Everyone – men and women, grown-ups and children, Americans and Africans, old and young – is the same, facing the same minute-to-minute choice in our minds, between our transcendent reality as spirit or acceptance of the ego’s illusion of the world. No matter what I choose in this moment – ego or spirit - this sameness is the truth and the reality behind all appearances of difference. And no matter what I choose in this moment – ego or spirit – eventually, I will come to experience this sameness in everyone and everything, and know my reality as spirit.
This process of constantly choosing, understanding and moving towards my sameness/oneness with spirit, begins as I learn that my interpretation of the sensory data, brought by my sensory organs to my brain, is solely instigated by the mind, because ideas leave not their source. So, its not the sensory data I need to work with but my mind’s (my decision maker’s) interpretation of that data. Does my interpretation of what I’m perceiving bring me closer to spirit, revealing the sameness beneath the appearances of difference, or does it entangle me more deeply in the ego’s illusion?
So, I come to understand that projection – what I’m experiencing outside me as a result of my decision maker’s choice for the ego – makes perception. Once I have projected the mind’s interpretation of differences beyond the mind and onto the world, I conveniently forget I have done so. Thus, there is no way out of this vicious cycle of projection and perception unless I begin to question the validity of my perceptions. “Escape is impossible,” the Course says, “until [I] see that [I] have responded to my own interpretation” of my own projection. What I perceive, “is the witness to [my] state of mind, the outward picture of an inward condition.”
Understanding this projection/perception phenomenon is the beginning of constructive change and spiritual growth.
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