T-7.8-The Unbelievable Belief
1. Jesus said, without projection there can be no anger. It is also true, without extension there can be no love. This reflects a fundamental law of mind, and it always operates. It is the law by which I was created, and I create. This law unifies the Kingdom and keeps the Kingdom in the Mind of God. To the ego, it is perceived as a means of getting rid of something it does not want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundament law of sharing, by which in order to keep what I value in my mind, I must give what I value. To the Holy Spirit it is the law of extension. To the ego it is the law of deprivation. Therefore, this law produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how I choose to apply it, which is up to me. It is not up to me to decide whether or not I will use the law. Every mind must project or extend. Every mind is life, and that is how mind lives.
2. Before the association between projection and anger can be undone, the ego's use of projection must be understood. The ego always tries to preserve conflict. Yet, it does not want me to find conflict so intolerable that I will insist on giving up conflict, and giving up the ego. As a result, the ego is very ingenious in devising ways that seem to diminish conflict. So I won't give up the ego and free myself, the ego tries to persuade me that it can free me of conflict. The ego utilizes the power of the mind only to defeat the mind's real purpose, using the ego's own warped version of the laws of God. The ego projects conflict from my mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuade me that I have gotten rid of the problem.
3. There are two major errors involved in this attempt. First, strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected, because it cannot be shared. Any attempt to keep part of conflict and get rid of another part does not really mean anything. Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is limited by his confusion. The second error is the idea that I can get rid of something I do not want by giving it away. Giving it is how I keep it. The belief that by seeing conflict outside myself, I have excluded conflict from within, is a complete distortion of the power of extension. That is why those who project are vigilant for their own safety. They are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. Believing they have blotted their projections from their own minds, they also believe their projections are trying to creep back in. Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constant activity in order not to recognize this.
4. I cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating the illusion about myself. There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. The belief that mind can attack is an error the ego always makes, and underlies the ego's whole use of projection. The ego does not understand what mind is, and therefore does not understand what I am. Yet, the ego's existence is dependent on my mind, because the ego is my belief. The ego is a confusion in identification. Never having had a consistent model, the ego never developed consistently. The ego is the product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power.
5. I will not be afraid of the ego. The ego depends on my mind. As I made the ego by believing in it, so I can dispel the ego by withdrawing belief from it. I will not project the responsibility for my belief in the ego onto anyone else, or I will preserve the belief. When I am willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence, I will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because, all anger and attack come from an attempt to project responsibility for my own errors. But, having accepted the errors as mine, I will not keep them. I will give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from my mind, and from the Sonship as a whole.
6. The Holy Spirit will teach me to perceive beyond my belief, because truth is beyond belief, and the Holy Spirit's perception is true. The ego can be completely forgotten at any time, because the ego is a totally incredible belief, and no one can keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. The more I learn about the ego, the more I realize that the ego cannot be believed. The incredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. The meaninglessness of perception based on the unbelievable is apparent, but it may not be recognized, because the unbelievable is made by belief.
7. The whole purpose of this course is to teach me that the ego is unbelievable, and will forever be unbelievable. I, who made the ego by believing the unbelievable, cannot make this judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for myself, I am deciding against the belief that I can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation, and affirming my true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally part of myself. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. My wholeness has no limits because being is infinity.
