A System of Thought in Time Is the Cause of Man’s Seeming Separation
A System of Thought in Time Is the Cause of Man's Seeming Separation
The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. The Separation occurred over many millions of years. The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL; a descent from magnitude to littleness.
The Separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a thought. Therefore, the idea of Separation can be given away, just as the idea of unity can, and either way, it will be STRENGTHENED IN THE MIND OF THE GIVER.
"Your body is a manifestation of your belief..in separation... You must understand your beliefs about separation and you do believe in separation or you would not be in this world experiencing what you are experiencing in a body at this time. " Jesus, My Autobiography
The ego is the symbol of the Separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary Only because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings.
Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them. After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior. The separation IS the notion of rejection.
This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. The separation is nothing more than the belief that your will is DIFFERENT than God's. NO mind can believe that its will is STRONGER than God’s. If, then, a mind believes that ITS will is different FROM His, it can only decide either that there IS no God, or that GOD’S WILL IS FEARFUL.
Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation. Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours.
You have actually created this world to prove to yourself that these are not things you want..... Everything that you see in every aspect of yourself represents the idea of separation." Jesus, My Autobiography
You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it.
By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe. Projection 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 uses projection ONLY to distort your perception of both yourself AND your brothers. It begins by excluding something you think exists in you which you do not want, and leads directly to your excluding yourself from your brothers.
The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving YOU as perfect. KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger, this arouses love FOR both because IT ESTABLISHES INCLUSION. The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED. The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in COMMUNICATION. A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego’s voice. It could not shatter the peace of God, but it COULD shatter YOURS.
God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not question. He merely gave the Answer. God’s answer IS your teacher (the Holy Spirit). Like any good teacher, He DOES know more than you know NOW, but He teaches you only to make you equals. This is because you had ALREADY taught wrong, having believed what was not true. YOU DID NOT BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN PERFECTION.
Could God teach you that you had made a split mind when He knows your mind only as whole? What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God’s extending outward, though not His completeness, was blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one.
The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. Both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE. So He thought, “My Children sleep, and must be awakened.” How can you wake children better and more kindly than with a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the Light has come?
You do not inform them that the nightmares which frightened them so badly were not real, because children BELIEVE in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe NOW. Then you train them to RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE between sleeping and waking, so that THEY will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. Then when bad dreams come, they will call on the Light THEMSELVES to dispel them.
You cannot be ANYWHERE that God did not put you, and God created you as part of HIM. That is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. This is COMPLETELY unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is NOT a belief, but a fact.
Anything that God creates is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone IS perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny yourself AND Him, because it is impossible to accept one without the other.
