Extension and projection

Stimulus: "A Course in Miracles distinguishes between "projection" and "extention."

Response: Yes. Extension, according to the Course, is an inherent property of mind as God created it/them. Extension is the will to create, the ability to create, the authority of God to create, and the knowledge of God that allows creation to proceed along the lines of God's own creation. It is unstoppable.

Projection, as has been made clear in the Original Edition, is the same law of mind as is extension, except distorted and unlike God's creation.

The real world can actually be perrceived. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing else. For if you perceive both good and evil, you are accepting both the false and the true and making no distinction between them. The ego sees some good, but never only good. That is why its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely for that you could not accept, but it always adds something that is not real to the real, thus confusing illusion and reality. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and illusion you cannot tell which is true. To establish your personal autonomy you tried to create unlike your Father, believing what you made to be capable of being unlike Him. Yet everything in what you have made that is true IS like Him. Only this is the real world, and perceiving only this will lead you to the real Heaven because it will make you capable of understanding it. The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this IS the condition of knowledge.  —  A Course in Miracles

Projection distorts creation of reality by adding something that is not there.

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Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky

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Projection and extension

Projection and extension are the same function, according to the the Course. Projection differs from extension only in purpose.

"Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing by which you GIVE what you value in order to keep it in your OWN mind."

In the original, the discussion starts with the idea of projection, including the notion that God projects. "Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him." As the text progresses, the idea of misprojection, or projection of error, is introduced.

"If the crucifixion is seen from an upside-down point of view, it DOES appear as if God permitted, and even encouraged, one of his Sons to suffer BECAUSE he was good. Many ministers preach this every day. This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose out of the combined misprojections of a large number of my would-be followers, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God."

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" . . . .nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to further substitutions. That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth."

Later the text settle in on the conventional distinction between projection as projection of error, and the extension of love.

This essential similarity between projection and extension was unfortunately muddied in the final editing of the Course. It is unfortunate because it obscure the fact that projection of error is accomplished with the full power of God. This has lead some sincere Course students to the conclusion that it is possible to escape from the world or error by leaving it behind, but that is not what the Course is suggesting.

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