Ch. 6. II. 1 – 4. Jesus: “We have previously discussed the idea that your mind is split, and the ego, with which you currently identify, is split off from the whole. Since mind is inherently whole and all-encompassing, any split in mind must involve an imagined rejection of part of it, and this is the essence of the ego belief in separation, with its deeply-rooted sense of guilt.
The wholeness of God, in which His peace is experienced, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that has relinquished the belief in separation and recognizes the wholeness of God’s Creation. It is by this recognition that the mind knows its Creator.
Exclusion from the whole and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation! We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation from your Self, and that once it occurs, projection becomes its main defense, the device that keeps the error going. The reason, however, may not be so obvious as you think.
When you project your guilt, although you have not gotten rid of it, you have ‘dis-owned’ it, dissociated yourself from it, and therefore do not believe it is still yours. And by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project, you are excluding yourself again from wholeness. Since you have also judged against the recognition that you are projecting, you keep that mental function separated from your present awareness as well. Then this multi-layered process of denial is repeated over and over, unconsciously, in an effort to keep out of awareness the painful fact that you have attacked yourself by trying to separate and then judging yourself guilty. And by this complex though flimsy self-deception do you try to imagine that you have made yourself ‘safe!’
Yet projecting guilt will always hurt you! It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem ‘better’ than they are, thus obscuring your equality and unity with them still further.
Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection only to destroy your correct perception of both yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers!
We have learned, however, that there is an alternative to projection. Every ability of the ego has a better use, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better Voice within it. Instead of the ego’s separation and projection, the Holy Spirit extends and joins. As their goals are opposed, so is the result.”