Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Choice for Joy and Peace

Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you. I have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and must realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. We cannot safely let it go at that, however, or you will regard yourself as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or as long as you believe that you are here. The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself. Your other [Real] life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate [oneness, your Real life].

The ego and the spirit do not know each other. The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this, [the separated mind] denies all truly natural impulses [to extend Love], not because the ego is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that you are. The ego is a device for maintaining this belief [that you are separate], but it is still only your decision to use the device that enables it to endure.

How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. You can only show him how miserable he is without it, and slowly bring it nearer so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This teaches him to associate his misery with its absence, and the opposite of misery with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth. I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit. (A Course in Miracles, T-4.VI.1:2-7;4:1-5:6. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

Giving our allegiance to the ego is the decision to maintain our belief that we are separate from God and on our own. It is the decision to deny Love and be in a loveless world. This decision leaves us feeling lack and loss of Love.

As long as we align with the ego, we will feel a need to search for what we have lost. The ego offers substitutes for Love that never satisfy because they are empty illusions. The frustration of searching and not finding leads, at the very least, to dissatisfaction with our seeming existence. At worst it leads to deep depression and a wish to escape. All this comes from our allegiance to the ego.

But we have another option. We can choose to withdraw our allegiance to the ego and turn to the Holy Spirit in our minds as our Guide. As we accept His vision in place of the ego’s perceptions, we begin to experience joy instead of depression, peace instead of conflict. Choosing the Holy Spirit as our Guide in all things is the choice for happiness. Each time we accept the Holy Spirit’s guidance in place of the ego, we experience greater joy and peace. This motivates us to practice more consistently. God’s rewards of joy and peace expand our willingness, leading us to giving our full allegiance to the Self God created us to be.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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