“Ideas leave not their source” means there is no world outside of the mind that believes in it. So it’s not only that the ego is an illusion that has existence only because we believe in it. But the world, the physical universe, is an illusion that exists in our experience only because we believe in it. That’s why I always remind people “Don’t believe your feelings – feelings lie. Experience lies.” The Course says “Nothing so blinding as perception of form.” Anything that you experience as specific – I don’t care whether it’s God talking to you, Jesus, the Holy Spirit or anyone else – it’s a metaphor. It’s not real. It doesn’t mean that the love that inspires it is not real. But the form is an illusion. Nothing specific is real. In fact there’s one phrase in the Workbook – “Divine Abstraction”: God is abstraction – divinely abstract. Which means non-specific, which means undifferentiated.
Nothing in this world is real because the thought that this world came from is not real. We think it’s real because we believe in it, which means it’s the mind’s belief that is the problem. But this is now a carefully kept secret. The body was specifically made with sensory organs that only see without. They only see what’s outside. The body was made to feel only what’s outside – which includes its own body.
We all know we have physical sensations, but that’s still outside of the mind. The body was made to only perceive, feel and experience what is external to the mind. And then there is this organ called the brain that takes all this illusory sensory data, puts it into some form that seems to make sense, and proclaims it to be reality. None of it is reality.
Bodies lie; they were made to lie. Feelings were made to lie. Experiences were made to lie. Perception was made to lie. Thinking was made to lie. That’s why Jesus says in many different ways, “The problem is not what we think, it’s that we think we think.” He says that near the end of the text. The problem is not what we dissociate, it’s that we dissociate. And then extrapolating that we say the problem is not what we project or what we project onto, the problem is that we project. The problem is not what we dream, the problem is that we’re dreaming. All different ways of saying the same thing.
The problem is never what we think it is. That’s what workbook Lesson 5 – very early on – says; “I am never upset for the reason I think.” I think I’m upset. That can include I think I’m angry, I think I’m anxious, I think I’m sick, I think I’m depressed, I think I’m happy, I think I’m joyful, I think I’m excited. Not for the reason I think because I think all of these thoughts and feelings are caused by something outside of me. Meaning something outside of my mind, which means that what we are projecting is causality. That’s what we are projecting – causality. The cause of my distress is my mind’s deciding for the ego and not for Jesus or the Holy Spirit as my teacher. That’s the cause.
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