82 We once said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without projection there can be no love. Projection is a fundamental law of the mind and therefore one which
always operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way 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
own mind.
83 Projection, to the Holy Spirit, 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 projection. Every mind
must project because that is how it lives, and every mind
is life. The ego's use of projection must be fully understood before its inevitable association between projection and anger can be finally undone.
84 The ego
always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious in devising ways which
seem to diminish conflict because it does
not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will
insist on giving it up. Therefore, the ego tries to persuade you that
it can free you of conflict, lest you give the
ego up and free
yourself. The ego, using its own warped version of the laws of God, 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 it. This has several fallacies which may not be so apparent.
85 Strictly speaking, conflict cannot
be projected, precisely
because it cannot be fully shared. Any attempt to keep
part of it and get rid of another part does not really mean
anything. Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher
and a poor learner. His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is severely limited
by his confusion. A second fallacy is the idea that you can get
rid of something you do not want by giving it away.
Giving it is how you
keep it. The belief that by giving it
out you have excluded it from
within is a complete distortion of the power of extension.
86 That is why those who project from the ego are vigilant for their
own safety. They
are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. They
do believe they have blotted their projections from their
own minds, but they also believe their projections are trying to creep back
into them. That is because the projections have
not left their minds, and this in turn forces them to engage in compulsive activity in order
not to recognize this. You
cannot perpetuate an illusion about another
without perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out of this because it is
impossible to fragment the mind.
87 To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind
cannot attack or
be attacked. The belief that it
can, a fallacy which the ego
always makes, underlies its whole use of projection. It does not understand what mind
is and therefore does not understand what
you are. Yet its existence is dependent on your mind because the ego
is your belief. The ego is therefore a confusion in identification which never had a consistent model and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are misusing their own power.
88
Do not be afraid of the ego. It
does depend on your mind and, as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief
from it. Do not project the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone
else, or you will
preserve the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence
yourself, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack because they
come from an attempt to project responsibility for your
own errors. But having
accepted the errors as yours,
do not keep them. Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely so that
all their effects will vanish from your minds and from the Sonship
as a whole.
89 The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive
beyond belief because truth
is beyond belief, and His perception
is true. The ego can be completely forgotten at
any time because it was always a belief that is totally incredible. No one can
keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot
be believed. The incredible cannot be understood because it
is unbelievable. The utter meaninglessness of all perception that comes from the unbelievable must be apparent, but it is not
recognized as beyond belief because it was made
by belief.
90 The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever
be unbelievable. You who made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for
yourself, you are deciding against the belief that you can
be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally
part of you. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness has no limits because being is in infinity.