Lately for me what has become starkly evident and true of everyone, is the rather dark and twisted truth that everyone is self-destructive. Everyone is trying to die. Everyone is condemning themselves for a sin that never really happened, and the wages of sin is self-inflicted death. Everyone is being unfair to themselves, mis-representing themselves, attacking themselves and hurting themselves.
"...A dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."
"Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
EVERYONE!
It's a suicidal planet. I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone has the same degree of "deep self-hatred", but it is certainly rampant. The guilt that people have over the separation has driven them insane. We've collaborated on making an insane and stupid world where suffering seems normal and punishment is atonement.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."
Let's just say it again. The whole world is MAD. And this is not merely an allegation or a speculation. It is EXTENSIVE. "This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."
"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt"
Even in biblical terms, if I recall, we're sort of told that each of us on earth has become a "sinner" ie believing in sin, and that we need to "repent" ie find our innocence again.
So what I see now is the fact that we've got a huge population of people who believe they have separated from God. The course calls us "the separated ones." We believe we've accomplished separation by attacking God, or that which is in truth not attackable. And because it is not possible, yet we believe it, we are insane, because now we believe something impossible is true. And this all began with an insane idea.
"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless."
"In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
We as immortal beings, accused ourselves of a sin we could never commit, made ourselves horrendously guilty for it, attacked ourselves, punished ourselves, entered an insane dreaming state in which we dream of being mortal, made up every form of suffering and sickness, and try to kill ourselves off to prove we are right. MADNESS!!!
Fortunately our entire state of insanity is entirely temporary, entirely unfounded, entirely untrue, and entirely correctable, without the slightest punishment called for. We are all just very mistaken people, who believe absolute bullshit lies that we've taught ourselves, and we need correction. We need help from outside of the hell we made to help us wake up to reality and recognize what is true.
"My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever."
"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY. You therefore saw yourself AS IF you were WITHOUT it. By making another Kingdom WHICH YOU VALUED, you did NOT keep the Kingdom of God alone in your minds, and thus placed part of your mind OUTSIDE of it. What you have made has thus DIVIDED YOUR WILL and given you a sick mind that MUST be healed. Your vigilance AGAINST this sickness IS the way to heal it."
Such defenses are put in place on purpose. They are chosen. They have a purpose, to fulfill a perceived need. They have a function - a task that they are to perform in order to achieve a goal.
The goal of sickness is to defend you or protect you or counter-attack against something you have perceived which seems to threaten your existence. Isn't it strange that a retaliation against a perceived threat damages you?
Sickness is not just some thing that happens. It is a device, a deliberate mechanism or tool that you use for a specific purpose. Like a bandaid, you use it to help your little wounds to heal. Or a screwdriver, you use it to help screw screws into wood. Sickness helps you to be protected against what you perceive as an attack.
Sickness implements separation. It pushes away the attacker and creates a gap or distance between you, so that you feel a sense of perceived safety. You want to put distance between you and the threat. Or put up a really solid wall that blocks them. These blocks are blocks to awareness.
The result is what expresses as a materialization of physical form in a distorted configuration, which is what we usually refer to as "sickness", illness or disease. The mind is literally warping the body to try to turn it into a defense mechanism.
The ONLY purpose of sickness is to defend you. This is the only reason why you want it. And it is the reason why you really have an actual desire to keep it. If you were to remove the defense, and if the attacker is still present without having changed at all, then you will be in danger.
You will also go to great lengths to build an entire fictional story around the symptoms of sickness explaining and justifying why the sickness ITSELF is the problem that you want to get rid of, in order to DENY that you really want to KEEP it, because to truly get rid of it would expose you to your enemy. We will make a lot of noise about the unfairness of the sickness and about how we did not ask for it, in order to HIDE the fact that we did ask for it on purpose and we are the ones who put it in place. To admit that would threaten to undo it, which goes against the entire point of us creating the sickness in the first place.
You do not want to remove your defense because of this. It is creating an illusion of safety and protection, further covered-up by layer upon layer of denial and displacement of what the real problem is. Unfortunately, all defenses are attacks and your own defenses are attacking you as much as the other. Construct a razor-wire fence and you better be careful not to touch it!
The only purpose of that defense is to block a threat. You must look at what it is that you believe is a threat. Typically it is anything which your ego perception mis-perceives as the opposite or undoing of itself. Your sense of identity is at stake. Any suggestion of "truth" which implies that the ego does not exist, will threaten "you" when you are identified as the ego.
Your false beliefs are your artificial identity which you believe are the truth. You want to protect that truth as though your life depends on it. You see its opposite as false, evil, and an attack. So long as you remain loyal to those misperceptions you will defend them, even if doing so requires you to implement defenses which attack you as much as anyone else. All defenses are double-eged swords and you cannot escape their toxicity and potency.
What must be truly undone before you will be willing to let down your defenses, is to learn to accept the truth as it is and not as it appears to be when seen through the ego. This will have to mean that your sense of identity is mistaken and must be set free. It must shift from "I am this ego thing" to "I am holy and innocent". Forgiveness must happen of yourself, and healing must take place in terms of how you see yourself or who or what you regard yourself as.
You need to find a willingness to be open to being mistaken about who you thought you were, and what you thought was true, so that you can allow the truth to save you from this illusion. The truth will show you a new identity and reveal the truth about you. This will reveal how the ego is in fact the thing which is false, and that it is not who you are.
If you can accept the truth as helpful and welcome instead of as a threat to your existence, you will see no NEED to defend yourself against it. You will not see attack in it, having not attacked. You will see no justification for trying to prevent it or reject it. You will accept it and allow it to be in you. You will invite it in and it will be your Identity.
At this point you will be WILLING to accept that your device of defense and separation is no longer needed. It's function is irrelevant. The sickness was ONLY serving your purpose of trying to protect your "self". You no longer need this protection because who and what you are is not being threatened by the truth but is in agreement with it. The truth is your friend. You can now let down your defenses.
This means, you will now admit that the sickness only came into being because you put it there, wanted it, needed it, and it was helping you - or so you thought. You have now been corrected and you now RECOGNIZE that this sickness was just something you used to believe in and no longer do. It is now false. It is not the truth. It is not something you need. You have not purpose for it and you admit that it is just a way of attacking yourself more. You don't want it anymore and don't have any attachment to it.
Illusions recognized as such MUST disappear. All of the symptoms and consequences of that so-called "sickness" must disappear. "He will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him" - meaning that your willingness now to admit the truth (allow Holy Spirit access) can and will supernaturally UNDO and make disappear all forms and signs and symptoms and content of sickness. All of the expressions - consequences - of deciding poorly will be undone. Your lack of support or need for the sickness will let it go and it will just vanish.
Properly recognized as completely false, unhelpful, unneeded, unwelcome, pointless, futile, purposeless, meaningless, and utterly useless, the sickness will be recognized as having no reality or truth or validity and this will make it disappear. Literally. All symptoms will go if this is truly deeply accepted.
The sickness was nothing more than a temporary protective device which you wanted and needed. If you don't need it, you WILL drop it. If your will is genuine and you've become really really honest with yourself, that sickness will be undone. And sickness is nothing more than a belief that separation is the answer to God, or that separation can save you from the truth. Undoing sickness heals your mind.
Once the sickness - as mental illness - as belief in separation - AND as symptoms of defense - is gone, THEN you will be at peace. Not before. No-one can be at peace when they are at war with themselves or with the truth. No-one can be at peace who believes sickness is real and must just be accepted. No-one can be at peace who is using death as a defense against the wrath of God. True peace can and must be experienced as complete and total perfect "health" in mind and all the expressions of mind.
If you truly do not believe in separation from the truth, you will have no defenses and you will not exhibit symptoms of sickness. You will walk your walk and not just talk your talk. And you will demonstrate therefore, by example, living example, that you are immortal and invulnerable because you do not believe in separation or sickness and they are not real. You will thus teach others that sickness is not the truth and the truth needs no defense. If signs of sickness remain, you are teaching the exact opposite because, in all honesty, you have not completely undone your belief in separation.
Sickness must go. Disease must be healed. Death must be undone. Resurrection is the only truth. If you are sick you are attacking yourself, everyone else, and God. A guiltless mind cannot suffer, and a guiltless mind exhibits no symptoms of sickness or damage. A broken body is a sign that the mind has not been healed. Complete healing is not only possible but necessary. You must teach that nothing has happened to you and you can't do that intellectually. You must show it and act like it.
"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."
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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.
"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, the mind HEALS THE BODY (making sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE) because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything."
This quote is often MIS USED in attempt to prove that if the mind is free of guilt, it cannot suffer WHEN THE BODY IS SICK, or WHEN THE BODY IS DYING.
This is BULLSHIT. It is taken out of context. A sane mind MUST HEAL THE BODY and makes sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. You are not supposed to "transcend sickness". You are not supposed to sit on a fence and watch while the body dies, believing you are not it. You are supposed to MAKE IT LIVE.!!!!!!! Only through LIFE can the body be made to disappear forever.
"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."
A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.
Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.
Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.
Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.
The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".
To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.
Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.
It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.
The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.
Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.
Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.
Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.
Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.
It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.
Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.
You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.
The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.
Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.
Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.
Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.
In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.
Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.
It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.
It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.
You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.
This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.
To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.
Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.
You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.
Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.
Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.
Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.
Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.
It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.
You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.
You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.
"We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING."
Believing in separation from God produces a split in the mind. The mind becomes confused because it's trying to believe in both light and dark, or true and false, without distinguishing between them. The will becomes divided and the mind seems to form two areas. Being in fear (uncertainty), you are now "in two minds".
One area seems to become associated with "who and what I am", and the other area seems to be projected as "who I am not", seen as outside yourself in others. You can refer to these as the persona and the shadow. The persona is the accepted parts of mind and the shadow is the denied repressed parts.
In this dynamic, there's always two parts to what you experience. For example if you are in fear, where you believe that you are under attack by another, you are in fact also attacking them. But the part of you that is attacking them is dissociated and projected - kind of disowned. You don't want to believe it's still part of you. So you "associate it" with someone else.
So then in fear you see yourself as "only the victim" and you do not see yourself as "the victimizer". But your mind, as a whole, is actually playing both roles. It's just that the projected disowned role of victimizer seems like it's "not you", and the you that you think is being victimized is just one split off half of the mind.
"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."
"Ideas leave not their source."
So the split mind has sort of become divided against itself and is now at war with itself. And various different properties seem to be assigned to one half, which you accept as "yourself", and the other half is denied and projected onto others as "not yourself".
Yet both parts are in your mind and don't go outside of it. So this whole roleplay of the two parts interacting, is happening inside your mind - ie you as a whole are actually doing it to yourself. This is the secret of salvation, to realize that you are NOT just one half of the equation. You are playing BOTH sides.
This is actually true of all things ego. If you take the position of victim, you are also victimizing. If you take the position of fear, you are also frightening and terrorizing. If you take the position of being sick at the hands of the world, you are also causing your own sickness. If you take the position of being helpless against death, you are also trying to destroy yourself from the outside in - which seems indirect.
So if i catch myself being afraid, I need to also remind myself that I am also the one who is scaring myself because I am the one who is doing the attacking. If I catch myself focusing on sickness, I need to remind myself that I am also the one causing sickness. If I am having pain, I need to realize I am making myself be in pain while pretending that it's not coming from me.
The stronger the state of dissociation, the less "oneness" there is with others. You'll see others as separated off from you, and you'll want nothing to do with them. You may even want to "get rid of them" at all costs, or wish they'd not exist, in extreme cases. The other seems to look truly "not me", to you, to such an extent that you think you are justified in blaming them for causing everything.
But what that means is that your mind is divided and strongly "taking sides" against itself. It's hiding from the other part of itself which it has projected through blame. You might think that the innocent victim self is the whole of your self, or your mind, because it's all you seem to be aware of as "within you".
This is because THAT part, thinks of the OTHER part, as OUTSIDE of itself. And therefore due to this separation between the two parts, you - this one part - believes the other part is "not you". And this is the major ego hurdle to be overcome.
Jesus describes ACIM as a course in "reintegration".
"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE."
"The purpose of this course is integration."
What is being integrated? The two sides of the split mind need to be rejoined as one whole mind. The sense of dissociation which splits you off from "your attacker" and frames others as "outside of you" needs to heal. It's not WHICH side you take that matters, it's the fact that you are taking sides at all.
We heal by becoming whole, moving from a state of "I'm playing the role of being on this one side", towards the recognition that you are playing BOTH sides. You play both sides of every conflict. You receive the effects of your own attack. What you do to others you do to yourself. What applies to them applies to you. This is the Golden Rule.
So if you find yourself "one sided", with you seeming to be caused by or at the effect of anyone or anything else, you know there is a brick wall of denial and disowning standing in front of you, behind which is the other half of your mind. And the wall needs to come down so that you can see that the part "in the shadows" and the part "in the light" are both parts of the same one mind.
By recognizing that both "sides" or "roles" or "personalities" or "identities" are existing within ONE mind, you recognize that NEITHER of them can be true. They are both illusions of separate identities - a victimizer and a victim. And the mind is pretending to be both of them. Neither really exists, and on seeing this both disappear, as the mind recognizes and "wakes up" to the fact that it is ONE MIND, not two.
"Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are."
"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."
"In our longer practice periods today, we will claim the peace that must be ours when the problem and the answer have been brought together."
"The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear."
"The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, NOT kept separate."
The golden rule is the nature and law of God. In God, everything is equal and shared. What applies to one brother applies to all brothers. What is true of me is true of you. But even moreso, because brothers are ONE, they literally share identity and soul. I am in you and you are in me. We are part of each other. We are irrevocably joined and share everything, even our selves.
We can describe this as the golden rule, in which what I do to you I also do to myself. There is no option or clause that your brother MIGHT treat you a certain way. You treat your brother a certain way SO THAT you are treated a certain way, because you ARE him, and so you are DIRECTLY treating yourself how you would wish to be treated.
There are no exceptions to this and it is impossible to violate or break this law or be outside of it. It is always operating, whether you are accepting of it and living by it, or whether you are attempting to ignore it and pretend it doesn't apply to you.
If we are one, then I have a shared interest with you. Whatever I do to you I do to myself. Whatever I give to you I receive. Giving and receiving are one. If I were to attack you, I'd be attacking myself. Therefore, it's in my own best interests to ONLY LOVE, otherwise I will make MYSELF suffer, and by my own hand. I have to INCLUDE you, otherwise I will suffer from exclusion.
"Ego" is nothing more than an attempt to oppose, deny and ignore this law. It is an attempt to pretend that it does not apply. That I am not you and you are not me. That we are not equal. That what applies to me doesn't apply to you, because we are different. If we are separate, we not one, and now I should have my own selfish interests - survival of the fittest.
It's like, were both standing on the same floor. Then there is a separation, like an earthquake. The floor cracks in two. I now seem to be on one side, and you on the other. But also the heights of the floors have shifted, and mine is slightly above yours. The two floors are now separate and different and not equal.
This is the separation from God, the seeming split in the mind, which suggests that instead of us all being one, we are now two, split apart, separated off, isolated in our own private territories, and kept apart. We can't seem to share because we can't span the divide of the broken ground, and everything we do is separate.
On this basis of separation, or not being able to share, the breakdown in unity, the collapse of oneness, the arising of exclusion, and the seeming imprisonment on either side of the rift, we get the denial of the golden rule. It seems possible now that because I am not a part of you, and am separate and isolated on my own island, I can only now think of my OWN interests. What I do to myself is done to myself alone, and if I throw a rock over at you, it hurts only you and not me.
While I might believe that what I do to you is NOT done to myself, or what is true of you is NOT true of me, it becomes possible to enter this state where we're trying to get away with murder. It suggests I could attack you, and escape the consequences. I could do something to you which is not done to me. I could give something that I do NOT receive, because I am not INCLUDED in it, because I've become EXCLUDED from you. As though giving and receiving are not one.
So the whole ego system is all about this sense of being exclusive, separated off, not sharing, not one, unequal, different, disconnected, dis-associated, and isolated. Our whole belief then shifts to it seeming to be plausible that we can attack without being hurt, or we can accuse without being accused, or we can make someone be guilty to take the guilt off our own shoulders. That no matter what we cause, we can escape the effects. I can hurt you, and not myself.
So this is then what the ego does, all the time. IT HAS ONE MODE of functioning. It's all it CAN do, because it is ONLY the idea of separation. Its aim is to emphasize, enhance, increase, and deepen the sense of being separate, so that IT increases. That's it's only goal. To attack ever more strongly and cause ever more disruption in equality. It's entire existence DEPENDS on the continuation of this inequality, this rift between brothers, and this sense that you cannot share anything with anyone because they're separated from you.
If the two floors or islands were to meet, and reconnect, and level out, and become one single unified space again, the two brothers could be reunited, and all sense of inequality and difference would melt. And ALSO there would have to now be an acceptance of the golden rule, because if we are sharing everything, then what applies to me now also applies to you and vice versa. We are now the SAME. We are one. So I cannot do anything to you without doing it to myself.
The interesting thing is that even when we're in an ego state of believing that we ARE separate, and are not a part of others, the golden rule actually still applies. We can BELIEVE that we are attacking something "not myself", and we can BELIEVE that the effects are being felt ONLY by that other separate person, and we can BELIEVE that we completely escape any consequences for it, BUT WE DO NOT. Because there are dire consequences STILL operating, consequences which are SELF INFLICTED, which CANNOT be avoided.
If you attack another, you STILL attack yourself, because you STILL ARE them. If you hurt another, you ARE hurting yourself. If you try to destroy another, you ARE destroying yourself. You may not REALIZE that you are, because you think of yourself as PROTECTED BY THE SEPARATENESS, as if the prison walls keep you SAFE. And so you think that attacking someone makes you SAFER. But it in fact erodes your safety because the more you attack the more YOU become imprisoned and weakened.
"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."
You cannot be strong without your brother. You cannot be happy without your brother. You cannot be healthy without your brother. You cannot be loved without your brother. You cannot be powerful without your brother. You cannot be free without your brother. You cannot be innocent without your brother. You cannot be holy without your brother.
So if you try to attack in any way, to produce the separation, to make yourself MORE separate, emphasizing the ways that someone else is an inferior evil shit that you hate and who should feel terribly guilty for being so wrong, YOU ARE accusing yourself of this. So you might ask yourself, "would I accuse myself of this?" You will think you're NOT accusing yourself because you don't see yourself as A PART OF the other person, but you are still doing it.
There is a HUGE COST to attempting to ignore the golden rule. The cost is that your mind becomes split, you become self-destructive and suicidal, you become alone and lonely, you become weakened and live in darkness, the world becomes a nightmare of conflict and war, you lose all sense of peace and happiness, communication breaks down and you become unable to relate to anyone, it makes you question whether you even exist, and you will try to destroy yourself. That's a pretty major cost for believing something that isn't true, as if it were real.
You DO have a vested interest, because when you attack you DO experience consequences, even if you do not REALIZE that you do. You may not recognize that every time you attack you feel worse. You may not recognize that when you hate someone you feel awful and guilty.
You may not recognize that when you accuse someone angrily of being guilty of something, to make yourself feel better, you increase your sense of being separate and small and weak and alone. Or that anger hurts your mind and body. You have to recognize what the consequences of attack ARE, so that you will decide that you do not WANT to be murderous anymore, because it actually is not REALLY in your best interests.
The golden rule always applies. It is never broken or violated. You can deny it. If you deny it you will suffer. If you deny it you will be confused as to why your life sucks, and you will probably blame it on someone else, thinking that they are not you, and that therefore you haven't blamed yourself. Everything you do you to do yourself and to all your brothers, to the entire sonship and to God. This is also the secret of salvation. You are INCLUDED IN EVERYTHING. And inclusion is ultimately love.
I'm learning recently that my mind and attitude may well affect other people. I think this is part of being more responsible for what my mind is doing "to itself", and extends to others, in that whatever I am doing to myself I am also attempting to do to others. Whatever sense of sin or guilt I have about myself I am likely to project. And this projecting is a kind of psychological attack that accuses and weakens others.
I notice that all the various thoughts I have about a person, all the fears, wonderings, ideas, visualizations of what may or may not happen, form a kind of "broadcast" that I experience as kind of "in front of me". Perhaps I experience it as being outside of me or coming out of me, due to the disassociation of projection.
So there is this whole "wall" or screen filled with ego thoughts that I am pushing out of me. And so by even having these thoughts at all, "about" someone, it's as if I am putting those thoughts onto the person and holding them within it. Framing them in my ideas about them, and trying to make it apply to them. Even if these thoughts seem harmless in the thinking of them.
Whatever I think about them is a form of framing them, interpreting them, deciding what to see in them, having an opinion about their condition etc. And the thing is, the ego has this really sneaky way of suggesting that "all thoughts are neutral", "you can think anything without having any effect", "your opinion is unbiased".
Early in the workbook we're told that "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts". That's a pretty major deal right there. And it also taps into the fact that our minds are powerful and our thoughts have effects. It also says "I have no neutral thoughts", so the ego myth of a neutral unbiased objective opinion or evaluation of what something is or is not doing, is a lie. Every thought is biased and has an influence and an effect and is a DECISION to see or believe in a certain way, NOT an impartial detached idea.
The power of the mind to affect real consequences is something which Jesus says we are afraid of.
"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them. Therapists try to help people who are afraid of their own death wishes by depreciating the power of the wish. They even attempt to "free" the patient by persuading him that he can think whatever he wants, without ANY real effect at all."
So you could put it this way. Either you are broadcasting love to people, or you are broadcasting fear and attack to people. How's that for responsibility? The whole collection of ego interference, predictions, controls, visualizations, imaginings, worries, concerns, etc that my mind has, are all forms of attack. So if I'm not loving, I'm attacking. "What is not love is murder." Gotta get honest here. We are either healers and blessers, or we are attackers.
I see that if I'm in attack mode, which is unto myself but also now seems to be "about someone not myself", and is still an idea in my own mind, that can't exactly be helpful to others. In fact it's what Jesus refers to as imprisoning your brother. And he even goes as far as to say that we're capable of cursing people with this.
""Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."
So if someone is already in some ways cursing themselves, weakening themselves, and you then start to go into a reaction, and start to join with them in this belief, and fall for ego illusions, and have fears and other attack (non-light) thoughts about them, you are cursing them and reinforcing their errors. Your thoughts are NOT idle or private, they are having effects. Fortunately, negative ego thoughts are likely "weaker" than light-filled miracle thoughts.
Most likely it's accurate to say, we are all pretty sick minded and spend most of our time attacking each other psychologically. If I am in sin and guilt, I am not really going to be very helpful to others. I am likely cursing people all the time, not blessing them. If I want to be a miracle worker, in which I express love to people which actually has the power to affect them positively, to heal their minds and bodies, to set them free from imprisonment, then I am going to get my own mind healed so that I can bless, not curse.
When you withhold or cease to attack/project sin with the mind, when you are not being in fear, when your ego isn't running wild with interference and planning and deciding everything and playing God, when you are listening and following God's will and trusting Him in love, you effectively "take off of" others the chains of imprisonment and the curses you have been putting onto them. This DOES appear to have an EFFECT on them. You are now "not supporting" THEIR own self-curse and are not reinforcing their own weakness. Instead you supply the lack and strengthen them through your miraculous blessing.
"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
So there is this pivotal message in the course. Either we are in a state of attack upon ourselves and others, which imprisons us AND them, in which we actually act like a prison guard controlling and isolating and defining people's confinement to ideas of limitation, OR we are setting ourselves and our brothers free by shining freedom onto them which actually HELPS them. By not supporting their self curse, we can perform miracles to alleviate their own imprisonment. Your loving mind CAN HEAL OTHER MINDS!
"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."
So we have to ask ourselves a humble question. Do we want to be a prison guard, controller, attacker, limiter, interferer, free-will denyer, and curser today.... or will we get out of the way and be miracle working healers who can only bless and extend love and who can literally bring about the release of others by our willingness to ONLY bless with thoughts of light, strength, support and love? We can resurrect the dead by believing in our own life. We can heal our brothers. This is the goal.
Our thoughts exert real influence. This is why we have to learn about the power of the mind. This is why we have to learn to be careful and responsible about what we think. Even our so-called "private thoughts" are being received by others. If you think poorly of someone, watch how they start to act negatively in return, because they DID receive your broadcasts even if you didn't speak in person.
If you take back all your projected bullshit and stop attacking yourself and others, watch how people start to miraculously awaken and heal in your presence. The strength of the Holy Spirit's light in you is powerful enough to resurrect the dead, waken the sleeping, and cure the sick.
"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time.
The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."
"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains. "
"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation."
"Now is Christ's power in your mind to heal as you were healed."
"The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he has"
In the two opposing views of ACIM - one that God created this world, and one that he didn't, there are some parallels.
Both views recognize that the ego is a problem and seeks to undo it. Both views recognize that the Holy Spirit provides a higher vision which is more truth-oriented.
Both views also seek to see THIS world in a more loving and forgiving way.
But where they diverge, is in terms of the overall goal of the relationship with this world.
In the view that God created the Earth, forgiveness is seen as a way to love what God created, as though you were attacking a real creation through your projections of guilt, and have to learn how to forgive it and reunite with it.
In the view that God did NOT create the Earth, forgiveness is seen as a way to love what WE created, in order to see the REFLECTION of God in it, as though you were attacking a FALSE world through your projections of guilt, and have to learn how to OVERLOOK it and unite with what is BEYOND it.
Both views have us changing our relationship with the world to a more loving one. To being more forgiving towards whatever it is and whatever is in it.
The view that God created this world uses forgiveness to form a better relationship with what is thought to be God's kingdom, to not merely reflect heaven in it but to see it AS heaven literally. This view rejects the idea that heaven is another kingdom distinct from the world.
The view that God did NOT create this world essentially uses forgiveness to UNDO the world we made, where atonement is seen as bringing about the END of the world. Not ended in attack, but ended after the "benediction of holiness upon it". First forgiven, then disappeared. The ending of the world then gives way to REVEAL the underlying Kingdom of God that it was hiding.
Since A Course in Miracles has plenty of material pertaining to forgiving "a world", to being loving towards "the outside world", to no longer projecting sin and guilt onto "the world" and so on, in both models, it is easy to see that the idea of God creating the world SEEMS to have a lot of material to back it up.
But where that model falls short is revealed in the difference in its final goal. It seeks to keep the world and not have it disappear. It seeks to make the world REAL, instead of recognizing its unreality. It seeks to combine heaven with earth such that Earth is fully literally heaven. And it seeks to write-off anything suggesting that Earth is not of God, by binding it to the ego's faulty perceptions.
There is an entire step BEYOND the forgiving of this world, a step where God takes us out of this world, where the world disappears, where the stars disappear in light, where the world "merely ceases to seem to be", where it "spins into the nothingness from which it came", where space and time and all their contents disappear, and where the world indeed does come to an end. We leave bodies, we leave the world, and we go to our true home in the Kingdom of God - not of this world.
So you can see that both models have a lot of parallels, both have features that have a similar approach. A person believing that God created the Earth can still adopt a loving attitude toward the world, some FORM of forgiveness toward it, and can even approach the reflection of God - albeit interpreted as literally God itself. The reflection of heaven is "read into" as being merely a way of looking AT heaven, rather than its reflection. And so a person studying under this umbrella could still potentially reach an advanced state of some FORM of love and forgiveness. But it does not take it all the way.
Only when we can recognize that God did not create the Earth can we truly have a) a place to assign statements about Earth being not of God, b) a proper recognition of what a reflection is, c) a correct understanding of what forgiveness means and implies, d) an openness to realizing there is no Earth/world, and e) a willingness to recognize God's Kingdom as beyond this world and our true home in God.
So both approaches can take you quite far, but the belief that God created the Earth will cause you to reach an impasse. You won't be able to go INTO heaven proper, because Earth will act as a doorstop. If you think you reached your destination before you actually did, you're obviously missing out on the final goal. The road doesn't end at planet Earth, it ends in another world entirely. And so the two paths DIVERGE greatly the closer you get to the real world. One aims to settle into life on Earth forever, while the other has its sights set on a world beyond the stars.
In your whole mind, there is a split mind. It's kind of an artificial mind. It's made of illusions. It's a mental construct which blocks awareness by fooling you into thinking it is not all the same identity.
This split mind comprises two parts. One of the parts you are conscious of and you think is your entire self. You've identified with it.
The other part you are mostly unconscious of, having shut it out and pushed it out of awareness. You think that part is not yourself. You do not recognize it as you. And you project it onto/as 'others' to disown it.
The illusion is maintained so long as you are convinced that these two parts are separate, different, unrelated, and not one self. That means you fall for the illusion, the appearance, and the stories each has, that seems to suggest they're not `one`.
The best way to create that illusion is to set them against each other in a war of conflict, which makes them seem like enemies, or opposed to each other, as though they have absolutely nothing in common. This is a deception.
When you do not realize the two selves are part of one self, you are inside the illusion. You've bought into it. And you've identified with one part as your 'self'.
Awakening happens when you look more closely at the illusions which make it seem like these two selves are in fact separate.
Those illusions include any idea of victimhood or victimization, any idea of denial or blame or scapegoating, any irresponsibility or disowning of responsibility, any way in which you reject or judge or abandon yourself, etc. All forms of separation and attack. All of these attack ideas must be questioned.
What then happens is you realize that the 'other' that you thought was not you, IS a part of you. Anything you are experiencing IS chosen by you. And therefore, since you are the 'other' as well as the 'self', you have been doing all of these attacks to yourself. This is the key to salvation/awakening.
You have to get to where you can see that you are playing both sides of the experience. You are both the victim and the victimizer. You are both the attacker and the attacked. You are both the person running away and the person chasing.
And then you will see that both of these 'identities' both have a story. One of them (persona) has a sob-story about how it's just trying to be good and how the other (shadow) keeps attacking it. And the shadow has a story about how it's got nothing to do with the persona and wants to destroy its fake image. You need to look at both stories and realize, both stories are an illusion. The entire purpose of the notion that these two identities are 'separate' is to convince you that your Self - your identity - does not encompass both of them.
You are both of the parts of the split mind. Both of the false identities are within you. And this is where you have an aha moment of awakening. If both of these selves are within you, and if you are literally doing stuff to your 'self' ie you are making the shadow self do stuff to the persona self and vice versa, then you will realize that it is an ILLUSION that they are two separate identities. They are not separate selves. They are part of your ONE self.
Once your sense of self encompasses and is responsible for both of them, the illusion and story of each will be blown. You will see through it and recognize it is a deception. They're not really separate enemies after all, they're both you! And that means you see the sameness and oneness and unity of your identity. Your one self, rather than your dualistic selves. And overlooking (forgiving) these illusions of separation leads you directly to seeing your singularity, your wholeness. The oneness - singleness - of your identity. This is where you awaken.
You awake to a sense of self which encompasses all of the parts that you used to think were separate selves. And you therefore transcend all of those separate selves. You transcend the persona and the shadow. You see through the illusion that you were 'only' one small part of the contents of your mind - the illusion that you were the construct of a separate portion of mind (e.g. intellect). Seeing the oneness of the two becoming one, unifies you and reveals to you the true self.
You are whole, you are inclusive, you are unified, you are one self, you are not a split mind, you are not multiple personalities, you are not at war with your own self, you are not attacking yourself, you are singular, you are 'individual' not multiplicative, you are innocent and holy. Holiness means whole. Simply, awareness of this - experiencing it, is awakening. Letting go of separate selves and returning to one self.