You always perceive in people what you CHOOSE to see in them.

If you CHOOSE to be upset and angry, it CHANGES how people look. It makes them SEEM like they are attacking you. And because of this change in YOUR perception - your filtering - YOU think that you are justified in this anger or upset "because of" what they so obviously are doing. But they only APPEAR to be doing this stuff because YOU are looking through a dark filter of unlove. It filters OUT the love and prevents you from seeing love IN the person, or something about them that is loveable.

When you CHOOSE to stop being upset with them, to like them and to love them, which your are perfectly free and capable of doing, this "fog of unlove" is lifted from YOUR mind and you see the person WITH love. This radically changes how they APPEAR to you. Or rather, what you see IN them. Whatever you perceive people as "being like", they only appear to "belike" that because YOU are CHOOSING to see them that way. How you see them and how they appear has NOTHING to do with them or what they’re doing.

If someone is upset with you, angry at you, saying they don’t like you, the only reason they don’t like you is because they are CHOOSING not to like you. Here’s the trick... if they would CHOOSE to like you, THEY WOULD LIKE YOU. This sounds so obvious but it’s true, because per the secret of salvation, anything that person doesn’t like about you is a result of THEM CHOOSING NOT TO. Whatever they think is "wrong" with you, they ONLY SEE because THEY choose to put that there. They think they are locked into this perception with no choice. They don’t realize if they would simply CHOOSE differently, they COULD choose to LIKE YOU, and would instantly warm up to you.

It sounds too obvious to be true, but this is how it works. You are NEVER justified in being angry at someone because that simply means, you are CHOOSING not to love them. The ONLY reason you don’t like someone is because you haven’t decided to like them, for whatever scapegoating mileage you’re getting out of that. YOU have the power to love everyone. YOU have the freedom to choose to love everyone. Because there is NO REASON NOT TO. The only time you find a reason not to, is when YOU have slipped into ego, YOU are attacking, YOU are projecting, an d YOU are accusing your brother of your own sins.

You are never upset for the reason you think. It is NEVER "because of" people, the world, the body, the environment, or anything other than YOU. You using your free will to CHOOSE TO BE UPSET. You are not at the effect of anyone. You are CAUSAL. Whatever you choose, you cause. You are a creator. If you do not LIKE what you are causing, that’s on you. But disassociating ownership for that responsibility is ego.

You don’t like xyz person because you decided not to like them. They now look like enemies because you WANT to see them as enemies. Your desire to hate them MAKES THEM appear to be unlovable. The only reason they appear unlovable is not because of THEM, it’s because of YOU. If you would decide to love them, they would stop looking like monsters. Set them free of your tyranny.

You are annoyed about xyz situation because you have not yet CHOSEN to be happy. You like being unhappy. When you decide to be happy you will love it.

You think you can’t love xyz person because of "what they are like", because YOU are choosing to be an asshole. There is NO REASON to be unloving. All the reasons we have, we make up. Just as there is no reason to be afraid and all fear is made up.

If I don’t like something, is the problem the THING I don’t like, OR ME choosing to be "not likey"? And while I’m busy pointing out the flaws and sins of others, which I ONLY SEE because I PUT THEM THERE through unlove, I might want to look closer to home at why *I* am being sinful towards them. MY problem causes THEM To look like THE problem.

Everyone is holy and innocent and deserves to be loved fully. If I’m not doing that, *I* have a problem. I need to choose again. The only way a sworn enemy becomes a beloved friend is by choosing to LOVE them, sooner or later. You are free to choose when to change your mind.

"The holiest of all the spots on Earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love."

"The power of decision is my own."

Healthy boundaries.. it's a concept thrown around as something to strive for. But what are boundaries and how do you make them and do they even exist?

You can only theoretically have boundaries between separate people. It's as though, if you acknowledge where you stop and other people start, or what is yours and what is theirs, ie the two of you are distinctly separate, then any blurring of that distinction is a crossing of boundaries.

So if someone comes along and 'steps on your toes' or violates your independent freedom, as it were, e.g. they blame something on you or disrespect 'you', then they've `crossed the line`. And if you are aware of where your 'line' is, then you can tell it's been crossed, and then its up to you to respond in a way that defends that boundary.

As separate human bodies it does at first seem natural and healthy to have healthy boundaries. Except that, even when you get healthy boundaries on an individual level, you still have to constantly maintain it. And that's because there's still a weakness. You're still vulnerable. You can still HAVE your boundaries violated. And this weakness comes from the fact you are separate from others. So the very 'boundaries' that supposedly are meant to establish your security and protection in fact establish a division that renders you attackable. Your boundaries are not strong enough to fend off attack or its effects, because they themselves are based on defense and attack. And there is no such thing as absolutely-impenetrable boundaries.

There is a higher form of this idea of healthy relations. It entails you remembering and realizing that you are ONE with others. You can't really be true to your 'self' (which is a shared self) if you are not also true to the whole. This is where it gets a bit abstract.

Basically, when you are true to who you *really* are, which is the One self that you share with all, your awareness of that truth automatically shows you what is true and what is false. When someone comes along and does something you are already aware of whether it is true or not, and whether it can hurt you or not. If you are in your One self, you are invulnerable. Invulnerability does not need a defense and it does not need artificial boundaries. It is its own defense because no illusions can affect who you really are.

So healthy boundaries are a stepping stone toward self respect and security and being able to assert yourself and to have a sense of protection of your identity. But ultimately they also wall you in and cut you off from others. This leads to the dilemma that you have to 'lower your boundaries' from time to time to let people in and actually have a connection, because if your boundaries are always 'up' you will just shut people out and feel isolated. But then when you expose yourself by lowering your boundaries, it leaves people open to walk all over you. Supposedly the response to this is to 'raise' your boundaries again on an as-needed basis. This is hardly very reliable.

That's why ultimately you want to rise above this whole need for living in a castle, having walls, having a drawbridge that you raise and lower to keep the enemy out when necessary. It's a human-level, ego-level, separate-self-level strategy to use boundaries to maintain a certain level of respect and to honor your sense of ego self. And there's nothing wrong with having that firm sense of who you are and who you are not - as an ego. But you are more than an ego and eventually you have to realize that this dualistic model of protection has a lot of maintenance to it, because boundaries are as much an attack as a defense. They are the ego's substitute for real protection and security, which comes from Oneness.

Being true to who you really are is the ultimate protection because, when you are aware of who you are, you automatically are confident (certain), you automatically see sanely and clearly to be able to discern who is doing what and for what reason, you are able to see that other people are calling out for love rather than attacking, and you know that you cannot be hurt because you are invulnerable. In your innocence lies your safety. Not ego-innocence which is vulnerable to abuse, but Holy Innocence, which is strong and reliable and truly safe.

Also remember, that the only person you need protection from, is yourself. Nothing happens to you against your will, and nothing can affect you unless you choose to affect yourself and agree to it. So how can you have a healthy boundary to separate you from yourself? In that light, if you are fully responsible for your reality and you are honest about it, you will simply stop attacking yourself and thus you are safe forever.

Healthy boundaries are a myth. It's the ego's way of trying to say, being completely distinctly separate from each other is HEALTHY. This is totally the opposite of the truth. It may be healthIER than being an ego with violated boundaries, because the ego feels safer when it is in isolation and separation. But it is NOT health.

No boundaries means death to the ego, on the world level, but no boundaries means absolute safety on the level of who you really are.

Here's something that may be very difficult to own up to. If you are upset by anything in the world, it is because you have attacked the world. And usually when you are upset, it is because you perceive someone else did the attacking. And then you recoil and despise the attack, and it affects you, and you become upset. And this all covers up the fact that you are attacking. Sin seems outside of you, not in your mind.

You see, you cannot see attack unless you attack. If someone seems to murder someone in front of your face, most people would be horrified. But that's the ego being horrified, about what the ego has done. The reaction has to be fake, because if you knew the truth you'd know nothing has really happened, would laugh at it, and raise the dead. Nothing real can be threatened. There is no death. You're just seeing a dream.

What's very hard to confess to or even be aware of, is that the only reason you are upset by a murder is because there is part of your mind that believes in murder, and is murderous. It reminds you of that, and triggers that in you. You are horrified by your OWN belief about YOURSELF. It reflects what you think is going to happen to you, and what you are doing to yourself. Otherwise you would dismiss it in an instant.

You might say, well, I'm a really loving person and I absolutely would never want to hurt anyone. I advocate for love and can only love. BUT, when someone gets murdered in front of my face, I may freak out. Why? How is that possible? It's only possible because I make it real, I believe it's true, and I value it. I see what I value, and value what I believe in. So I believe in the murder, and its horrors just reflect what I believe I deserve, because of my belief in sin being real, which I am perceiving outside of me.

There HAS TO BE something in my mind that is made of sin, in order for me to react to the "sinful behavior" of others. Otherwise I would be absolutely unmoved by this illusion. So on the one hand I'm claiming to be love/loving, but these events prove my love is conditional, and that means I MUST be in denial. Invulnerability is a characteristic of innocence and holiness, not reacting with ego emotional trauma. A peace that passes all understanding. The immovable rock of sanity.

So we have to be really, REALLY honest with ourselves. Are we REALLY loving, if we are so easily shaken by sin? Are we really awake, if we are still affected by the world we see? Something is incomplete if there is even a slight trace of upset. If we have any reaction other than love, we are in the ego. To the Holy Spirit, all things call for love, not fear.

Yet sometimes we split the world into two things. There are perceived behaviors which are "okay and loving" and other behaviors "which are evil". This is the result of a split mind looking at the world. And when the loving things happen we think, ok, that's love, I'm doing that, so I'm loving. Then when the unholy things happen we think, that's NOT love. But instead of recognizing it as a meaningless illusion we recoil in horror and pass blame and point a finger and make the person wrong. Because we're not really whole in our love. It's not unconditional.

If I derive my sense of happiness from what happens "to me" or what happens "in the world", then I am easily robbed of happiness when anything goes wrong. And there are plenty of things that will go wrong. Invulnerability and love can only come about by becoming CAUSE, not effect. By recognizing that you are NOT at the effect of the world, in ANY of its forms, any events, or when anything happens. If I want to be actively loving in this world, it can't be that I ditch love at a moment's notice when something alarming seems to occur. That's special love, and too much fear. Fear does not enter where it is not welcome, and fear is its denial.

And so it's possible to have special love for the world, which means that you value bodies and the planet and want to keep it and want to have "loving behavior" and so on, but without overlooking these illusions and without being consistent. Some actions are then considered acceptable, others are considered evil and are despised. That is not love. That's judgementalism. That's fake spirituality. That's the ego trying to spiritualize an illusion and make it real. It takes many forms, sometimes things such as "not eating meat", or "hating murderers", or trying to focus solely on "the positive", or wearing "spiritual clothes".

That is denial. It is the two-facedness of the ego. The ego is especially good at taking sides and making out that one "way" is right and one way is wrong. Still continuing to be affected by the world is a certain sign of unforgiveness. Forgiveness overlooks the world which is why it causes you not to take anything seriously in it, recognizing it is not real. This can be difficult to learn because many things in the world SEEM evil or unloving. But you can't have a life where you are "loving sometimes" and call it loving. You have to learn to realize that the unloving, hateful, vengeful things are NOT THAT, and see through them to the truth.

This is a course in Cause, not effect. The world is not a cause. Believing it causes anything produces effects in you and makes you sick. To suffer with upset or horror when bad things happen is sickness. To blame the bad things for causing it is sickness. To not realize what you did to yourself to make yourself experience upset, is sickness. A Course in Miracles isn't about putting on a nice facade of persona all the time and "looking loving", and then taking off the love and going into fear or judgement when the situation changes.

Beware of illusions of love. Real, genuine, deep love is unconditional in its application, sees ALL things in this world as unreal, recognizing NOTHING can change what it is, and has NO effects from worldly events. To love is not to take sides or to judge or to hate sinners. To love is to recognize the Christ in each is the only truth and all the rest is bullshit. "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew YOU were dreaming."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me." UrW304

There is a trap which people may not be aware of, which can cause you to get very stuck. And the more egoic you are the more likely you are to get stuck.

The problem is, what we are "being" in our mind and identity, directly influences what aspects of the world we focus on and what we see IN it.

If we are being very separate and body-identified and full of guilt etc, the world will actually seem to take on these qualities and reflect back an experience of it being fragmented, discordant, warring, unsafe, etc.

This doesn't depend on the things that happen in the world, or the specific forms or objects or people. It's more to do with how it registers to your awareness, that it means to you, what you read into it, what stands out to you and what it means.

You actually have a SUBJECTIVE experience of the world. All perception is subjective. The world does not objectively exist. Only heaven is objectively real. In the world what's going on in YOU, directly CORRELATES to what you "make of" what's out there.

THIS can become a horrible trap because if you don't realize that your inner state is influencing how you see things, you could think that the world "is just like this". That if you FEEL that the world is dangerous and guilt-ridden and fearful and full of sin, it's because YOU are being these things.

If you don't realize that your experience of the world is a MIXTURE of the world itself and your inner state of mind, you could by mistake believe that "the world is just like this". As if how it appears to you, what it means to you, what you focus on in it, is INHERENT to the world itself.

For example if you are filled with guilt and shame and fear and darkness, the world will see to be a very dark guilty nightmarish place. You will focus on separations and physicality. The solidity of matter will seem heavy and impenetrable like a prison. Things will loom over you and threaten you. You won't feel safe anywhere and everything will seem evil. And then you will think the whole world IS an evil place, and it's impossible to escape it.

If you're sort of living in an experience of "a world" that seems like that, you will reason to yourself that it makes sense for you to act certain ways, to defend yourself from it, to not love it, to hate it and resent it. You might be thinking that you hate the world because it's a horrible place. But the reason that it seems horrible is because you hate yourself. You are MIXING your attitudes about yourself, WITH your perceptions of the world. You are FLAVORING the world with your mind.

Essentially, you cannot see OUTSIDE OF your own sense of identity and nature. You project this identity and nature onto spacetime. You then "relate" to this projected mixture of objects and meanings and regard it as "objective truth", but it isn't. It's a sort of blind closed-box experience, in which YOU are making the world seem to justify hate and resentment.

The problem is that then you will feel that you cannot forgive the world. No-one who believes the world is evil and horrible can forgive it. If it REALLY IS these things, you cannot forgive it. You cannot feel safe in it, you cannot trust it. You know it would make no sense to trust an UNTRUSTWORTHY world. And the idea of TRUSTING it seems completely risky and opening yourself up to attack. Forgiveness is unjustified and attack is justified.

God also DOES NOT love "such a world". He does not and cannot love a world in which there is this content of fear and guilt. Because in order to BE IN such a world, his mind would have to contain fear and guilt, and then he would be lost in unreality and attack, and find it IMPOSSIBLE to forgive and love such an "experience" of a world.

But we are told God does love "the world", because he sees it WITH love and GIVES love and thus his reflection of love is upon it. And thus he EXPERIENCES love because the love is in him. As in "God is in the world I see because God is in my mind." The reflection of heaven is possible when YOU are being heaven-like, and holy-minded, and forgiving of yourself, such that you PROJECT this out and see it REFLECTED back to you.

Essentially, THE WORLD IS A MIRROR. It is NOT a separate thing from you. It is not "having its own" stuff. Believing that the world is separate from you and has its own objective truth which you have no influence over, is the ego mindset of false perception. It causes you to focus on separations and differences and sees no cohesion or unity. This is a mistake, because the egoic mind is experiencing "the world" AS THOUGH IT IS ITSELF.

If you are experiencing the world LIKE the way you experience yourself, but you BELIEVE that you are "separate", you will believe that your experience of the world has no CONNECTION to your state of mind, and that now means YOU ARE TRAPPED. You are lost in a mirror, believing that what you see in the mirror is NOT YOU and is nothing like you. Yet alone that you might be putting it there.

In higher states of mind you come to see that because you are holy and innocent and loving and inclusive, because you are not separate and not attacking, you don't see these things "in the world". Or rather, you experience the world in a way that de-emphasizes these things. You don't experience or notice or pay attention to differences and separations. The more whole YOU become, the more the world SEEMS more whole.

So the big trap is, which most people are falling into, is that the more you think the world itself is SEPARTELY evil, the more you will emphasise that YOU are separated off, and your mind will become darker and darker. The darker your mind becomes the MORE the world will seem darker still. And you will think that your HATRED of it is totally justified and makes total sense. You will point and finger and believe the world ITSELF is inherently evil, and its evil has nothing to do with you. That it is NOT a mirror.

And that means you're quite capable of driving yourself into a "pit of hell", a nightmare of your own making, where you keep attacking the world over and over and making your relationship to YOURSELF worse, which makes your experience of the world worse, which just keeps you going down and down further into a hellish experience because you don't realize the world is a mirror. If it IS a mirror, and you treat it like it is NOT a mirror, you will think IT is "getting worse", when really YOU are getting worse, and you will justify hating "it" (as if not you) even more. This is the split in the mind.

The more you dissociate, separate, project guilt, attack, be unforgiving etc, the more you experience that the world has NOTHING to do with you. That its conditions are an inherent evil of its own, objectively evil. That you are not contributing to this evilness in ANY way. And that's a serious trap, you can get very lost in believing that you SHOULD hate and be outraged toward the world because "it" seems like a horrible evil place. But it isn't inherently a horrible evil place. YOU are being horrible evil in it, and it's making you FILTER your perception to show you aspects which seem to reflect that back to you.

The world IS a mirror, and if this is not recognised, you will see no way out. To get out of the hellish nightmare, you have to be able to RISE ABOVE, ie transcend, which means YOU have to become more heavenly if you want to experience the world as more heaven-like. YOU have to become less separated off if you want to experience the world as a less separating place. YOU have to stop attacking if you want to experience that the world isn't attacking you. YOU have to be what you want to SEE in the world.

And that means that no matter what you are experiencing the world as NOW, that's just the result of what you chose to BE previously. If you want to see the world in a better light, YOU have to get yourself into a better light. And then the qualities you saw IN the world in the darkness WILL DISAPPEAR, or become less emphasised, because YOU are being a better person.

Ultimately this leads to you reflecting heaven within yourself, which results in you projecting heavenly qualities, which results in the world appearing to reflect heaven back to you. And that allows you to transcend all the limits and separations and differences, allows you to ignore hierarchies of illusions, stops you being deceived by forms, and allows you to overcome temptations.

Essentially your EXPERIENCE of the world becomes more like a oneness the transcends all the forms things take. And then the world reflects the MEANING of God. When you reach that state you're in the real world, the world you made is the forgiven world, and you're ready to go home to heaven.

"In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves." UrT14E5

"This is a question everyone must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible here. Yet the Word of God promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death; that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance. The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this." UrM12A1

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that." UrT21A1

"Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E3

"To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this." UrT25D1

"In His (Holy Spirits) perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it." UrT25D5

If I see myself as "being attacked" by someone, I am attacking.

If I see myself as "being victimized", I am victimizing.

If I see myself as afraid, I am threatening.

If I see myself as lacking, I am stealing.

If I see myself as judged, I am judging.

If I seem sick against my will, I have deliberately made myself sick in order to accuse others of causing it.

If I am dying and don't want to die, it's a great way to discard all of my power and give up on life, as if death is the total opposite of what I want when in fact I'm choosing it.

If I am feeling unsafe, I'm undermining someone.

If I'm trying to rely on myself, I'm trying to be unreliable.

If I see myself as guilty, I must believe it about others as well.

If I see myself as innocent, it can be that I have put my sin onto others and am in denial.

Always the surface appearance hides the exact opposite motive that lies underneath, because the ego is always two faced. Whatever it seeks to accomplish it accomplishes the exact opposite. Whatever it says its intentions are, they are a cover-story for a completely opposite plan.

No-one dies without their own consent. Death is chosen. Death is suicide. And death is an attempt to prove that you have no will or power to choose anything else, while simultaneously using all of your will and power to make death seem to happen in secret.

This is why death is *failing the Course.*

God is always in a forgiving state, even though there is nothing to forgive, in order THAT there be nothing to forgive. God always has a forgiving attitude.

Forgiveness is not something you do to get TO God, it is your permanent, natural condition of expressing from love and being forgiving. The opposite of being forgiving is having an unforgiving (relentless, attacking) attitude ie ego.

God IS forgiving, at all times. And it is our natural function to be forgiving at all times. Not just as a process of undoing ego stuff. Forgiveness is a constant state.

"Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter. Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that needs forgiveness when Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love."

What can there be in us (Sons of God) when GOD'S FORGIVENESS IS PERFECT?

Also the correction of perception is a temporary measure in order to become able to recognize that perception is not needed and that knowledge is the truth, so correction of perception is NOT forgiveness either.

"It cannot be emphasized too often that CORRECTING perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary ONLY because Misperception is a BLOCK to knowledge, while ACCURATE perception is a stepping-stone TOWARDS it. The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable judgment which it necessarily entails that it is UNNECESSARY. This removes the block entirely."

In other words the only reason we are correcting perception is to come to realize that preception is fundamentally false and not needed at all, because we can have direct access to knowledge of truth, which is not perceived but known.

The problem in your mind is that you have condemned yourself to be a sinner. You've accused and attacked yourself, claiming you are guilty. You cannot tolerate this guilt, so you want to make it go away, but your belief in the ego/sin is a desire to also keep it.

The ego then provides what seems like a solution. It suggests you can make the guilt go OUTSIDE of your mind, and the blame can then be pinned on someone who is completely separate from you. An external scapegoat will take the fall for you.

This of course requires that you identify yourself as separate from other people, typically on the basis of them being "a separate body". If you are body-identified, you will see yourself AS the body. So anything inside the body is you, and anything outside is not. This is how the body serves the purpose of a separation device.

The ego will say that if you push the guilt outside of you, and pin it on someone else, you will escape it. What it does NOT tell you is that this is impossible. You cannot take an idea or a thought or feeling or belief which is mind content, and make it exist OUTSIDE the mind itself. It has to stay in the mind, which is why "ideas leave not their source."

What happens is, you go into denial that the guilt is in you, and you deny that trying to make it go outside your mind is impossible. This forms a block to awareness. You then attempt what we call "projection", or the ego's use of projection, in which you try to displace the guilt beyond the outer limits of what you consider to be yourself.

Again, what the ego doesn't tell you is that this will not work, because you cannot make anything go outside your mind or your self. The whole world is inside of you. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts." "Heaven and earth are both in your mind."

What you actually do is you split your mind into two compartments. You place the guilt into one compartment, and you IMAGINE that this compartment is OUTSIDE of the second compartment. The second compartment, inside the body, is considered to be the whole of yourself, or your whole mind.

So now what you're doing is you are actually increasing the belief in separation WITHIN your mind, are making a rift in your mind which hurts it, you are emphasizing separation within yourself, and you are dissociating from a part of your own mind. You now believe that part of your mind is NOT part of your mind, and is EXTERNAL to your mind. And you also believe this must be outside of the body.

So now it becomes easy to associate this guilt with anything external, whether it be the wrong weather, another human body, a group of people, some organization, an event, certain types of foods, belief systems other people have, body traits, or whatever. It's easy to believe the guilt BELONGS to them, because you believe the guilt is OUTSIDE your body - outside of yourself. It then MUST belong to someone else.

What you will then do is believe that your guilt is bound to the other person. You project it onto them, mixing them with it, as though it is an inherent part of what they are. A part of their sinfulness.

This is ESPECIALLY easy if the other person appears to make a mistake or do something wrong. It is certainly a blessing in disguise if they commit some kind of serious crime or sin. Because now you have a wonderful opportunity to seize their error, holding it against them as a sin, to AMPLIFY how guilty they are, on the apparent basis of what THEY did, as if to suggest they are guilty because of THEIR OWN sin.

This appears to exonerate you, because now you can point a finger at a "self-contained" guilty person and say, YOU are guilty, and I am not. While doing this, however, your mind secretly tries to ADD YOUR OWN guilt to what you think is theirs. You try to secretly slip your guilt into the situation while claiming it belongs to them, and is justified in being attributed to them. You give them YOUR guilt, and call it theirs.

The thing is, even while you do this, YOUR guilt IS NOT leaving your mind. You will, however, believe that it is outside of you and even see and experience it as if it is. In fact this dissociation can become very strong. You can become extremely convinced, and therefore perceive, that the guilt is entirely theirs and not in you at all. Look at what THEY are doing wrong! But this IS a state of tremendous self-deception.

What is really happening is your mind is PRETENDING that it has projected or displaced the guilt outside the borders of your self, it is convincing itself that it has succeeded in getting rid of it, it has convinced itself that the guilty party is NOT itself, that the guilt is NOT in the mind any more, and that YOU have been set free from it. This is all a lie, and is all a state of mental illness, because a mind AT WAR WITH ITSELF is insane.

When you are then attacking what seems to be the other guilty person for what you think is THEIR guilt, your mind IS in fact attacking ITSELF, WITHIN itself. It is attacking the portion of your mind that you have believed is "not a part of me", which YOU have attacked, causing a split in your mind, and the guilt that you think you're looking at IS STILL inside the limits of your mind. Your mind believes the guilty mind is SEPARATE, but it is STILL joined to your mind.

"It can be but myself I crucify." "You're doing this to yourself."

"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."

So as you attack another in anger, attempting to make someone else - someone "not me" - seem guilty, you ARE in fact STILL ATTACKING YOURSELF, trying to make YOU NOT BE YOU. You only seem to be indirectly doing this because of the seeming separation IN your mind. You may think separation is now taking place BETWEEN brothers, ie between your separate body self and your brother's separate body self, but really it is taking place INSIDE OF YOU.

The guilt you see in them is STILL your guilt. The sin you are accusing them of you are still accusing yourself of, but are heavily in denial of that fact. The idea of guilt NEVER leaves your mind. You are SEEING your own guilt projected onto someone else. You BELIEVE if you can angrily attack them and find them to be extra guilty, then this will mean YOU are not guilty. But in fact it REINFORCES your own guilt.

This happens because not only did you start out with guilt from your OWN self attack, you have now believed that you have successfully attacked another, and justly, causing them to be hurt, which now induces even more guilt in you. And while you are busy BELIEVING that you are destroying your enemy, the enemy is actually part of your own mind, and your mind is destroying itself.

"Anger is never justified."

Each time that you become angry, you are projecting your guilt. Each time that you find ANYONE to be guilty of anything even slightly, you are trying to escape from YOUR guilt. Each time you find someone to be accused of anything, YOU NEED a scapegoat because YOU deep down believe you are guilty. This means you are running away from your guilt by trying to use DISSOCIATION to PRETEND that it is not inside of you.

The more you intensify your attack on another, the more you hate them, the more you seem to find them to be sinful, the more you want to separate from them, the more you think you cannot stand being around them and want nothing to do with them, the more murderous you become, the more YOUR MIND SPLITS. You THINK that you're finding someone else guilty but you are ONLY EVER finding yourself guilty.

In effect, the mechanism of denial, dissociation and projection, DOES NOT WORK. It does not heal you! The ego claims it will work every time, and you can convince yourself very profoundly that you are succeeding at doing this. But you ARE mistaken. The thought of guilt CANNOT leave your mind. It cannot exist outside the scope of a mind that thinks of it. And there IS nothing outside of mind, because mind is all-encompassing.

Therefore, everytime that you think you are successfully finding someone ELSE guilty, you ARE NOT succeeding in removing guilt from your mind. You are side-steppping and avoiding it, denying that you hate yourself. You are PRETENDING that it is not in you, by believing it is outside of you. And every attack you make upon it IN your brother, IS a direct attack UPON YOURSELF. And YOU DO therefore experience the consequences. The Golden Rule is always in effect.

This means every single time you try to get rid of your guilt this way, which really is an attempt to KEEP IT AND NOT HEAL IT, you magnify your guilt and run way from it. Your denial increases and you become ever more divided within yourself. You will sense yourself as being separated from your brothers, but even worse, you are separating WITHIN YOURSELF. This is self destruction.

Every time you accuse anyone of guilt, YOU ARE literally directly accusing a part of your mind of being guilty. You NEVER accuse anyone of their own sins, or their own guilt. You can't even really tell if anyone is guilty or not. You can only try to shove YOUR guilt onto them and accuse them of it. You ADD your guilt to their mistakes, turning them into sins.

You only EVER accuse anyone of YOUR sin and YOUR guilt. You try to MAKE others be guilty because of how guilty YOU feel. Which means you USE them as scapegoats so that YOU will convince yourself you are less guilty. Even if you're lying to yourself.

The ego does not want you ever looking within at the guilt that you think is there. It wants you believing its plan of "forgiveness to destroy" will work. Its plan is that if you will just place the guilt OUTSIDE yourself, someone ELSE can take the fall for it. But this literally is absolutely impossible. All you end up doing is making yourself worse off, increasing your belief in separation, and hurting yourself more.

Given that the ego's "magical solution" to the guilt is really an attempt to KEEP IT AND HIDE FROM IT, it simply DOES NOT actually make the guilt go away. It does not reduce it or heal it. You use denial to try to block it out of awareness, and you use dissociation to try to pretend it's not yours. But it remains in you, festering and unforgiven. Because it is always YOU that needs your forgiveness, because "all attack is self attack."

Your brother is NOT GUILTY. The guilt IS NOT THEIRS. YOU think you are guilty. You are in denial about it. YOU need to heal this guilt and actually undo it, because it is based on a lie. YOU are not guilty because sin is not real.

YOU don't NEED to project guilt because you are NOT a sinner. This is the forgiveness YOUR MIND needs in order to heal the separation. Because the separation is IN YOU. And it is in YOUR MIND that it needs to be healed.

"You but accuse your brother of your OWN sins."

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"But consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. You PROJECT guilt to get rid of it, but you actually merely CONCEAL it."

"The ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is ALWAYS to get rid of guilt. But, characteristically, it attempts to get rid of it FROM ITS VIEWPOINT ONLY. For much as the ego wants to RETAIN guilt, YOU find it intolerable."

"Only by persuading you that IT is you, could the ego possibly induce you to PROJECT guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind."

"Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause."

"ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you."

"When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that THERE IS NO GUILT IN GOD'S SON. And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness. For the IDEA of guilt brings a belief of condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by doing so, you cannot know that you are God's Son."

"Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no sin, no crime, no guilt that it can find and "love."

"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Would I accuse myself of doing this?

I will not lay this chain upon myself."

"Minds that are joined, AND RECOGNIZE THEY ARE, can feel no guilt. For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"See no-one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness UNTO YOURSELF. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God, lies the conviction of your OWN guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make YOU free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for ALL your brothers. For so you learn that IT IS TRUE FOR YOU. "

So long as you remain in a position of causation, you are all-powerful. And that means the truth comes out of you, it is given and shared, and reinforces itself. You see it in everything you project it onto, and in your harmlessness you are safe.

Being all-powerful, you are invulnerable. Nothing can happen to you against your will because you are the one doing the happening. Being purely causal and creative, you have tremendous strength and ability. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

Centered in your power, which you share with God, you know that you are safe and protected. So long as you do not hurt yourself, you cannot be hurt. So long as you do not cause something to happen to you, nothing can happen to you. Your will is as powerful as God's will, and nothing can prevail against it or intrude upon it.

""My Self is ruler of the universe."

It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

(Urtext W253L to W253L1)

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. "

(Urtext W190L5)

It is only when you deny that you are all powerful that you enter into what we call fear. Fear is a seeming absence of love, so if you've denied yourself you've denied love. Seeming to lack power, to be weakened, to see yourself as not the cause, you now see cause and power and strength as separate from you - because you believe you are separate from them.

Cause and will and power and mind are now projected outward and are seen as outside of you, beyond your will, outside the limits of your mind and of your control. They seem therefore to be able to act without your consent, to will on their own. ACIM calls this an "alien will".

Once you see cause or power as outside of you, separate from you, you HAVE to also believe that you are no longer powerful or causal. And this begins the slippery slope toward seeing yourself as being able to be affected. If you are not all powerful, something else has more power. If you are not causal, something else could cause you.

As soon as your mind believes that power and causation are external or separate or disowned, it also sees itself as an EFFECT of that causation. It believes it can BE affected, because it is no longer strong, or safe, or protected by the love of God. Being in uncertainty about its own causation, the mind goes into doubt and fear.

If there is an alien will out there, and if it is separate from your own, then it must be against you without your permission. This is the root of all fear. The belief and perception that the word is transpiring against you, choosing without consulting you, determining your future, deciding whether you will live or die, and generally "happening to you" beyond your ability to stop it.

You can't seem to stop the world attacking, threatening, troubling, upsetting you etc, once you're on this slippery slope into hell. And the only response to that is fear. If you do indeed see power and causation as outside your scope of control, beyond your reach to manage, then stuff can happen to you at any time, without your seeming to choose it. And who wouldn't be afraid of that? It is disturbing to think something can happen that you cannot prevent.

You're afraid because you see yourself as a victim. A victim is a role where somehow, in some way, you seem not to be the one causing or choosing, and you seem to lack the power to stop it, simply because you believe something has power over you. A power that is not yours, a power you do not share in, a power that you cannot wield, and a power that you have lost.

Ultimately then it is in fact YOUR OWN POWER that you have dissociated from and projected. It is YOUR OWN CAUSATION that you have put outside of you, pretending it does not belong to you. It is YOUR OWN MIND that is giving this power away and is trying to associate it with things that do NOT have it. And it is YOUR OWN MIND that positions itself as being "at the effect of" that very same power.

This means of course that you are doing it to yourself. All fear is you attacking yourself from the outside in. All fear is you believing that you are at the effect of a cause that's separate from you. Yet ideas do not leave their source. Your mind houses the idea that cause is separate from you. Your mind houses the causation that it visualizes as outside of it. And your mind houses the effects that it puts into itself to demonstrate what the cause is doing to you.

Really this means that all fear is self-threat, you can only be afraid if you threaten yourself, it is only YOUR OWN POWER that you are afraid of, fear is an attempt to hide from your own power, and being a victim is an attempt to pretend that you are powerless. All sense of fear then comes from the belief that you have no power over "that power" which seems not to be yours, and is an attempt to PRETEND to be powerless. Yet you USE your power to do this.

If in any way you believe that anything in the world has the power to do anything to you at all, you have for a start associated YOUR power with external things. You've GIVEN your power away to things that don't own it. You WANT those things to have your power. Now you see and perceive external things as being powerful over you, causing you, sinning against you, justifying your anger, and making you afraid and upset.

But notice that YOUR MIND also manufacturers all of the sense of "I am at the effect", it visualizes an appropriate "reaction" to the threat, it PUTS THE EFFECTS IN YOU, and literally materializes all the symptoms and consequences that it imagines must come from such a cause. If it for example believes that some other person has power over it, it will not only give that power TO the person, it will also visualize itself as affected BY the person, AND put symptoms into itself to correspond to the "amount of threat" that it has invented.

This is where the hierarchy of illusions comes in, along with orders of difficulty. You may have noticed that when you believe something external is big and serious, important and powerful, authoritative and trusted, or has some sense of capability or truth, you have MORE reaction than when it's something mild, weak, insignificant, unimportant, or that you don't believe in.

If some educated doctor suddenly tells you you have a terminal illness, you will very likely go into into much bigger fear than if someone tells you their opinion about the weather. If there seems to be an external threat to your "life", ie the body seems to be being caused against your will, and you think it is your self, then you will have a huge amount of terror.

But in every case, in every scenario, no matter how it looks, or who seems to have the power over you, or who is doing what to you, or what role they play, it is ALWAYS YOU, always your own mind which is DECIDING to believe in a) the disowning of your own power, b) the projecting of it onto another, c) associating it with another, d) seeing yourself as caused BY that power, and e) therefore changed against your will by that power. And your mind itself will invent AND PUT IN PLACE, all of your symptoms, effects, altered feelings, consequences and results of what you believe that power can do to you.

This is also precisely how the symptoms of sickness come about. And it is also what happens when you project your sin onto others, through the body, which uses the body to accuse another of sin. Your mind sees itself as under attack by an external power - its own power that it has disowned - and to try to prove it, it manifests changes in the body to symbolize the various ways that you are under attack. The body is then held up as a picture of crucifixion to show to another that THEY caused this effect in your body, even though YOU put the effect there.

It's all part of your attempt to FORCE them to have power over you. It's your wish that you would even crucify yourself and make yourself seem to die, to attack the body with terrible afflictions, IF only it can mean that, at the same time, your brother is assigned all your causing, thus all your "doing", is framed for your murder, and can be accused of causing YOU to change.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

This all simply happens through false perception which is the reversal of cause and effect. Whenever you see cause in the world in any way, you are projecting YOUR power to cause. And you must see yourself as a victim or effect of that. Perception is now backwards because you perceive the world is happening to you instead of you dreaming the world. To see the world causing you is false perception. To see YOU causing the world, is true perception.

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made. "

(urtext T28C11)

What this all means is really the secret of salvation, that "you are doing this to yourself". No matter how it looks or who plays the role of victim or victimizer, still this is the truth. Your mind disowns its own power, your mind frames others and the world for having this power, your mind decides to position itself as affectable, your mind puts the effects in place, and your mind uses the effects to accuse others and the world of what YOU did, so that you can keep disowning your power.

Effectively, using the body as a scapegoating mechanism to get rid of your sin. Because sin is very closely aligned with causation. You think that you used your power to cause the death of God, to attack reality, and to change the truth. And now you try to keep projecting your power in order to avoid admitting to this, even though it's not true. If you maintain yourself as powerless, you can claim that you have no power, and therefore cannot have been the one who caused God to change.

But wielding your own power also means therefore that you cannot be hurt, or attacked, or had power over, or caused, or affected, or made vulnerable, or weakened, or made sick, OR CAUSED TO DIE, without your consent, and without YOU making it happen TO yourself. If you so choose to stop attacking yourself WITH YOUR OWN POWER, nothing in the world can have any power over you. If you choose to stop hurting yourself, you cannot be hurt. If you choose to stop making yourself sick, you cannot be sick. And if you choose to stop dying, you cannot die.

You cannot be afraid of anything but your own self-attack. Nothing in the world causes you. Nothing in the world has power over you. No-one has the power to make you anything. You are not affected by anything but your own mind.

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

(urtext W281L)

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

(urtext W26L)

"It can be but myself I crucify."

(urtext W196L)

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details"

(urtext W152L1)

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

(urtext W190L5)

To summarize simply, only you can make yourself afraid, you can only be afraid of your own power, only you give yourself the symptoms and effects which you think that power would produce, and only you can stop doing that to yourself. Only you threaten yourself, only you choose to be in fear, only you make yourself a victim, and you have the power to NEVER be victimized ever again.

You have the power to live forever, and that makes you utterly invulernerable and incapable of being sick or dying. You have this power because God has shared his with you. And if it be your will, no-one and nothing has any power over you to frighten you. You cannot be afraid unless you choose to do so, any more than you can have any effects of any kind without electing to choose that they be there. You are the one who is scaring yourself, and you can stop.

"I am not weak, but strong."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

(urtext W91L8)

"I've got to do something about this!" shrieks the ego. I MUST FIX IT!!!

Arghhh!!

Ok. Stop.

1) We believe something has gone wrong and think it's real.

2) Believing it is broken, we MUST believe that a remedy is needed.

3) We now try to figure out what went wrong and what we need to do to remedy or fix it.

This turns us into a FIXER.

And it is a total trick.

Because the truth is, NOTHING HAS EVER REALLY GONE WRONG.

The idea of something going wrong is ALWAYS an illusion! A deception. A mis-perception. An ego attack thought.

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability", means, that you are still invulnerable, but the ego is attempting to make you believe otherwise.

Don't listen to it.

Do not listen to the "something has gone wrong", which leads to the "I must fix it".

STOP IT!

STOP IT!

STOOOOP IIIIIIT!

Now, reverse the thought. Has something really gone wrong? NO!

Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has happened. Atonement.

"Let me recognize all my problems are resolved" - ACIM - they are fixed already because the problem is an ILLUSION!

So if nothing has really happened, you do not need to FIX, you do not need to CHANGE, you do not need to SAVE, you do not need to be a HERO, you do not need to DO ANYTHING.

The solution is never to REACT to the idea that something needs to be solved. The solution is to realize that the impression of something being 'wrong' is ITSELF FALSE.

Nothing is wrong. There's nothing to do. Nothing needs fixing. Nothing is broken. You don't need to do anything, or go anywhere, or fix anyone. Surrender that.

Just be.

When you are whole, you have only one identity. You are identified with Spirit. You are one with Holy Spirit. You are at peace.

When you begin to believe that illusions are actually reality, entering into the separation state, you put denial in place to shut out awareness of God, and therefore awareness of your "whole self" (Holy Self, True Self etc) seems blocked.

Once this denial is in place, which is an act of believing in real sin, you have tried to attack your wholeness and God’s wholeness with an idea of separateness. You therefore put illusions of separateness into your own mind. These show up inside your own mind, or to put it another way, inside your own self.

So you "split yourself", in the same way that two people seem separate. The split seems like a wall coming inbetween two identities. At the same time, both of these identities are separated from the whole self and God.

Neither "part" of the split mind has awareness of the whole, because these parts, which have come about because you believed in separation, are both cut off from being aware of the whole mind. Neither of them "identify with" the whole self.

So now you have this whole mind which remains whole, in truth. Then you have this fictional scenario playing out INSIDE your mind, where there is this strange dream of separateness and division.

What keeps the parts of the split mind separate are simply illusions - appearances - that there is something about each part which is different to the other, causing them to seem to be "not each other". This cannot be true in reality, but within the split mind (consciousness), you develop a multiple personality disorder.

This split plays out as dreams of various dramas of conflict. Other terms for this conflict are war, self-attack, condemnation, judgement, the whole drama of victims and victimizers, some things being good and others bad etc.

The funny thing is then, within your whole mind, there is sort of a "stage" with a "play" being performed, with characters, and there are at least two main characters. And each character is seemingly "opposite" to the other in as many ways as possible. They want nothing to do with each other, they want to emphasize the ways in which they are separate and unlike, so that the illusion of "why" they are not ONE is reinforced and maintained.

One of these major parts of the split mind is the persona, and the other part is the shadow. I don’t think the course explicitly uses those terms/words, but it definitely does speak about this in many places and ways.

In order for there to be multiple selves in the mind, ie identities, false identities, there has to be denial and the purpose of that denial is to "shut out" one of the selves from the awareness of the other one. There are whole sections about this in the course.

The "persona" part of the split mind as we’ll call it, is really a part of the ego which attempts to create an illusion of innocence. Really the purpose you had in creating the split to begin with was an attempted solution to your belief in sin.

You figured that "all of you" was sinful, and you could not tolerate this idea. There was no way to KEEP it and also escape it. You wanted to keep "real sin" because that was your tiny mad idea/wish. So you made up a solution which is totally insane, but which creates an illusion of it working.

The solution is to section off one part of your mind where you’ll house all the "bad" or "rejected" or "condemned and sinful" parts of yourself, and then you’ll keep another part of the mind where you’ll create an illusion of a completely "innocent seeming" self.

By keeeping the two parts away from each other, ie keeping the fake-innocent self (persona) "in the dark" about the sinful self (shadow), the persona is able to maintain an ILLUSION that "you" did not sin! It shoves all of the evidence of sinfulness into the unconscious shadow part of the mind, attacks it, disassociates from it, and projects it "away" from the persona as much as possible.

One thing to note here is that you did not really want to get rid of your belief in sin. You wanted to believe it as real and irreversible. So you devised a way to KEEP it but To PRETEND you did not want it, so that no one (including you) would suspect or question that you might’ve been the one who did it, so that nobody ever will LOOK AT the fact that it was you, and therefore the idea of real sin goes unchallenged. You make yourself out to seem "innocenct" or even remorseful, with FAKE GUILT, in order to pretend you did not want to sin and weren’t the one to do it, but it’s not true.

This is all taking place still within your mind, entirely. It has nothing to do with what is "outside" of you, or anything to do with anyone else. But because the persona part of the ego disassociates from the shadow, it makes it SEEM "to the persona self" that the shadow-self is NOT ITSELF. Ie it is "other than me".

What happens is you, as the whole mind, who has temporarily lost track of who you are, and who thinks you are a split mind, with multiple personalities, now "sides with" the persona self. It is fictional and totally fake, but it seems to make "you" look like you did not sin. So you allow this persona self to be IN your "conscious awareness", and you make sure to keep the shadow self OUT of awareness in unconsciousness.

The primary function of the persona therefore is to attack your whole self, to identify that some major portion of your self is a sinner and guilty and deserving to die, ie not good enough and can’t be loved because it’s supposedly "evil", it confines all *illusory apperances* of the "bad stuff" and shoves it into unconsciousness, by using denial.

The act of putting "distance" between the persona and the shadow therefore implements *disassociation*, which basically means you do not want to be "associated with" the sin that you believe you committed against God (so no-one would suspect you). So you distance yourself from it using this denial mechanism. This MAKES the shadow ie basically creates an enemy for the persona, who it hates and despises and wants nothing to do with, ON PURPOSE, so that it can KEEP the bad shit away from itself, making an illusion of innocence.

Since this is happening all entirely within the whole of your mind, BUT since you have identified your "self" only with the persona self and not the repressed sinner/shadow, you then "perceive" that you are NOT the shadow self. That it is some "identity" separate from what you are. You disassociate from it so heavily that you literally believe it is NOT YOU. ie, this other part of your own mind is NOT part of your own mind.

What then will happen, however, is the mind cannot get rid of this dark sin, because ideas do not leave their source (!), so it can’t actually get it OUT of the mind, it can only *disguise* it. The persona will then seem to experience that it is now this little helpless innocent-seeming perfect good likeable harmless little self, and that the shadow unconscious self is this big ugly monsterous enemy that it wants to keep hating in order to keep it OUT of AWARENESS. To maintain denial.

Now. What this has actually resulted in in terms of the Son of God, is that within His mind, he has invented these fictional characters, the conscious self who is fake, and the unconscious self which is denied. The conscious self, the persona, SHOWS UP as a BODY! It acts as a visible representation of "who I am", a fake identity, appearing innocent, born seemingly innocent, and no one would suspect that it had tried to murder God.

And then, everything OUTSIDE of the body, the entire "world" and "environment" and all "people who are not me", are actually projections of YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS MIND. So your unconscious mind (shadow) is actually outside of your body, and your conscious persona self is inside your body. You can see just how much disassociation there is for an average person, by looking at how much they believe that they are ONLY the self that is "in the body", little and helpless, and everyone else is "not me".

Since the person’s mind is split and the person has identified only with their fake persona self, thinking that everything outside of them is "not my persona self", this happens to map exactly to how we experience the world in terms of bodies and relationships. When another "body" shows up "out there", we regard it as "not myself".

This simultaneously "maps" our unconscious, repressed, disassociated belief that WE SINNED, onto that other person, because just as we believe that our own sinful shit is "not myself", we also believe that that person is "not myself". Therefore it is EASY to "associate" your own disassociated unconscious sin WITH that "not me" other person! This allows you to perceive, and believe, that the sin is IN THEM, it is THEIRS, NOT YOURS, and THEY are the one who was the sinner against God!

Truth is, your experience of what you see "in the not-me selves" - other people out there, is YOUR belief in sin, actually WITHIN your mind still, and you are now interacting with YOUR SHADOW, inside your mind, hallucinating that it is a separate person or content within someone else, and you actually come to believe that this other innocent person is the "one" who is sinning against you.

Any attack you seem to experience, will SEEM like it is being caused by other people. IT IS NOT! It is YOUR other split off part of your own mind - your shadow, attacking the REST of your split off mind - your persona - which you think is "all of myself", but which is only PART of yourself. The persona - your conscious self, who denies that it has an unconscious mind, is "attacked by" this other part of the mind that it believes is not even part of itself.

If you think about it, the only way that it is possible for the persona part of the mind to "be attacked" is if the attacker is INSIDE the realm of where the persona lives. It can only get "access" to the persona because it actually SHARES the same "host mind", and therefore the persona can be attacked by the shadow.

We often, as personas, not our real selves, will believe that the identity who is doing the attacking is "not me", and therefore someone else is attacking "you" (your persona) and it is nothing to do with "you". You will therefore identify with being the VICTIM, who has been unfairly treated and abused against its will, by this "other". This ego persona will see itself as JUSTIFIED in being angry and getting revenge, which it does by further attacking yourself and sectioning off even more parts of you which it deems sinful.

The main function of the persona is to first condemn yourself as a sinner, then try to section off the sinful parts of you to hide them and make them unconscious through denial/disassociation, and to then try to "keep" only the bits of yourself that it deems acceptable, worthy, attractive, valuable, credible, innocent, likeable, good, basically a picture of fake innocence... a picture of someone who no-one would suspect of murder ous intent or a sinful past.

The whole point of the persona is to DENY that you were the one who sinned against God, by pretending to be totally innocent and harmless. To do this, the persona has to attack you, split parts of you off, judge them as bad, make them unconscious, disassociate them from yourself, and only keep the smaller subset of illusory qualities that it says is "acceptable for now".

The persona is a perfectionist and is NEVER satisfied and has impossible standards. The ego thus ranges from suspicious (when in the persona mainly), to visciousness (when the hated guilty shadow self comes out of unconsciousness to express pain and guilt).

You need to realize that the persona is actively GETTING RID OF YOU, by emphasizing all the things that it finds "good" about you, and getting rid of all the things it finds "bad". And sooner or later, because you are never good enough for it (because ego denies love/lovability), it will strip away "bad stuff" until there IS No good stuff left, and you will be DEAD! The persona tries to "preserve a good self" in the name of getting rid of you! It is not on your side and it is not acting in your best interests.

What you need to realize then is that every enemy and attacker and abuser and victimizer is PART OF YOUR OWN MIND. It is the shadow in your mind, which your persona made up, coming back to attack the persona to try to point out the ways that the persona is actually a murderer. While the persona is busy claiming "I did not do it, it’s the shadow’s fault, it’s the sinner", the shadow is going to have in its agenda to "expose" the bullshit lies of the persona and point out the ways that "you" are NOT GOOD, and not pure or holy or right or happy etc. The persona hates this and sees it as attack or violation, but it’s the mind’s attempt to heal itself in a way.

When the unconscious pain (pain body) starts to come into awareness, the persona freaks out in fear and tries to suppress it and get rid of it and avoid it. Trying to get rid of IT is what happens when you try to get rid of OTHER PEOPLE because you think that THEY are IT and getting rid of them will solve your problem! Except the ego’s tactics DO NOT WORK! YOU will keep your shadow self and make it worse.

You have to realize that every attacker is PART OF YOU. And, what is being "attacked by" that attacker, is also PART OF YOU. The key is, the secret to salvation, which is that you are doing this ALL to yourself. You are BOTH attacking you (persona identified self) and are also BEING the attacker (shadow). BOTH of these FAKE CHARACTERS are in your mind. You put them both there. oYu are not EITHER of them

At some point, in your undoing of the ILLUSIONS that keep these two selves apart, and which maintain war, and which keep you thinking that other people are your enemies when it’s really YOU, and that YOU are not even the self that was being attacked, you will start to see through this split-minded perspective.

At some point, you will first of all ACCEPT that BOTH of these things are parts of your own mind, nothing to do with anyone else. That means the attacker and the attacked are both in your mind. Then you will realize, that if they are both in your mind, and you put them there, YOU - whatever you are really - must be maintaining both of them. If YOU are putting both of them in your mind, then YOU are literally the puppet master who is pitting these two selves AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Therefore the war that is waging between "them" is actually FICTIONAL, the claims that each of them makes about what the "other" is doing to the is an ILUSION - a fake story and a fake set of character traits and a fake scenario of victimization, IS NOT REAL.

IF... you, as the whole mind, contain both persona and shadow, and if you are the ONE who has put them there, and if the ways they SEEM to be two separate identities is NOT TRUE, then...

IF you can realize that YOU ARE BEING BOTH OF THEM, then suddenly you will see a COMMONALITY between them, a truth which completely obliterates the entir illusion of separation, undoes all the disassociation, collapses all denial, and totally blows up this whole FICTIONAL PLAY which has been playing out in your mind.

IF they are both you, and you are ONE SELF, looking upon both of them, and realizing that they MUST both be you because *YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF*, THEN.....nothing about them which *seems* separate can be true. They can’t BOTH exist as separate personalities if they are actually both you - ONE IDENTITY - not two identities.

Seeing this finally collapses the entire illusion, the split in the mind is OVERLOOKED, you forgive yourself for what you did not do, you stop playing the roles of attacker and attacked, victim OR victimizer, and you LET BOTH SIDES OF THE WAR GO. You realize your war with yourself could not be won because, since you were BOTH SIDES, you WERE ALWAYS LOSING, no matter who wins.

Seeing this futility will AWAKEN YOUR MIND to suddenly realizing, that since you are ONE REAL IDENTIY, NOT two fake ones, the fake ones cannot be real. And suddenly, they will DISAPPEAR. And since they were blocking your awareness of the WHOLE of who you are, and since you no longer see EITHER of them as your IDENTITY, suddenly your mind will AWAKEN to accepting and being AWARE OF who you ACTUALLY ARE, as ONE WHOLE SELF!

The fictional ego illusion deream will disappear from sight. Blocks to awareness will vanish. You will no longer pretend you are at war with yourself. You will no longer pretend to be multiple personalities. And you will simply return to your natural whole state of FULL AWARENSS OF ALL OF YOURSELF, as God created you. A mind which is whole, not split. A mind which is HOLY, not evil. A mind which is neither a victim or a victimizer. A mind which cannot BE attacked and CANNOT attack.

And now you are home, back to being who you really are, back with God, and in love FOREVER!