aware of when I projected. I understood why I did it. After that morning’s little exercise, I understood somewhat the depth of the anger, fear, and guilt that is involved. I learned to withdraw my projections and accept full responsibility, and I saw that it didn’t destroy me. I knew I wanted to be free, and Jesus said I could do so, and apparently, it is not all that hard. All I had to do was quit wasting time following ego strategies. By doing this, I was well on my way to giving up the ego altogether and freeing myself.

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