When you believe that something outside of you is the cause of your problem or upset, your mind's perception will start to experience yourself as though part of your being has 'opened up' to the other person, has exposed itself to them, is connected to them and vulnerable to them.
It feels then as if that person is directly putting your upset feelings into you. It's as though you opened an energetic doorway and merged with the other person's ego, allowing them to enter your inner space, giving them permission and access to actually 'cause you' to change - i.e. to become an upset victim.
You may not realize you do this, each time you are upset about someone or something, but you do. You are so used to it that you think it is normal. Your experience internally, of how you feel, in relation to some attacking/wrongful person, is that your insides have opened outward like a 'wound', you feel exposed, you see the other person as 'doing stuff to you', and you literally will feel like they actually are 'accessing' you - that you're in the midst of an open-air battle.
The way you can realize this is to take back responsibility for everything you are experiencing. Own your feelings. Admit that you feel the way you feel because these are YOUR feelings that YOU have chosen to feel, for absolutely no particular reason. And you have to admit that the way you feel has NOTHING to do with the other person at all. This locating of your responsibility in and around your feelings, essentially causes you to have a perceptual shift.
You now will see yourself as NOT being caused by the other person, therefore you are not a victim, and therefore what you are feeling has NOT been caused by them. These are your own experiences. And in a way, this 'detachment' puts SPACE between you and the other person's ego or whatever the illusion is that you're faced with. This will in a way act as a protective barrier or wall, sealing you in, making you experience yourself as secure and Invulnerable, NOT exposed, and that the FEELING ITSELF that you're experiencing is not BASED ON what the other person is doing.
When your feeling is not based on some external cause, then there is no FOUNDATION for it. Without a foundation, it has no cause, and IT MUST DISAPPEAR. So... taking full responsibility for everything you feel and experience, paradoxically, FREES YOU from all upsetting and negative experiences, because there is no foundation for any kind of harm or negativity when you are BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF. When you are being the LOVE that you are, you are invulnerable. When you are not being the love that you are, you become susceptible and exposed and a victim that is sure to be hurt. You don't want that. It's much better to not be upset and vulnerable.
Perfect immortality and complete invulnerability and protection and un-assailability of the Kingdom are all your natural inheritance if you will claim ownership of it.
Whatever you believe in, that is what you believe you deserve or are worthy of experiencing.
If you believe you sinned, you will believe you deserve an experience of guilt.
If you believe you're guilty, you will believe you deserve an experience of fear.
If you believe you're afraid, you will believe you deserve an experience of punishment.
If you believe you are being punished, you will believe you deserve an experience of death.
What are you worthy of? To become worthy of love, you must recognize that none of these accusations are true. You don't deserve any of them.
You did not sin, are not guilty, need not be afraid, there is no punishment coming, and you don't deserve to die.
Because separation didn't happen. So you're innocent.
"Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation."
"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appears as facts..."
"...All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent, or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions."
---------
The justification for anger can be explained purely in metaphysical logic.
A mind which is whole is wholly aware of all there is. This awareness is an awareness of all the facts, all the truth, the entire picture. Nothing is hidden.
Since nothing is hidden, it is obvious that anything you experience is chosen by yourself, you get everything you ask for, you never get anything you do not ask for, and all prayers are answered. There are no victims in heaven.
In this awareness is also the awareness of the secret to salvation, that nothing can happen to you unless you are doing it to yourself.
When some of the truth becomes hidden, through a block to awareness, or implementation of the ego thought system, the mind goes into darkness and cannot see the whole truth.
It therefore has only partial information. It is only partially aware. This means something is hidden from its awareness.
The mind always believes that it is aware of everything there is to be aware of, and assumes it is seeing the whole picture. Even when it is severely blocked, the mind still believes it is seeing the whole picture and is being completely objective.
It's awareness of what it does see, is used as a basis for its logic, and it makes sense out of the information it has. It thinks that what it sees makes sense to it, since it believes in it. It always thinks it is aware of the whole truth and all the facts, even if it is not.
When events transpire and something happens which appears not to have been caused by ones own self, this appearance is due to not being aware of how you do things to yourself. It means the mind has lost the ability to notice its own causing and asking and praying.
So now something happens and it seems like the mind did not ask for it to happen. It now seems as though it is getting something it did not ask for. Effects are showing up which it did not cause. At least to its perception. It is unconscious of the fact it did cause it.
Making sense of this lack of facts, this reduced picture, there essentially is no real explanation for how these events transpired. But the mind did not see that it itself was the cause of them. And so... it concludes completely "rationally", naturally, that it must have been a cause outside of itself.
This actually is not only the basis for all anger it is also the basis for projection of causality and sin outside of oneself. Since we do not see that we chose or caused things, it makes it very easy to assume that there is an external cause.
So now, since it was not myself that made me be attacked, to my knowledge, it must've been someone else. And since I did not cause or ask for this attack, it was UNJUSTIFIED.
What also will be unjustified is pinning the cause for the effects onto something external, because even if you can find a scapegoat to blame it on, you will never be wholly certain that it was them, because it was not them, and so this will engender automatic fear that you are accusing the wrong person. It can only ever loosely make sense as to who caused it, and so in this projection there is always uncertainty.
If it were true, that I am attacked by a cause other than myself, it means my innocence was unfairly treated, I was willed against my will, and someone has sinned against me.
THIS, automatically gives me the logical justification to be upset and angry. In fact, it is merely the perception that cause must have been outside myself, that automatically made me PERCEIVE, that I am "at the effect of the world". So now effects are starting to show up inside myself, I am started to be changed into an effect, I'm experiencing emotional reactions which are effects (which I'm putting there), and it SEEMS like it is being done to me by someone else.
It then seems to make perfect sense that someone is attacking you without just cause and this completely justifies your own upset, your own retaliation, all sense of needing revenge, all anger, all rage, all blame and scapegoating, all projection of sin, all making someone wrong, and the supposed need to "address the imbalance" by "compensating" for the attack with a counter-attack.
Anger then simply seems to be rational, seems to make sense, seems justified, normal, natural, and completely well founded, based on the lack of awareness and limited perception.
This means anger is NEVER justified, because it is always a FALSE CONCLUSION, and a false premise. It never is founded in the whole truth. It is never founded in all the facts. It is always founded in a victim mindset from someone who has a limited perspective of themselves, who does not see that they CAN only attack themselves, and that no-one else has the ability to attack them.
The people who become angry, while not being justified in the anger, ever, nevertheless DO NOT KNOW that they are making this mistake. There is information OUTSIDE OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS, that they do not currently have access to. There are some FACTS, which they have no knowledge of. There is key evidence, proof, which has been concealed.
And so they are simply MISTAKEN, not guilty or sinful, just mistaken, because they're trying their best to make sense of their limited experience of the whole. This is why Jesus tells us to "forgive them for they know not what they do"... because literally, they DO NOT KNOW what they are doing. They are acting erroneously, based on not enough factual information. And they don't even realize it, because of that block to awareness.
No-one in their right mind would become angry, ever, or attack anyone, for any reason. No-one in their right mind would ever justify anger on any basis. The fact is, people WILL, even MUST, become angry, or at least projecting of sin (cause), outside of themselves, when awareness is blocked. The projection of cause is AUTOMATIC as soon as awareness of the facts are blocked, because these blocks make you unaware that YOU are the cause of everything. This is the core root of all projection.
So simply, those who are angry, are not making sense, they do not know they are not making sense, and they are trying their best to make sense out of being in the dark. They are confused, lost, afraid, alone, separated, seeing themselves threatened and victimized, do not realize they have done all of this to themselves, and are not even AWARE that they are doing ALL of it to themselves.
This, if you can recognize it, is the justification for FORGIVENESS, in which FORGIVENESS IS ALWAYS JUSTIFIED. Forgiveness is always justified because no-one who attacks is EVER in their right mind, and no-one who attacks is EVER fully aware of all the facts, and no-one who attacks WOULD EVER attack if they had access to the truth.
Therefore, attack is not PERSONAL, or about you. It's always about the person attacking and their attempt to deal with the strange twisted view of reality they are experiencing, in which they are simply freaking out because they've lost a sense of proper perspective, context, and contrast to what is true. All of their reactions are COMPLETELY PREDICTABLE, based on the metaphysical state their awareness is in. No-one who has a block to awareness can escape coming to false conclusions and then feeling justified in revenge.
So if we can recognize, attackers are only attacking themselves, and they are not in their right mind, and they do not know what they are doing, and they are literally unconscious to some degree, and that if they HAD all the facts they would instantly AGREE with you (if you are in truth) that you do not deserve attack and you are not at fault, then you would be willing to RECOGNIZE your brother's innocence, and also acknowledge the impossibility of being attacked by them in the first place.
Essentially, everyone deserves forgiveness simply on the grounds that no-one ever attacks on a basis of awareness of reality, only because they are undergoing a state of sleep and their view of reality has become distorted. They are simply insane. All attack is insanity. And they cannot really be held accountable for acting on a basis of not being in their right mind.
Those who are angry simple need healing and an increase in awareness. To accept the truth and admit to their inherent invulnerability as lovable children of God.
Most of your perceptual errors and projections come about because you simply lack some information. You are unaware of some truth. Some pieces of the picture are missing for you.
You try to make sense of what you see, ie what you are aware of, and you look around and you do not see yourself as being the cause of what's happening. So it MUST be someone else.
It becomes totally reasonable to come to these false conclusions, based on the evidence you are aware of. They make sense. You're just trying to make sense out of what you are experiencing.
So if you seem to be upset and suffering and you do not SEE that you have done this directly to yourself, you will quite naturally and understandably start looking for causes elsewhere. Maybe it was someone else that did this to you?
And then it becomes very plausible and acceptable that its "true" that someone else must've done this, so you blame them. You're not really trying to be an asshole, you're just trying to make sense of your experience of your little slice of reality, and are confused because you don't really know everything there is to know.
So it is really forgivable, that you make these mistakes. They are very understandable mistakes, given how little information you are aware of. There are all kinds of things going on in your UN-concious mind which you are not even aware of, and there are ways you're doing things to yourself that you do not even see.
And there are beliefs that you have suppressed that you may not even be aware that you believe. And as these things play out, they seem to come out of nowhere and you can't explain how or why, they seem unjustified, and therefore you are justified in being angry and see yourself as victimized.
It's ok. You just don't have the full awareness of all the facts that you would need, to come to any other conclusions. Based on what you ARE aware of, your conclusions make a lot of sense, IF these limited facts were all the facts. But that's a big IF, and they are not all the facts at all.
All you need to do then is become more AWARE of more of the truth, to make what was unconscious conscious, to re-awaken your whole mind, and become able to SEE the whole of the truth. This will clear EVERYTHING up for you. You will see it all in a new light, and you'll be like, OHHHHH, now it makes more sense!
Then what you thought was a truthful explanation for why you were a victim, now becomes more obviously seen as a choice you made on your own, or something you did to yourself. And now you can very EASILY let other people off the hook because you can SEE that they really did not do this to you - you did it.
All you need is just more information. More awareness of the truth. That will shed so much light on what you are experiencing and will explain everything. And it will help you to see that there is really no need to be upset, because separation hasn't even really happened and nothing in this world is real at all. And then you'll remember to laugh, and be justified in laughing, because the truth will set you free from your mistaken perceptions.
Sometimes when an old hurt is coming out, you'll start to project it onto someone else. It's kind of as if you switch on a movie projector, you fetch an old tape from your vault, load it up and press play. The movie starts to project and you start to see it and experience it. Except now it's mapped onto other people who probably were totally unrelated to causing it, which starts to make it seem like they are causing it.
As you project, you are kind of hurling the pain at someone else. Whatever the issue is, let's say you are angry at someone for how they treated you or that they acted a certain way that was hurtful. As this hurt comes up in your mind, it will find a target and project toward it. It actually tries to turn that person INTO the person that you are upset about, and you start interpreting their actions as though they're doing exactly what that person did.
And as you do this projecting, it's kind of like you are judging, condemning and attacking the person with this stuff. You're trying to turn them into this stuff, to fill the role. And for most people this actually influences them and may cause them to start acting in a way that fits the 'role' that you are projecting. And this makes it even more plausible that all of this upset is because of them.
In the midst of such hallucinations you can really get to believing that this person is doing this to you, and at the same time you are feeling the old hurt, and putting two and two together you think its because of them. But what's really happening is the person is just triggering your old hurt and you're not really dealing with it.
Whatever the person seems to be doing, it likely is similar to what someone else did in your past. Form-wise it may not be similar at all. It could be that the person has the same attitude, or reminds you of how someone was a certain way when around you, even though their physical behavior and appearance may be different. The psychological 'content' seems to match and this creates a connection.
In this state of semi-consciousness it's pretty hard to realize that this is what is going on, especially when you're convinced it's all to do with this other person. But what you're feeling is your own stuff, for which you are responsible, and this projection is just hurting the other person. You are accusing them of what you believe someone else did to you so that you have a way to scapegoat the energy and seem to get it out of your mind. Which doesn't work.
The only way is to realize that you are triggered, you are reacting, you are re-experiencing old stuff, it's nothing to do with anyone else, and you need to own it and heal it. Taking the burden off the shoulders of the other person is a good start.
Had a nice chat with Jesus last night.
One observation made is, that you can't just jump straight into fear or guilt. It's not like you can go from innocence straight to feeling afraid, although it seems this is what we do because it can happen quite fast. There are steps that MUST precede it.
e.g. if you are afraid, you have to:
1) separate from love, 2) believe its really happened (sin), 3) become guilty, 4) feel compelled to fear punishment.
So you don't just 'get afraid', you have to have first done these other things. Similarly if you find yourself mainly in guilt, you didn't just become guilty, there had be these other steps before it (ie separation and sin).
Once you see where you are on the spectrum between love and death, ie:
1) Love/atonement/Holy Spirit
2) Separation idea
3) Sin (something really has happened)
4) Guilt (guilty for making it happen)
5) Fear (afraid of the punishment that guilt suggests will come)
6) Punishment (actually experiencing punishment)
7) Death/ego
... then you can figure out how you need to 'undo' the preceding steps. If you find yourself mainly in fear on an issue, figure out what guilt it was based on. If you are afraid, you ALWAYS have guilt underneath it. If you mainly find yourself feeling guilty about something - at least you haven't moved into fear, but now you need to realize there was some sense of 'sin' underneath it.
As you move away from the 'death' end of the spectrum you are moving away from the ego. As you move away from the Love end of the spectrum you are moving towards the ego.
You need to move yourself toward the atonement end of the spectrum if you want to be at peace. AND... this is the important part, you need to go ALL the way. You don't want to go all the way because the closer you get to it the more it challenges the ego's deepest-held truths (e.g. that the world has happened - which is a 'sin' idea). It also means getting up-close and personal with God which your ego does not want to do.
Many people (me too) get stuck in the middle of the spectrum somewhere around the fear or guilt areas, and think we need to just undo the fear or guilt, but really we need to look at what the guilt is based on, which is some kind of sin, then look at what the sin is based on, which is some sense of separation from God and yourself, and then undo even the idea of being separate, so that you can REUNITE with God and yourself in the At-one-ment.
At any time, all you need to ask yourself is:
1) Where am I at on the spectrum between holy spirit and ego?
2) Where do I want to be? (ideally, with Holy Spirit)
Then work your way one step at a time uncovering the foundation of where you find yourself.
You might be angry with someone, you might be upset and annoyed about what they're doing or how they're treating you or others, but here's the secret.
There is no such thing as genuine anger.
Anger always has a secret motive of USING the other person to get rid of YOUR own sin and guilt. Always.
It's very convenient that anger comes across as though you are justified, outraged, offended, annoyed, as though it's entirely someone else who is wrong and not you.
And even in the midst of that anger or upset you will feel all hurt and victimized and unfairly treated, making it seem like this experience is something you totally do not want and have not asked for. You even think you want to get rid of the anger and make it go away. Except you don't.
It serves your secret plan to get rid of your deeper sin, which you've made unconscious to yourself.
You might complain, you might blame, but you're getting a huge benefit by maintaining this state of anger and upset.
You WANT other people to attack you, you WANT other people to hurt you, and you WANT them to do things to you so that you will have a great opportunity to find them guilty.
You'll then jump at the chance to accuse them, regardless of how upset you are or how much you perceive that you don't want this to be happening. You DO want it to be happening.
You are using other people to hurt you so that you can get revenge and get rid of your own sin. You're trying to make them wrong, think of them as the one who is wrong or bad, so that you have this opportunity.
So in your anger, it might seem as though you're upset because of what they are doing to YOU. But what about what you are doing to THEM?
Your desire to see them as wrong is an attack. Your desire to find them guilty is an attack. Your desire to pin the blame on them is an attack. This hardly justifies your innocence.
No-one else is ever the real cause of your upset. No-one else ever attacks you or makes you experience effects. No-one else puts the effects into you or into your body. No-one can do anything to you but your own mind.
You have to own up to this and admit that YOU believe you are sinful and guilty, regardless of whether other people seem to be accusing you. YOU believe it. And you need to undo that belief (go to the Atonement) if you are to be at peace.
Then having forgiven yourself for what you did not REALLY do (sin is not real), you'll be able to recognize that this other person was innocent all along, they were COMPLETELY uninvolved in what you were experiencing. They didn't cause any of it. You were just using them and doing it to yourself.
Two fighters are in the boxing ring. They move around and jab at each other. As they become closer, they fight more. They punch and hurt each other, trying to defeat the other. There is no love here. It is anger and aggression and forcefulness gone wild. They seek revenge for what they see the other as having done to them.
This is representative of all ego confrontations, in which one person is trying to attack another, to justify the attack, to try to "win", and to hurt and destroy the other in order to achieve some kind of prize.
Now, the round ends and the boxers are required to go to their corners. Notice what happens. The fighting stops. There is temporary peace. There is relaxation and relief.
What also has happened, is "distance" has been put between the two. They have stopped lurching at each other, they are no longer trying to inflict pain on each other, and have recoiled into themselves.
This is symbolic of forgiveness. In forgiveness, what you want to do is look at the horizontal cause and effect relationship in which you are believing someone else did this to you, you plan to do that to them, etc... you need to cut all of that out and essentially "separate" the two fighters.
You do this by examining how you believe that you caused the other person, and how you believe they they caused you, and you STOP believing that. This collapses the horizontal causality.
So.... that person did not hit me. That person did not affect me. I am not caused by them. They have done nothing to me. I am not at the effect of that person. They have no power over me. I am responsible for everything I am experiencing. I must have done this to myself.
And.... I have not done anything to that person. I did not affect them. I did not cause them. I have not done anything to them. I have no power over them. They are responsible for what they are experiencing. They must have done this to themselves.
This is prying apart an ARTIFICIAL CAUSALITY which the ego has tried to establish between the two of you. You are withdrawing all blame and projection from them, and recognizing that their blame and projection onto you is nothing to do with you. This dismantles the entire ego thought system of believing that someone else is the cause of you, or affecting you, or that you have been affected in any way.
This breaks and reverses the ego's use of cause and effect. There is no cause outside of you. You are not at the effect of anything outside of you. You are returning to your "corner" and disconnecting from the other person and are ceasing to try to make them responsible for your experience.
So be like the fighters in their corners. Back off. Take back your projections. Stop trying to attack others. Stop believing they are attacking you. The ego has no defense against this because it literally lowers defenses and exposes you, which paradoxically makes you invulnerable.
If you are feeling like someone else is wrong, someone else is guilty, someone else is at fault, someone else is sick, someone else is doing something they shouldn't be, someone else is afraid, someone else is not awake, someone else is pissing you off, someone else is the cause of any upset etc.... YOU ARE MISTAKEN.
The problem we have though is that once we get into the way of perceiving, the mindset, where we actually are quite adamant about how it is someone else who is wrong, it may not even occur to us that we need to forgive or that there is any other way to look at this. We can get so absorbed with anger and reactions and frustrations, that compound and increase the sense that the other person is wrong. It's all their fault. And we may not even REALIZE that we are actually experiencing being a victim right now.
Often when we are victims we are actually in a state of anger or frustrations and projection and that means that we're really really convinced that all of the 'problem' is outside of ourselves. Like, literally, it seems like it's got nothing to do with us. And we don't even recognize that we feel victimized by whatever it is we think the other person is doing wrong. Anger and frustration for example are quite strong energies which seem justified and which aren't usually interpreted as victimhood.
Victimhood is often equated with the experience and perhaps the acknowledgement that something is happening against your will - at least the awareness that you are suffering. When you are upset and pissed off at how wrong the other person is, you may not even have that awareness, because you feel like you WANT to feel angry and SHOULD feel angry, rather than that that you are actually suffering in a state of victim consciousness.
So an early step is, to recognize, if you are angry and upset, you most likely - pretty much definitely - are experiencing the situation as a VICTIM, and that means you are actively SEEING yourself as a victim, and playing the ROLE of a victim, and are actually CHOOSING that role. And you don't have to.
Just because you currently are really passionate about how the other is 'wrong', that doesn't mean you are in your right mind. You don't have peace, so something is amiss. Do you want peace, or do you want to keep being angry and outraged and justified in doing so, as a victim? Do you want to keep suffering? And, is the solution to your suffering that the other person changes and stops doing what they're doing, OR is it that YOU actually need to change yourself, so that you stop experiencing the situation as a victim? That's not so easy to admit to, or to have a willingness to pursue. It's much easier to skapegoat the other person and to expect them to be the one who is meant to change. That's the ego's form of forgiveness.
And there's a trap you can easily fall into. In the situation, just based on an evaluation of what's happening and how most people would view it, sometimes the other person IS seeming to be wrong, or IS severely mistaken. Maybe they are lying, maybe they are deluded, maybe they are attacking you, etc... so there is now 'evidence' that they are wrong. And this is a severe trap because now there is a risk that you will be so convinced they are wrong based on the situation, that this JUSTIFIES even more you condemning them for being wrong. And this becomes even more of an unconscious reaction. It wouldn't be so hard to get out of this if they were more obviously right.
But when even the situation itself clearly shows that the other is wrong/mistaken, it's very much harder to stop yourself from using that to judge them. So they're wrong, okay, that's fine, but does that mean you have to be right about it? Do you have to make them wrong for being wrong? What about recognizing they are wrong, but seeing that this wrongness is a mistake that calls for FORGIVENESS, rather than you conveniently using is to ATTACK them for it? Once you enter into attacking someone for them being 'actually wrong', you are falling into the ego's trap and likely will become even more upset.
So stop. Step back. And have this little willingness..... maybe it's ME that is mistaken. Maybe I am projecting. Maybe the other person is not as wrong as I'm making out. Maybe the other person IS wrong but I don't have to react to that wrongness with more mistakes. Maybe what I see in them IS my stuff. Maybe it's not actually their own wrongness. Maybe all the guilt I see in them, even their sickness, even their fear, even their delusions, even their lies, even their attacks, what if that is actually MINE? And what if I need to take that back and seek true forgiveness for it from Holy Spirit?
This is the beginning of taking responsibility. No matter how the situation seems, whatever you are seeing IN it, whatever you see IN the person, whatever you think is THEIRS and not yours, IT IS YOURS. Take it back. Own it. Then take it to Holy Spirit for correction. The other person is INNOCENT. They were just holding onto your guilt FOR you, so that you could disown it. Get honest as fast as you can.
Whatever you see in something, if you think it is inherently offensive, it is not. The offensiveness is in your own mind, and you put it there.
That can be hard to accept because it means that you've been used to this idea of an objective reality outside of yourself all this time. A reality which has its own inherent qualities and which reports them to you as though they are distinct from your perception.
What it implies now is that what you're experiencing as reality, is in fact a hallucination that's part of your own mind's malfunctioning, that you literally are inventing everything that bothers you, that you are doing all that to yourself.
This implies also that there is no fixed reality out in the world, and therefore there is no inherent truth based on form. You literally give everything the meaning that it has for you.
ACIM lesson #2, right at the start: "I have given everything I seeā¦all the meaning that it has for me."
This means that you are basically inventing every single justification that you think is truth, or that you think is based on objective facts outside of you. It means that, if you want to, and when it suits you, you MAKE UP everything that you think is true.
If you are in favor of something, you will make up reasons why it is a good idea, to support it and lend weight to your conviction that it is somehow inherently right. And if you are against something, you will make up reasons why it is a bad idea, in order to continue to support your belief that the reality outside of you is fixed and has nothing to do with your experience of it.
It can be perhaps alarming to discover that you are literally making everything up as you go along, and that all the things you thought were factual or true are really just your rationalizations. You decide what stuff means. You lend it credibility and pretend that this credibility comes from outside of you.
You think that other people's opinions, authority, certifications, education, experience, or even physical evidence, are all ways in which the world has an inherent truth. You have come to depend on this notion that you are not experiencing the results of your own made up subjective fantasy, but that everything that's going on is happening "on its own" without your input. And because you do not see the ways that you contribute to it or indeed create it, you do not accept that IT HAS NO TRUTH.
This leaves you in a kind of limbo like state where you're kind of just hanging there with no sense of what the truth outside you is anymore. If you're making up all the meaning, and quite literally the entirety of humanity is totally making up the meaning of everything in society as it goes along, then really there IS no inherent meaning outside of your mind.
This means the world is basically either neutral or insane, and that, based on the ego, it CANNOT make sense. There cannot be truth to it, and since it is a mental hallucination, it is nothing better than a chaotic illusion. Trying to "understand it" is an attempt to discover that it has an inherent meaning of its own, separate from your mind. We are very addicted and conditioned to continually look for meaning outside of ourselves, in the world, in order to disown true meaning (God/Self).
This is what happens when you try to figure things out, diagnose sickness, analyze situations, look for what is really happening, try to find proof, explain the background of something, try to identify causes, look for rational explanations or depend on the opinions of other people's authority. This is you attempting to turn an illusion into a reality, trying to convince yourself that you are NOT the one who has given it all the meaning it has, or that it is not just some blank canvas onto which you've projected an entirely fantastical world.
What this means for your mind and your sense of reality is that you cannot continue to claim that there is an objective world out there, and nor does that world have its own meaning at all. It is in fact a meaningless world, and this meaningless world cannot be understood unless you transcend it.
ACIM lessons 10 through 14:
"10 My thoughts do not mean anything."
"11 My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."
"12 I am upset because I see a meaningless world.
"13 A meaningless world engenders fear."
"14 God did not create a meaningless world."
If the world is meaningless, and God did not create it (thus it is not objective reality), then this shows you that every meaning you see in it is made up but your thoughts, which are themselves meaningless and contain "pretend meanings". These pretend meanings attempt to give meaning to a world which has none.
What you may be afraid to admit is that it is not possible to find truth in any way shape or form in the world, because the world is not real. And that means your mind, your sense of reality, has been believing that it's had nothing to do with what you perceive all this time. When in fact it is the sole inventor of all the meanings that you think the world has.
Everything supposedly "out there" is neutral and therefore if you think something is good or bad or right or wrong or acceptable or unacceptable it is ONLY because you're making up a truth which you try to turn into reality and try to justify to yourself as being objective. It is not. It is subjective hallucination. So if there's no truth out there, it leaves you sort of hanging as to how to deal with reality.
It is as though you create your own reality, which is a popular new-age concept, which also leads on to manipulating the world. But this really is denying the fact that you do not create reality. You are creating UNREALITY. But it's a step closer to realizing that what you are experiencing is coming from you, and therefore what you perceive is not necessarily objectively real.
You're dreaming, and only God creates reality!
This is why in your awakening journey you then have to go through the process of recognizing the part that your mind plays in inventing meaning, how it distorts perception, how you contribute to what shows up outside of you, how you use it, how completely subjective you're being, and how everything that you thought was objectively real is in fact not real at all.
As you do this you will gradually realize more and more that there IS an objective reality, it's just not "out there" as a physical world, and instead it is within, in your Oneness with God. Formless, timeless, spaceless, ageless. The ONE and only meaning. A meaning that has not been fragmented into a billion conflicts. A meaning which hasn't been artificially attributed to an illusion. A meaning which ACTUALLY IS MEANINGFUL to you - that you can feel in your heart, in your very being.
God is true meaning. God is the one and only meaning. All else is meaningless.