“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” — Goethe
Projection Makes Perception
”Projection makes perception”
Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is because of this that private worlds do differ. ²But the figures that he sees were never real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers, and do not include their reactions to him. ³Therefore he does not see that he has made them, and that they are not whole. ⁴For these figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only. It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. ²For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. ³Thus do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they who answer. ⁴And no one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. ⁵Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. ⁶Again and again have men attacked each other because they saw in the other a shadow figure in their private world. And thus it is that you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. ²Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others, you are literally attacking what is not there. ³The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned themselves. ⁴They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. ⁵And so they separate into their private worlds, where everything is disordered and where what is within appears to be without. ⁶Yet what is within they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot see. - [CE T-13.V.2-4]
1 Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. ²But though it is no more than that, it is not less. ³Therefore, to you it is important. ⁴It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. ⁵As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. ⁶Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change your mind about the world. ⁷Perception is a result and not a cause. ⁸And that is why order of miracles is meaningless. ⁹Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. ¹⁰Nothing perceived without it means anything. ¹¹And where there is no meaning, there is chaos. Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. ²See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. ³If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. ⁴If you see holiness and hope, you joined the will of God to set him free. ⁵There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. ⁶And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to recognize the one you made. ⁷The world you see but shows you how much joy you have allowed yourself to see in you and to accept as yours. ⁸And if this is its meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within you. Never forget the world the sightless “see” must be imagined, and what it really looks like is unknown to them. ²They must infer what could be seen from evidence forever indirect, and reconstruct their inferences as they stumble and fall because of what they did not recognize or walk unharmed through open doorways that they thought were closed. ³And so it is with you. ⁴You do not see. ⁵Your cues for inference are wrong, and so you stumble and fall down upon the stones you did not recognize, and fail to be aware you can go through the doors you thought were closed, but which stand open before unseeing eyes, waiting to welcome you. How foolish it is to attempt to judge what could be seen instead. ²It is not necessary to imagine what the world must look like. ³It must be seen before you recognize it for what it is. ⁴You can be shown which doors are open, and you can see where safety lies; and which way leads to darkness, which to light. ⁵Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you where to go. ⁶Why should you guess? - [CE T-21.I.1-4]
Projection of Guilt and Judgement…
Projection creates the illusion we all believe in—that we are “good within an evil world." [CE T-31.V.2:6]
“The ultimate purpose of projection is always to get rid of guilt.”
“Projection is the dynamic whereby causation is thrown outward: what our mind has caused now seems thrust upon us from without. Projection is motivated by the desire to get rid of our guilt, but its deeper motivation is the desire to make us powerless to change our beliefs. Projection produces a world that seems to have enormous power over us.” - ACIM
The Ego believes that it can escape through projecting everything out on others…
“We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the ego’s fundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped. The ego wishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. It coun- sels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest outside your- self, the safer you become.” (T-15.VII.4:1-6)
Projection creates illusion that separation made us and we are powerless
“we made the world in order to transform separation from a crazy idea we made up to an objective reality that made us.” - Robert Perry
The Course explains this purpose behind projection clearly in the following passage: “Though the dream [of this world] itself takes many forms...the dream has but one purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; that it is cause and not effect. And you are its effect, and cannot be its cause. Thus are you not the dreamer, but the dream.”
As a result, the dreamer “cannot doubt his dreams’ reality, because he does not see the part he plays in making them and making them seem real.”
The Creation of a Judgmental, Condemnatory, Punishing World
“it is guilt that has driven you insane.”
“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 that seem to govern it are the laws of death.”
- Our mind believes that the guilty deserve punishment, and the deeply guilty deserve death.