Perception derives its meaning from relationships. Those you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. The separation is merely another term for a split mind. The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. You may let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions.
A Course in Miracles-Text, Chp 5, Sec III, P 9
If you look at world history, you will find war after war, injustice, theft, murder, rape, treachery, etc. This is the ego’s world, written by the victors, and based on separation, individuality, and specialness. It is a battleground–“one or the other” – “kill or be killed.” All of us are the inheritors of this insane world. It is in our genetic makeup and none of us has not been raised on the idea that error is real (serious) with the resulting belief in sin-guilt-fear and scarcity. As long as we perceive such a world we will be complicit in its cause, whether our bodies are in the fray or not, because our bodies are neutral and cause is in the mind.
We may find this idea reprehensible and judge ourselves as only the ego knows how. Most likely, though, we will repress the thought of our own sin, guilt and fear, and project it out onto socially sanctioned perpetrators, victims of our special need to be right, and socially acceptable. And, this is the cycle that perpetuates the ego’s world: choosing sides, victims of our wrath, vilifying and punishing them, sowing the seeds for the next crime until it feels like we are all prisoners in a merciless world that will destroy us all in the end.
The other half our spit mind, however, sees an entirely different relationship in which we are all One. In the Holy Spirit’s vision error is not real and we have never left Our Source. The memory of God is still in our minds, even though “the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is His Own dwelling place; the place in the mind where He is at home. You are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and peace is of God. You who are part of God are not at home except in His peace. If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity (T-5.III.10.4-8).”
The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation idea. Although we could never have really left God, when we imagined that we had, God placed His Memory in our split mind so that, when we awakened from the “silly dream” of separation, we could choose Him as our teacher and find our way back to God. The foundation for the “real world” is the Atonement, which is the realization that we have never left our Source. With that foundation, the world is transformed into a “happy dream”.
You might wonder how we can escape the ego’s nightmarish prison for the Holy Spirit’s “real world.” Our belief in space and time is deeply embedded in our psyche, but it is held fast by our addiction to the ego’s thought system of sin, guilt and fear. When we choose the Holy Spirit as our teacher, the world become a classroom in which we replace all of that with the recognition that scarcity is a silly dream in a rea world of abundance.
Instead of all that judgment and condemnation, the Holy Spirit (or Jesus) tells us that our only function is forgiveness. He asks us to be vigilant in our minds for separation thoughts, and to look at each one with Him. Realizing that we are each a part of God’s One Son and have no meaning apart from God, we learn to hold each thought of sin, guilt and fear in the Light of Christ and watch it disappear.
These thoughts have feelings and I hold them in my Heart until they are gone. By doing this I accept responsibility for the fact that they are in my mind, know I am determined to be rid of them, and feel them until they are gone and peace returns to my mind. Sometimes, they return–because I think them again. And, I take them into my Heart and feel them until they’re gone. If it’s a really persistent belief, it will take awhile. I once had anger that was so persistent that it took a month until the bottom dropped out and “I” fell into a deep sadness.
The sadness was completely irrational, but I didn’t have to tie it to a story and strengthen it in my mind. All I had to do was look at it with the Holy Spirit. So, I continued the practice with the sadness, just holding it in my Heart awareness until it went away. Finally, after three weeks of persistent application, the sadness dropped out and I fell into the Heart of Love. I knew instantly that it was the Self, our true Identity.
Forgiveness is the Way Home. But, we first have to recognize that the cause of our pain and suffering is in our own minds. We have to stop judging and condemning others, with the understanding that there really are no others, no separation, and the ego and its world is just an illusion. No one that appears to be outside us is responsible for any thoughts in our minds. As we learned in kindergarten (hopefully) we have to mind our own business (MYOB), and that business is to forgive the thoughts of separation in our minds.
Then, I guarantee you, your mind will be healed, you will have true perception (vision), your relationships will be holy, and your dream will be happy. It’s called the Atonement, and that is how we put an end to war.
Michael Valentinus Wilson 