Unfairness and attack are one mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived the other must be seen. You cannot be unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself...
ACIM Chapter 26,X,3
This week’s quote: “You cannot be unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself.” is a more generic version of last week’s quoted expression that 'we are the only ones who can deprive ourselves of anything.' Indeed it follows that if only I can deprive myself of anything, then I cannot be unfairly treated by anyone other than myself. Thus I am the cause of the effects I perceive in how I am treated, i.e. it must be my projection, for if I perceive deprivation, it cannot come from any other source but myself.
This may seem like a difficult concept to swallow, but it is something we experience every time we dream. Every character in the dream, every plant, animal or object we perceive in our dream state is created by our own mental projections. Nothing outside us is needed to create a dream according to our desires. One part of the mind writes the script, casts the actors, sets the stage, the props and costumes, arranges the sequence of events and projects it all onto the screen of another part of the mind as a sequence of events in which we usually play a leading role. In this projected play, we enact the events according to the script, with as much believability and “reality” as we accord to our waking-state experiences, because that part of our split mind that witnesses the play has conveniently forgotten that it created all this, and so experiences it as though it is reality.
Now since this is our common dream experience, is it not plausible that the apparently “real” waking-state experiences are also dreams on another level of awareness? Is it not plausible that we forget that we wrote, produced, directed, and are starring in the projected drama we call our “real” life? But because we believe it to be real, we find it reasonable and logical to attribute the cause of certain events in our waking-state drama to other players in the drama and not to our self.
But consider how differently we would behave, either in our dream or waking state, if we came to know, even faintly, that it is not really “real,” but simply our own mental projection. Could we, knowing this, attribute cause to anyone or anything in the dream? Certainly we could, but that would simply be an obvious act of denial. If we had some inkling that we are having an illusory experience, would it not be wiser for us to take things more lightly, to bear patiently the events of the illusion, enjoying the contrasts, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs, knowing that all is well since everyone and everything in the illusion is a part of myself, part of my own creation.
Instead of believing everything we experience in the illusion is real, we could instead marvel at it all, knowing that when it ends, however it ends, all will still be well, for it is just a dream, with no lasting effects other than the experience of it all, just as actors in a play know that the play is unreal. In the least, would this awareness not bring some measure of relief to “unpleasant” dream experiences and thereby prove that they are indeed dreams, for absolutely reality, unlike a dream, is unchangeable. Such changes are called miracles, and one of the many thing that miracles do is prove that the apparent reality of our experiences are false. The practice of miracle mindedness is the practice of changing experiences by the power of intention or will, when we know or at least suspect the experience to be unreal. Miracle mindedness is the culmination of accepting the truth expressed in the preface of the Course that: “Nothing real can be threatened; nothing unreal exists; herein lies the peace of God.”
Peace, Edmond
