Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is
very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make
it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and
to believe in truth, you do not have to do anything. Understand that
you do not respond to stimuli, but to stimuli as you interpret them.
Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response.
That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If
you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or
enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, because
you have made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it
power, and having done this, you will overlook truth.
2 The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very obscuring,
and never without the risk of your own ego-involvement. The whole
process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability
to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you
react to your interpretations as if they were correct and control your
reactions behaviorally but not emotionally. This is quite evidently a
mental split in which you have attacked the integrity of your mind and
pitted one level within it against another.