T-7.VIII:The Unbelievable Belief

1. 1We have said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without extension there can be no love. 2These reflect a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one that always operates. 3It is the law by which you create and were created. 4It is the law that unifies the Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. 5To the ego, the law is perceived as a means of getting rid of something it does not want. 6To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your mind. 7To the Holy Spirit it is the law of extension. 8To the ego it is the law of deprivation. 9It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it. 10This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you to decide whether or not you will utilize the law. 11Every mind must project or extend, because that is how it lives, and every mind is life.

2. 1The ego’s use of projection must be fully understood before the inevitable association between projection and anger can be finally undone. 2The ego always tries to preserve conflict. 3It is very ingenious in devising ways that seem to diminish conflict, because it does not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will insist on giving it up. 4The ego therefore tries to persuade you that it can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself. 5Using its own warped version of the laws of God, the ego utilizes the power of the mind only to defeat the mind’s real purpose. 6It projects conflict from your mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of the problem.

3. 1There are two major errors involved in this attempt. 2First, strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected because it cannot be shared. 3Any attempt to keep part of it and get rid of another part does not really mean anything. 4Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. 5His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is limited by his confusion. 6The second error is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by giving it away. 7Giving it is how you keep it. 8The belief that by seeing it outside you have excluded it from within is a complete distortion of the power of extension. 9That is why those who project are vigilant for their own safety. 10They are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. 11Believing they have blotted their projections from their own minds, they also believe their projections are trying to creep back in. 12Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constant activity in order not to recognize this.

4. 1You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. 2There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. 3To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. 4The belief that it can, an error the ego always makes, underlies its whole use of projection. 5It does not understand what mind is, and therefore does not understand what you are. 6Yet its existence is dependent on your mind, because the ego is your belief. 7The ego is a confusion in identification. 8Never having had a consistent model, it never developed consistently. 9It is the product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power.

5. 1Do not be afraid of the ego. 2It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. 3Do not project the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the belief. 4When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from an attempt to project responsibility for your own errors. 5But having accepted the errors as yours, do not keep them. 6Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Sonship as a whole.

6. 1The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond your belief, because truth is beyond belief and His perception is true. 2The ego can be completely forgotten at any time, because it is a totally incredible belief, and no one can keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. 3The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed. 4The incredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. 5The meaninglessness of perception based on the unbelievable is apparent, but it may not be recognized as being beyond belief, because it is made by belief.

7. 1The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. 2You who made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. 3By accepting the Atonement for yourself, you are deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally part of you. 4This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. 5Your wholeness has no limits because being is infinity.