Projection is a Mind Game
The dream itself is neutral. Ego is just a way of interpreting it. We have to get past ego's interpretation in order to see the dream as a dream.
The Holy Spirit teaches us that the dream is neutral, and that this neutrality is grounds for a decision to be happy, joyous and free with all our brothers and sisters, which is the necessary pre-requisite to our shared awakening.
Interpretation is a form of projection, and projection is fundamentally a problem of perception.
Projection is not that we are dumping unwanted feelings on somebody other than us and imagining we're free of those feelings. Rather, we are seeing something that is not true, and pretending it is.
Basically, we are trying to understand the question of evil and sin (which is a helpful exercise) but the way we go into it, and therefore the way we "solve" it, is through the other. They are the problem that we, the good guys, are making a good-faith effort to solve.
Rather than see sin and evil in our self, we see it outside. A Course in Miracles says that the outside world is the picture of an inside condition (T-21.In.1:4), and we think we are separate from the picture. I'm not shooting up schools, blowing up energy grids, hoarding grain, letting loose the dogs of war.
Question: who or what is served by this error in perception that I make over and over and over (which means, by the way, that it's less an error and more a strategy)?
Answer: I am served by it in the sense that I am relieved of the burden of becoming responsible for the solution to the problem of sin and evil.
Okay then: who or what is served by my willingness to not be responsible? And how did - how do - they get me to go along with such a transparently awful plan?
The way they do it is they pretend to offer me absolution. If I’m not the bad guy, then I’m the good guy, which means I am not guilty. We sell each other out for the illusion of non-involvement.
And who are they? "They" are ego. "They" are a system - a system of thought - that runs by itself, with no agenda but its own survival. That's why attacking this or that node does nothing, because the system wants to be attacked, critized, analyzed. It needs you to fight; it doesn't matter what you fight.
Which means that what it really really wants is your attention. It wants you to give attention to it instead of . . .
. . . instead of to what?
Love,
Sean
Sean,
You left us on dot, dot, dot! ;-)
I was waiting for the conclusion sentence to tell me how to take full responsibility, and what to put my attention on (which I know you implied).
I assume that I should put my attention on love, but it’s so abstract, and I like concrete steps.
(I’m hooponoponoed out!)
Thank you for reminding me that I need to take 100% responsibility. I’d be interested to hear how you personally do that.
💗