A new kind of projection

Lesson #30 in the Course Workbook: “God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.”

“Today we are trying to use a new kind of ‘projection.’ We are not attempting to get rid of what we do not like by (projecting it and) seeing it outside.” Remembering that we look within first and choose either spirit or the ego as our guide, this lesson is about extension, about choosing spirit as our guide and extending our reality as spirit’s love, the other half of the dynamic of looking within, and having that affect what we see outside.

With projection I see my sinfulness and guilt for accepting the separation from God as real, judge against it, and project it onto others, thus creating a world of specifics to have someone and something else to blame for having separated from, and denied my source.
I seek to get rid of what I don’t like within, literally making up the world, “thus were specifics made.” It is this that I want to forgive and be forgiven for.

Now we are to learn about forgiveness and experience a new kind of projection - extension, in which we take the love we first looked at within – the love of spirit which we really are because there is no way we could separate from God, and have it extend so we see it and not guilt and fear, all around us. Unlike projecting our imagined guilt, with extension I do not see love as separate from me. Spirit’s love, which is first seen within, when I accept my reality as spirit and choose spirit as my guide, is now experienced in everyone and everything, regardless of the veils of fear and hate I use to unconsciously conceal it. I experience the love and oneness of spirit in everyone and everything because I have first experienced it in myself – God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.

This is the shift from ego to what the Course calls our ‘right minds,’ from the ego’s projection of guilt to spirit’s extension of forgiveness and love – the key to the practice of A Course in Miracles. “We are trying to see in the world what is in our minds, and what we want to recognize there” - what I want to recognize, what I choose to recognize there – a world that works for everyone and everything. “Perception seems to teach what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught (and the teacher you chose). It is the outward picture of a wish; an image that you wanted to be true.”

So, what do I want to be true? Who do I want to be my teacher, spirit or ego? And what about you, what do you want to be true? Who do you want to be your teacher, spirit or ego? Do you want to contribute to a world that works for everyone and everything, or one that works only for true believers such as yourself, and the rich, powerful and politically connected?