To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified. This is in accord with perception's fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. The rest but stems from this, to hold it up and offer it support. This is perception's form, adapted to this world, of God's more basic law; that love creates itself, and nothing but itself.
ACIM Chapter 25,III,1
Perception is key to how we experience, and perception rests on our beliefs, which in turn rest on our will to have things be as we desire. “This is in accord with perception’s fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there.” This statement gives us a glimpse of the immensity of our mental power and will. Because we want a certain experience, we project that experience outside ourselves, and conveniently forget we did this. Then, we employ our senses to see our projection as we wanted to perceive it. The senses are only verifying our original projection, but because of our forgetfulness we accept their messages as proof that what we perceive is “real” and so we experience what we wanted as something that is happening to us, as opposed to through us.
In this complicated mental gymnastics, the culprit or enemy is our desire to have things not as they are (created by God) but as we want them to be. As aptly stated in the Bhagavad-Gita: “It is desire, it is anger, born of rajo-guna, all consuming and most evil. Know this to be the enemy here on earth.” So what is this all-consuming desire that motivates us to “want” what God created not? It is the guilt we feel in response to taking seriously the mad idea that we can somehow be separate from God.
That this mad idea came into our awareness is only a small part of the problem, the major part is our forgetting to laugh at such a preposterous and obviously untenable idea, for how could there be anything separate from the One that is All-That-Is. But having entertained this idea, the next mad idea occurred, that God would be angry or at least displeased with us for attacking His creation, which is what considering this mad idea amounts to. This second mad idea is as preposterous as the first, because the all powerful Creator certainly knows His own creation, and knowledge implies awareness of all the possible thoughts and actions of His creation, so how could He be angry at what He knows He created. But even if God could be angry at us, who is part of His creation and therefore part of Himself, why would He every punish us, for that would mean He punishes Himself, which would make no sense at all.
But we did not stop to consider the insanity of our first two mad steps. Instead, fearing revenge and punishment, we sort for a hiding place—yet another mad idea, for where could we hide from One who is omnipresent? The answer is of course nowhere, except in fantasy. For what cannot be real in waking is easily imagined and made real in dreams. And so the holy son of God fell asleep and dreamed the dream of a make-believe world where he can hide in safety from the imagined wrath of God, for even God Himself is barred entry to this fantasy world. Here we, the holy unified children of God, dwell in dreams of separation from ourselves and from God, in dreams of unreality that we perceive and experience as "real."
But while God or Truth or Eternity cannot enter illusions and time, God also cannot abandon His children even while they dream. Knowing His children sleep, God keeps a part of our minds safe from illusions, established in His eternity, peacefully and at one with Him. While we, His one creation, has the freedom to choose between reality and illusions, He keeps a part of our mind holy—literally filled with His Holy Spirit—unaffected by our dreaming so that when we are ready, we can choose to turn away from illusions and awaken to our true identity. With the invaluable help of the Holy Spirit, our way out of this fantasy is guaranteed, and forgiveness is the means.
Forgiveness for all our perceptions, for everyone and everything we perceive, not for what our perceptions did or didn’t do, but because we realize or will realize finally that NOTHING happened that needs forgiveness. It is just a dream we made up and convinced a part of our mind that it was real, motivated by our fear and judgment. This realization is our awakening, our way out of the dream and our glorious return to reality and to God.
* Chapter 3.26-27: This is Lord Krishna’s answer in response to Arjuna’s question “What is it that impels a man to commit sin, even involuntarily, as if driven by force, O Varshneya?”
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