Distinction: Extension vs. Projection

(The Course uses distinctions to help you understand how Truth and ego differ. I will visit these distinctions on occasion to help you with your study.)

The belief that by seeing it outside you have excluded it from within is a complete distortion of the power of extension. (T-7.VIII.3)

Because God is All, it is the nature of Mind to see Itself everywhere. The Course refers to this seeing as extension – the mind reaching everywhere. Being what it is, your mind can’t get away from this ability. So the ego has to use it but what it does is project – it splits your mind so that there is a within you and an outside you and tells you that what you see outside is not you. Now you did not make the world, it made you.

The Course aims to return your mind to its original wholeness, and therefore teaches you to take back the projection – to see that it is you who have made the world you see. Only then can you change your mind.

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Comments

carrie genevachild said…
One of my favorite passages from the TEXT is:

"The world you see is...the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition." (T.21.in.1:2, 5)
4:11 PM
hannah said…
so.. while nothing in the dream is truth, and there is no crossover between not truth and truth, would it be a closer reflection of truth in the dream for selves to say that you ARE me, and i AM you? or just that we are not?
7:59 AM
ACIM Mentor said…
How about the Truth in you is the same as the Truth in me? And nothing else is the Truth.
10:01 AM
hannah said…
so.. sameness IS oneness? or are you suggesting i dont try to force the experience of accepting oneness, that to accept sameness is enough of truth where im at? is what im trying to grasp here unimportant?
6:57 AM
ACIM Mentor said…
Yes, to be "one" is to be the "same".

If you focus on "we are not" you focus on what is not real and you leave yourself in emptiness. But if you focus on the Truth in you and in others you focus on, well, Truth and abundant Wholeness. And you let go of the rest (selves and their stories).
8:02 AM
hannah said…
okay.. thank you, that makes sense, and feels gentler. constructive and joining rather than feeding the egos sense of loss, of a structure falling down.

ive got so many questions running through my head as i sit here, but i can see that they are all really about not wanting to just.. refocus. not wanting to let go of self. my self still feels like theres so much to sort out, but i think that a lot of it is simply distraction from and fear of just choosing truth.

like.. im just seeing, in the last couple of weeks, that how ive related to you is weird. part of me knows you are truly helping me, to clarify, and stay focused. to collapse time. and part of me feels like im using you to keep the teacher outside of me, so i can hold on to individuality rather than to see one truth reflected in you.

i ended up angry at 'past' teachers for my feeling of 'outgrowing them' in the awareness of what truth was.(im cringing at the feeling of arrogance in saying that - im not experiencing consistent peace myself!) but i think that i just wanted them to keep truth feeling distant and not in me. i think i can relax about that feeling.. i think its all just really about trying to keep oneness away from my awareness. i just saw that maybe its a reflection of the belief in one or the other?? and 'one or the other' is just a reflection of wanting to keep individual selves real. so.. seeing the truth in you doesnt mean im hiding from it in myself.. now that ive seen i was trying to use teachers to do that. seeing truth in you can be acknowledging the truth im growing awareness of in myself.

is this an example of shifting the focus from what isnt to what is? this what i will do, until the choice is really made for truth?
11:40 PM
ACIM Mentor said…
Hannah, I am never the teacher. You choose to read my teachings with one or the other teacher in you (ego or Holy Spirit). The teacher is never outside of you.
10:50 AM
hannah said…
oh, laughing! that is joy.. to the part of me that doesnt want to struggle! i can feel that it sucks to the part of me that thinks there is a world to save, and wants to 'bring about positive change' in it. hm.

thats part of why i cannot fail or fix my nephew, right!? because i am never the teacher for him. if i think i can persuade him to choose the holy spirit within him, i am choosing my ego in that moment, because im afraid of the alternative, it feels like choosing the ego as teacher has real effects. and in that idea of being the teacher for another, is the reinforcement of a whole heap of thoughts of not truth as real. which are really just one thought of not truth made to seem complicated.

so it comes back to seeing the truth in myself, and in him. growing my awareness of that as reality. and accept that part of me is going to keep trying to 'do' in some form or another until only the truth is real in my mind?

oh sheesh, i just read all the previous comments again.. how easy it is to forget the shift of focus which is what will actually bring peace, not trying to intellectually understand truth and illusions from illusions perspectives! and i can see how focusing on whats not real (trying to understand it) was making me feel afraid, complicated impotent and ineffectual. im afraid to let all this thinking go. im afraid of the detachment from the dream. yet im greatful to be here. un-doing, yuck.. yay!

thanks for your simple focus.
8:04 PM
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