The theme for this morning will be "Projection makes perception." This is one of those vitally
important principles in the Course. In fact, it's so important that it's repeated in the
text. In a sense it goes to the heart of what the ego attempts to have us do and then understanding
it goes to the heart of how the Holy Spirit undoes what the ego's attempt is. One of the
ego's...one of the ways of explaining or characterizing what the ego's strategy is, is that its attempt
is to make us be mindless. Its terror is that if we ever return to our mind we would change
our mind, and our original decision for the ego, which is the thought system of being
an individual and being special and being unique...a thought system that we have identified
with; so in that sense we have become the ego...that that thought system will be undone
simply by changing our mind. And so to ensure that we don't change our mind, what the ego
does is teach us we are mindless by taking the thought system of the ego (separation,
sin, guilt, fear of punishment, suffering, and death) and projects it out and then causes
us to forget what we have projected. It's like a veil of forgetfulness or an iron curtain...a
curtain of amnesia falls across our minds and we have no memory that what we are perceiving
outside is what we have perceived inside. And so we actually think that what we are
perceiving outside is there, and that is because we have forgotten that projection makes perception.
That we first choose on the level of our mind which thought system we will espouse: one
of separation, separate interests, guilt, attack, judgment or the thought system of
correction, the thought system of shared interests, of forgiveness, of the miracle. And whatever
we have chosen to make real in our minds we will project and then perceive it outside.
So I first (assuming I've chosen my ego) I first choose my ego's thought system of guilt,
I project it out, and I now see guilt and sin all around me but I perceive it there
because I have projected it there and I have put it there. But having forgotten that I
have projected it, it now appears, once again, that what I am seeing outside is actually
there, and I have no memory of being a mind. And, of course, since we have no memory of
being a mind, once again, we cannot change it and if we can't change my mind then the
original decision for the ego is preserved forever or seemingly forever and there is
no hope. The hope that Jesus offers us in the Course is in that idea that projection
makes perception. There is a way out of the world that I perceive. There is a way out
of the body that I perceive and experience; the body that's always racked with pain, that
grows old and eventually dies; a body that is hurt by the insults and attacks of others.
There's no way out of that because we really have no control over the world. We seem to
have some illusion we could control parts of it, but certainly we can't control all
of it, and we certainly don't believe we could control the laws of nature and the laws of
bodies and the laws of death. But there is hope when we recognize that all of this takes
place in the mind and has never left its source; that's a corollary principle in the Course
that we'll explore another time: "ideas leave not their source." But we recognize now that
since projection makes perception, if I change what my identity is in my mind then it will
change how I perceive the world. And instead of perceiving the world as a cold and cruel,
hostile place in which I am vulnerable and, as the Course says, at the mercy of forces
beyond my control, I will now begin to realize that I do have control. I may not have control
over your body; I may not even have control over my body, but I do have control over my
mind and, again, because projection makes perception, there is now something I can do
about it. In fact, in Chapter 21, which begins with the line (the repeated line): "Projection
makes perception," it says a few lines down from that in that first paragraph that, the
world you see; it's an outside picture of an inward condition. The world you see is
an outside picture of an inward condition. The "inward condition" is my mind's decision
and if I've chosen my ego then the world I see outside (the world I perceive) will be
a world of egos, attack, separation, sin, guilt, fear, judgment, and eventually death.
But that's because I have put it there. Projection makes perception. But because I projected
it out and see in you all my judgments of myself, all my thoughts of sin and guilt and
what a horrid person I am because I'm the one who separated from God and betrayed His
Love and abandoned His Presence, and rather than accuse you of that I now recognize that
this is a projection of what I believe and have made real in my mind. Lesson 134 in the
workbook says when you're attempted to accuse someone of anything you should first stop
and ask yourself, "Would I accuse myself of doing this?" Because of projection making
perception I'm accusing you of what I'm secretly accusing myself of. But when I can reverse
that projection, which is the role of the miracle, and I bring back to my mind what
I have put outside onto your body or my body and I bring it back to my mind, I now remember
I have a mind. I become mindful instead of mind-less and now I can change my mind. That's
where the hope is and "projection makes perception" is the way that I can make that choice because
it helps me understand what my ego has done. And the miracle takes what I have put outside,
once again, brings it back inside of my mind where I now look at it and I can now judge
it through Jesus' eyes instead of my ego's eyes, and thereby let it go.