Talking to Myself

"No two people have ever met." -- Byron Katie

"Conflict is sleep, and Peace awakening." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 331, 1:8

I have to remind myself frequently that I am always talking to myself.  We all are.  As we move through our day, we are observing and interacting with our own projections.  "Perception is a mirror, not a fact." (ACIM)  This is why the world we see seems so confrontational and full of differences and conflict.  It's the continual out-picturing of our own divided mind, our own judgments and beliefs.  I'm always and only talking to myself.

In all personal and professional relationships, it's especially important to see this.  Two people are talking about the same topic, but neither one is hearing the other.  Both come to the table with myriad assumptions... both think they are talking to someone else, but they are only talking to themselves.  A Course in Miracles calls this phenomenon 'level confusion.' 

The easiest way to understand this is to consider that at the level of conflict, there are always what seem to be real differences and problems.  It's the nature of the dream of separation from God that we 'project' this illusory separation onto the screen of the mind and experience it as many and different.  But as the mind is healed, as we experientially remember God and our true Self as One, we discover that it was all imagined.  There were no real differences at the level of Reality... no real problems.  Like a child who awakens from a nightmare, we discover that we have been safe at Home all along.  We have all been safely One in God, and remain so eternally.

Einstein wisely said that you can never solve a problem at the level you're seeing it.  If you're seeing it, you're projecting it.  The practice of forgiveness, of giving up our judgments and assumptions and yielding to the ever-present Truth of Being, allows us to ascend to a level closer to Reality, where there are no differences or conflicts in sight.  There's only One of us.  So I am still always and only talking to myself... but in Reality, I am talking to my Self.

"Forgiveness is the light [that] shines away all conflict and all doubt.  No light but this can end our evil dream.  For this alone will never fail in anything." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 333, 2:1-2, 4