A Course in Miracles

Chapter 6 - Attack and Fear

The Uses of Projection

Any split in will must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation.

The wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and by this recognition knows its Creator. Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation and also that, once it had occurred, projection became its main defense or the device that keeps it going. The reason, however, may not be as clear as you think.

In the ego's use of projection, to which we are obviously referring, what you project you disown and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very statement you are making that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you have already attacked it by projecting it. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself first out of awareness and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe.

Projection will always hurt you.

It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem "better" than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related because projection is always a means of justifying attack.

Anger without projection is impossible.

The ego uses projection only to distort your perception both of yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something [you think] exists in you which you do not want and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers. We have learned, however, that there is another use of projection. Every ability of the ego has a better counterpart, because its abilities are directed by the mind which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit as well as the ego utilizes projection, but since their goals are opposed so is the result.

The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect.

Knowing this perfection is shared, He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger, this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need which in this world is universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy.

How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there?

You cannot be anywhere that God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief but a fact. Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him, Who alone is perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny yourself and Him since it is impossible to accept one without the other.

The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit’s perception is the counterpart of the perfect equality of God’s knowing. The ego’s perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the bridge between perception and knowledge. By enabling you to use perception in a way that parallels knowledge, you will ultimately meet it and know it. The ego would prefer to believe that this meeting is impossible, yet it is your perception which the Holy Spirit guides. You might remember that the human eye perceives parallel lines as if they meet in the distance, which is the same as in the future, if time and space are one dimension. Your perception will end where it began. Everything meets in God because everything was created by Him and in Him.

God created His Sons by extending His thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now. You can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. God created you to create. You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its wholeness.

Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker from which they reach outward. This is as true of God's Thinking as it is of yours. Because your minds are split, you can also perceive as well as think. Yet perception cannot escape from the basic laws of mind. You perceive from your mind and extend your perceptions outward. Although perception of any kind is unnecessary, you made it, and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. He can inspire perception and lead it toward God by making it parallel to God's way of thinking and thus guarantee their ultimate meeting. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment with the idea and therefore does not want it now.

The Holy Spirit uses time but does not believe in it. Coming from God, He uses everything for good, but He does not believe in what is not true. Since the Holy Spirit is in your minds, your minds must also be able to believe only what is true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this because he speaks for God. He tells you to return your whole mind to God because it has never left Him. If it has never left Him, you need only perceive it as it is to be returned.

The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred. The ego cannot prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred.

The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily make the idea seem so difficult. Yet the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary because what never happened cannot involve any problem. It does not follow, however, that you cannot make the idea of return necessary and difficult. It is surely clear, however, that the perfect need nothing and cannot experience perfection as a difficult accomplishment, because that is what they are.

This is the way in which you must perceive God's creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one parallel line which the Holy Spirit sees. This line is the direct line of communication with God and lets your mind converge with His. There is no conflict anywhere in this perception because it means that all perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose mind is fixed on God. Only the Holy Spirit can resolve conflict, because only the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. He perceives only what is true in your mind and extends outward only to what is true in other minds.

The difference between the ego's use of projection and projection as the Holy Spirit uses it is very simple.

The ego projects to exclude and therefore to deceive.

The Holy Spirit projects by recognizing Himself in every mind and thus perceives them as one. Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is the same.

Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united, He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak because that is what He is. The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you.

The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outward to make you aware of it. The Holy Spirit was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by perceiving Him impartially can you perceive Him at all. The ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is One. No darkness abides anywhere in the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. This alignment with light is unlimited, because it is in alignment with the light of the world. Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds in this light, we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one.

A Course in Miracles

Chapter 6 - Attack and Fear

Relinquishment of Attack

We have used many words as synonymous which are not ordinarily regarded as the same. We began with having and being and more recently have used others. Hearing and being are examples, to which we can also add ...

• teaching and being,
• learning and being, and, above all,
• projecting and being.

This is because, as we have said before, every idea begins in the mind of the thinker and extends outward. Therefore, what extends from the mind is still in it, and from what it extends it knows itself. That is its natural talent. The word "knows" is correct here, even though the ego does not know and is not concerned with being at all.

The Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe through His impartial perception. By attacking nothing, He presents no barrier at all to the communication of God. Thus, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never be defiled. The ego never was and never will be part of it, but through the ego you can hear and teach and learn what is not true. From this, which you have made, you have taught yourselves to believe that you are not what you are. You cannot teach what you have not learned, and what you teach you strengthen in yourselves because you are sharing it. Every lesson you teach you are learning.

That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be conflict-free yourselves, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you denied this you made what you are something you must learn. We said before that the message of the crucifixion was, "Teach only love, for that is what you are." This is the one lesson which is perfectly unified because it is the only lesson which is one. Only by teaching it can you learn it. "As you teach, so will you learn." If that is true, and it is true indeed, you must never forget that what you teach is teaching you. What you project you believe.

The only real safety lies in projecting only the Holy Spirit because, as you see His gentleness in others, your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it can accept this fully, it does not see the need to protect itself. The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly benign. They bless because they know they are blessed. Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind and because it projects beneficence, it is beneficent.

Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack.

No compromise is possible in this. Teach attack in any form, and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet your learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it. Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free and keep you so, as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By learning it through projection it becomes a part of what you know because you cannot teach what you have dissociated.

Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea which you share you must have. It awakens in you through the conviction of teaching. Remember that, if teaching is being and learning is being, teaching is learning.

Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours, and you are love.