Lesson 325 from A Course in Miracles reads: ‘All things I think I see reflect ideas.’ In other words, what I see on the outside is a reflection – or a projection – of what I first think on the inside.

What’s projected from the mind is unresolved content. The world represents that unresolved content. When I fall asleep and dream, my dreams are inward projections of all that remains unresolved within myself, the dreamer. Why shouldn’t it be the same way with the world itself, which may just be another level of the dream? Yet the more we invest in the reality of the world, and depend on it to make us happy, the more unfinished business we seem to generate. We do this by believing that the outside causes the inside. In a physical sense, this is what we believe. Science tells us that this is so. It says that we were created by the finite, physical world, and that our consciousness and our minds merged from brain, which evolved from outside forces; matter and energy shaped by the natural laws of evolution.

If we examine the evidence of our senses, it does seem that our consciousness – which we identify and associate with the brain – arose from electro-biochemical processes which emerged from interactions outside the brain itself. It’s very difficult to believe that our minds emerged first and that they make the world, and I’m talking about the physical world of bodies and matter, of space and time, as well as the interpretations we place upon spacetime forces and upon events and experiences which arise out of the human world of culture and civilization. As a follow on, if the outside, physical world made our minds and our states of consciousness, then the external world must also be responsible for our states of mind, which includes our happiness. This orients us to be externally focused.

The idea of lesson 325 – that all things I see reflect ides which arose first in my mind – simply describes the concept of projection. Projection runs counter to this perceptual train which seems to make things flow from the outside to our inner states. The idea of projection – introduced by Freud as one of his ego defense mechanisms – describes our interpretations and judgments as something our minds place upon the world of externals as a way of keeping our ego identities intact and as a way of minimizing anxiety to the point where it doesn’t interfere with our ability to function.

I’ll give you an example. I knew of a very old, married woman who kept accusing a much younger, handsome man of being interested in her. It was clear to all of us that he wasn’t. She couldn’t point to any evidence other than the way he looked at her. To those who knew him and her, it was clear that she might’ve been interested in him. Yet her sense of propriety and morals wouldn’t allow her to acknowledge this interest, and so she projected her interest in him into him, and saw him as interested in her. This allowed her to reduce any anxiety she might’ve felt for desiring someone outside the marital bond, and to keep her idea of herself as a very proper, faithful woman intact.

Freud, who wouldn’t argue with the idea of materialistic science, at least began the discussion that we project from the inner to the outer, that the mind makes things up about the world and then denies that it has done so.

Jung, who was Freud’s protege but departed from Freud’s mostly reductionist worldview, believed that our task, psychologically-speaking, is to withdraw these projections. What he meant was that we needed to bring them back within the projecting mind by taking responsibility for them, by owning the emotions and realizing that we created our own happiness or unhappiness, our own reality, by how we chose to interpret the world of events. 

What A Course in Miracles, Freud and Jung might agree on is that, at least to some extent, we create our own reality. It’s mentally constructed. Freud, who came first, might say that we project unresolved psychological content in order to remain ego syntonic – which means to be consistent with our ideas of who we think we are. Jung, who came next, would take projection farther by exploring mythological and dream content on both individual and collective levels. Jung would identify myths, dreams and archetypes – which are repeating figures in dreams and myths that arise from a collective psyche – as unconscious, projected material. A Course in Miracles, which was written by two psychologists with Freudian backgrounds who didn’t believe that dreams were very meaningful, would take Freud and Jung one step further. A Course, which comes last in time, would describe the entirety waking reality and our external environment as projected ‘dream’ content. Hence, the lesson: All things I think I see reflect ideas.

All three might say that the psychological journey is one in which the unconscious must be made conscious. Consciousness-raising is the process in which the identification of and withdrawal of projected content back into the self helps each of us as individuals, and the groups with which we identify collectively through our cultural and economic membership, take responsibility for our own states of mind, and our own peace of mind.

Withdrawing our projections back into our minds by identifying them is what we do. How we do it is honesty, open-mindedly and willingly, to borrow three adverbs from Appendix II of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, entitled Spiritual Experience. Taking responsibility requires a knowledge of oneself. Socrates said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Lao Tzu remarked that he who conquers others is strong; but he who conquers himself is mighty. These sources, East and West, ancient and modern, converge on the importance of looking inward. Introspection is key, since it reminds us that the world is constructed from the inside-out, not the outside-in. Self-examination also helps to catalogue increasing reams of mental content which I then project and see out there in the world. Introspection helps me to assign responsibility to the world’s creator, who, in conjunction with other observers, is me.

Will I ever completely rectify all my unresolved content by seeing it as coming from within myself? I don’t know. That would be the same as saying that there is a heaven and that we finally ‘get there.’ It would be saying that we achieve nirvana and ultimately transcend the near endless cycle of birth and death. Some believe that this is so. Yet in some New Age texts, it’s proposed that we’re on an infinite journey toward an infinite God. In Hindu cosmology, the universe repeats in cycles forever. There’s an old Eastern story about how we tediously transmigrate from lower to high beings, finally attaining enlightenment after many lifetimes, only to fall back again through arrogance to bug-like status. Who knows?

This ego is extremely pernicious, and tends to appropriate for itself spiritual progress, which is anathema to spiritual progress. Yet is it more powerful than truth itself? The problem we experience is that every time we project inner content, each time I look for happiness in the world rather than finding it within myself, in a sense I inflate another bubble universe into being, creating dreams within dreams, simulations within simulations. The labyrinth grows denser, darker, until I confuse my insides with my outsides and see myself as a wee creature lost in the maze, at the mercy of a dreamt world. Cause seems reversed and I witness my source as flowing from the outside to the inside, and I am its victim, the object acted upon by a subject which seems arbitrary and cold, sometimes embracing, at other times smothering or rejecting.

This outside-in is the state of science today, and science is the description of our worldview. The philosopher, Ken Wilbur, called it flatland holism. Augustine, the theologian,  called it evening knowledge to distinguish it from the more innocent morning knowledge of which humanity was possessed in less sophisticated times.

You may not agree that it’s our thoughts that make up the world. You may be a believer in scientific progress. I believe in science, and I rely on it. I just don’t think it can solve our fundamental problems since it can’t accurately locate their sources as outside of our minds. We still have poverty and sickness and war, and to say that it’s because we haven’t tried hard enough to resolve these ills is missing the point. 

Where is the world today? Is it in better shape than it was 100, 500, or 1,000 years ago? I don’t think anyone can answer that with a definitive ‘yes.’ In some ways, we seem to have progressed. In others, we’ve regressed. Overall, perhaps the human progress is sideways. Not better than or worse than, just different than. Maybe the world won’t really improve until each of us realizes, in our own ways and through our own unique experiences, that the world is essentially and fundamentally crafted from within. It’s an inside job. Because then, and only then, can we cease being victims of external sources and take our power back.

© 2024 by Michael C. Just