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Study of Text, Chapter 11: V: The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 16. 10-26-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 16

16 Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego’s demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses are consistent. The case for insanity is strong to the insane. For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source. Yet reasoning without meaning cannot demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must be deluded. Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has denied? Its witnesses do attest to its denial, but hardly to what it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.

Journal
What Jesus seems to be telling me in this paragraph is that the ego has something to say and if I am interested and want to believe it, then I will. That does not make it true, it only means that I want it to be true. When I was holding a grievance against someone, I saw justification for that grievance every time I was around this person.

The grievance was the ego interpretation of this person’s actions and I was fully buying into that interpretation. But when I realized how painful it is to separate myself in this way, I changed my mind. I decided that I wanted to be happy and I asked for help to see differently. My prayer was answered and I began to see this person’s actions in another way as I chose to become aware of the Holy Spirit’s interpretation.

Now when I see him I smile. Every time. It just makes me happy to see him. Nothing changed about this person. The only change occurred in my mind. I wanted to see the Christ that was in him, and so Christ Vision was given me. The transition from seeing with ego and seeing with Holy Spirit seemed to take time because I needed time to fully let go of my judgments.

I had a lot invested in my grievance and I had to divest myself of it. I continued to see, first with ego then with Holy Spirit for awhile as I learned through contrast that the ego had nothing to offer that I want. The ego can show me what I think I want, but it cannot show me truth. Once I make a new decision, I understand why I want the truth. The ego illusion was blinding me to the Son and thus to God.

How could the Son of God stand right in front of me and I not see Him? I saw what I wanted to see. That is all the ego does for me. It shows me what I want to see, not what would make me happy, not the truth. The ego cannot give me those things because the ego doesn’t have them to give. The power to choose is mine. To see God, I must choose to see His Son. What grievance could be more important than that?

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Study of Text, Chapter 11, V.The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 15. 10-22-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 15
15 The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly. Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.

Journal
I have been allowing my mind to see the ego attack on meaning in a larger sense. I looked at how it works at those times I am sick and those times I am upset with coworkers. I was thinking about relationships that have suffered this ego attack, and fear of lack and loss. But really, all of those categories are just more ego attack on wholeness.

It is the ego saying that a threatened relationship is different than when my income is threatened. So, I see all these different forms of separation, then I see the different stories around each form. The ego separates things until they are unrecognizable. What seems to help is to become willing to see the sameness in all things. Then the Holy Spirit can heal my mind of this insane fragmentation.

If I am caught up in the story, I will see only separation. I will see part of a story, and focus only on the part that interests me. I will see things through the filter of my beliefs so that what I see will be different than what someone else sees. I then wonder how it is that the other person could be so wrong when I find the “truth” so obvious. The level of confusion is so profound that I cannot find my way out alone. I need help.

When I ask the Holy Spirit for help with any perceived problem, He starts with me where I think I am and then sends me thoughts that lead me out of the story and toward truth. No matter what the story or what emotion the story elicits, it is never about that story. It is always about the belief that sourced the story and then projected it into the world. So He brings me to that belief and then I have the choice of keeping it or letting it go. If I don’t see the value in keeping it, the belief is removed from my mind.

Sometimes I have to go through the process a number of times until I finally decide that I don’t want it anymore. The point here is that the story I am experiencing is just a reflection of wrong minded thinking. It is an idea and that is all. It is either a true idea or false idea. The false idea doesn’t exist because God did not create it. So there is only a true idea. Wow! Look how the Holy Spirit undid the complicated and shattered meaning the ego tries to demonstrate, and brings us to the simple unified truth. Everything is an idea and only true ideas exist. Like it says at the beginning of the Course:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exis

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Study of Text, Chapter 11, V.The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 14. 10-21-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 14
14 The ego’s interpretation of the laws of perception are, and would have to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s. The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake consistent truth must be meaningless. The next step, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: Error is real and truth is error.

Journal
The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. As soon as I read this sentence I saw how true this is and I saw that the ego then makes the error real. I got a call from an angry customer this morning. He had asked for a repair, and the repair didn’t work. In fact, this is his third time to call about the same repair. What I did was call the repairman and tell him what happened. I told him it must be done and done right, and everything cleaned up. I was very firm about this.

I did what I needed to do to get the problem solved. It should have been over at that point, but what happened is that the ego mind felt aggrieved and felt like anger was called for. It had stories to justify its position on this. The ego overlooked the truth that everyone involved is innocent and that there was a mistake to be corrected and that was all. Instead, it made the error real, insisting that it should never have happened and that the repairman was guilty for doing a shoddy job, and therefore, that my anger was justifiable.
Immediately, I turned to the Holy Spirit for His interpretation of the situation. I saw a problem, I took care of the problem, it’s over. There is no need for guilt or anger. Everyone is innocent and this is true in every case no matter what happened. In the world mistakes are made, but in reality nothing has happened and God’s creation remains as it was created.

Even so, I notice how intent the ego mind is on finding the guilty party and how it loves its righteous anger. But this time, I am not going to join the ego. I see the temptation, I understand it, but I am not interested. I see that the urge to be angry is just a reaction to fear. There is fear of losing a customer and fear of not making the right choice, of having to take on the role of “boss” as I speak to the repairman and not feeling qualified for that role. There is the fear of being judged harshly by the repairman. The fear he and others will see in me the same error I see in them. I give all this to Spirit and let it stay there.

It is not my goal to be the best sales person, or to keep customers. It is not my goal to look good in someone’s eyes, to earn their respect, or their acceptance. It is not my goal to be the boss or to avoid that responsibility. It is my goal to watch my mind, to ask for and accept healing, and to see the face of Christ in everyone including me. I need only open to that, to want it. I am doing that to the best of my ability and the Holy Spirit is doing His part, so it is done.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: V: The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 13. 10-20-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 13
13 The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to break down or to separate out. The attempt to understand totality by breaking it down is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack. Unaware that the belief cannot be established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.

Journal
So how is it that I analyze instead of accept? What does Jesus mean by this? I was sick yesterday and I don’t feel really good today. The ego mind thinks about what this means. How did I get sick? What caused it? What would fix it? What medicine or action would make me feel better? This, I think, is analyzing the sickness, breaking it down into what feels like more manageable parts and then dealing with each one.

How would acceptance look? I am thinking about a video of John Mark Stroud that I watched yesterday. It was part of the MiracleShare Conference. In his talk, John Mark said that the body is a communication device that tells us where we are mistaken in our thinking. In this way it is very valuable. I agree with this and this morning, instead of analyzing the sickness, I accept it as a message that my mind is sick and needs healing.

There is only one problem and one solution. The problem is separation and analyzing the sickness just increased the separation beliefs in my mind. This sickness is different than other sicknesses I have had before and it is not as serious as some, but because of the symptoms there are certain things I will not be able to do. Maybe I got this stomach upset from eating too much rich food or maybe I caught it from someone. Maybe I need some medicine or just some time and rest, or maybe I need to see a doctor. So many parts to the problem and so many possible solutions if I keep listening to the ego.

If, on the other hand, I accept that I am listening to the wrong voice and that is the only problem I have, then the solution is simple. I stop listening to the ego interpretation of the problem and the ego solutions, and listen instead to the Holy Spirit. Problem solved. If there is anything that needs to be done in the world, I will know what it is, but the problem itself was wrong minded thinking, and the Holy Spirit is the Answer. I accept the Holy Spirit’s answer and quickly or eventually, the body catches up and communicates to me that the mind has been healed.

Jesus says that the ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and from looking at the way the ego tried to solve this problem, I see how true that is. If the ego could not categorize the problem, it would not know how to find an answer. It needs to know symptoms of various diseases and the medicine appropriate for each. It needs to know what sickness is serious enough for medical intervention and which just needs time. The ego believes that power and defense lies in how it separates things out and how much information it has at hand for each separate part.

Holy Spirit doesn’t separate at all. It sees only one problem and that is a confused mind. It sees only one solution and that is a clear mind. This is true if I have a headache, a virus, a cold, cancer or if I am dying. It’s all the same to the Holy Spirit, and so the answer is obvious and simple. The ego needs to attack the problem by dividing and separating and the result is chaos. The Holy Spirit accepts that the problem is one and the answer is one, and so the result is peace.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: V: The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 12. 10-19-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 12

12 God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because His Autonomy encompasses yours, and is therefore incomplete without it. You can only establish your autonomy by identifying with Him, and fulfilling your function as it exists in truth. The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. But it is given you to know that God’s function is yours, and happiness cannot be found apart from Your joint Will. Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness. Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you believe. Yet God’s Son is not insane, and cannot believe it. Let him but recognize it and he will not accept it. For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. But the sane realize that only attack could produce fear, from which the Love of God completely protects them.

Journal
When I read something like that first sentence which tells me that God is as dependent on me as I am on Him, it makes me cry. He cannot want anything but love and peace, joy, perfection, all good things for me, because I am of Him, in Him, part of Him. When Jesus says that God is incomplete without me, I am truly humbled, and I cry again from happiness, and I notice that I also cry in relief. I guess that I still fear God, though I tell myself otherwise. Well, something else to give the Holy Spirit and to accept the Atonement for.

Here is what really caught my attention this morning. “Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness.” I started thinking about how ego goals bring fear. When I think about the ego goal to retire, I am excited as I realize it could happen within two years.

But I am also afraid because all sorts of things could interfere, and prevent that goal from being fulfilled. This is true of all ego driven goals. Even fulfilled they are fearful. What if I retire and the financial change is too much and I regret the decision to retire. What if I retire and I hate retirement. That last one was purely hypothetical. Ha ha. But you get the picture.

The ultimate goal and the goal all the others stand for, is to be successfully independent of God. That is what the ego wants. I appears in many different ways, that is, it takes many different forms, but they are all just symbolic of the one desire. That desire to believe in separation and to experience the different forms separation can take is the source of all the problems in the world, and the world itself.

Thank God … really … thank you, God, that I can choose to return to my real self. I can choose the goal that is mine as God’s Son. I begin to realize that this small individual will is nothing, and nothing to pursue. I begin to realize that my will is God’s Will and all that means, all that offers me.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11, V.The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 9. 10-14-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 11

11 If the ego’s goal of autonomy could be accomplished God’s purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true. According to the ego’s teaching, its goal can be accomplished and God’s purpose can not. According to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, only God’s purpose can be accomplished, and it is accomplished already.

Journal
It can be hard to accept that we have not accomplished autonomy because we seem to think for ourselves thoughts that God would not think and we seem to do things that are out of accord with Love. This world does not seem to be an illusion, but seems to be very real. We identify our selves as bodies and these bodies seem to feel things. These eyes seem to see things. And yet, Jesus tells us that all this is only an illusion.

We made the body and the eyes to do exactly this for us, to give us something to identify with other than our reality, to give us something to convince us that we are separate from God now. And it is this very thing which made fear, the idea that we had succeeded in gaining autonomy from God was the genesis of fear. That fear is the only fear there is. All other fears are simply forms of that one fear.

My fear of heights is really the fear I have successfully separated from God. It is that fear taking on a form that I think I can tolerate, and control. No matter how frightened I am of being in high places it is preferable to thinking that I have made myself separate from God, and that there must surely be consequences for this sin. The fear of sickness and the fear of loneliness, of poverty, these are all forms of the fear of God that we have chosen because they are not as fearsome as that one great fear.

It does no good to try to overcome our various forms of fear. What good would it do me to overcome my fear of heights? I would simply find another form of fear to take its place. Here in A Course in Miracles, Jesus is offering us a way out of fear, the only way out. He does not tell us how to overcome our fear of poverty or sickness.

He tells us that fear is not real and that God loves us and longs for our return, not to punish us but to welcome us and to celebrate us. We have not sinned and we will not be punished. Like a child afraid of the dark, imagining monsters under the bed, we made up that which is scaring us. We don’t have to make fear go away, we only have to call on our Father and His Voice will direct our thoughts and heal our mind of these strange beliefs.

I woke up in the early hours this morning and lay tossing and turning in the bed. Finally, I asked Spirit what He would have me do and so here I am letting Him talk to me about the impossibility of fear. One of the thoughts that came to me while I lay there trying to go back to sleep, was the sudden memory that I have to take part in the question and answer section of the MiracleShare Conference Saturday morning.

This thought startled me fully awake because I had been so focused on remembering all I have to do to prepare for Saturday’s wedding that I had not been thinking about the conference at all. I thought how bad it would be if I forgot to call in, and then I started to worry about that, which of course got me to making plans and deciding what to do to insure everything got done.

When I felt my body start to tense up, I stopped myself by remembering my purpose. The peace of God is everything I want. I began to relax and the fear of failure, of forgetting, of not meeting all my obligations, began to fade away as I remembered that when I don’t take on the burden of directing my own life, the Holy Spirit does it for me. Just like that, fear lost its grip on my mind. It just wasn’t there. It can disappear that quickly because it isn’t real.

I could have lain in bed and worried about not getting enough sleep, or about not getting all my work done tomorrow. I could worry about some repairs for my house or any other of so many things the ego would use to distract me from remembering who I am. But all of these are just different forms of the one fear, that I made an ego and it has replaced God. It is laughable, this fear. God’s purpose cannot be undone by my imaginings.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, Chapter 11, V.The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 9. 10-1-15

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 10
10 Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it. Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. If you overlook love you are overlooking yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, you are believing that attack has power. Very simply, then, you have become afraid of yourself. And no one wants to find what he believes would destroy him.

Journal
Whatever seems to separate me from God is only fear and fear is not real, so nothing real separates me from God. My work right now is to let go of the persistent belief that fear is real and meaningful. I practiced last night. I was driving late to get to a hotel and crossed the Mississippi via an unfamiliar bridge. I don’t see all that well in the dark, and the Mississippi is very wide and the bridge seemed to go on forever. I felt a stab of fear as I peered into the darkness to see the stripe dividing my lane from the other. Then I remembered my purpose and I surrendered the fear and drove the rest of the way in peace.

As soon as I let the fear thought go, the fear was gone. The fear was just a false thought in my mind and had no power and no reality other than what I gave it. This is how I am allowing my mind to be healed of the belief in fear. In my fear, I had seen myself separate from God. In releasing that thought, I felt closer to God. I felt happy and I laughed at myself for my fear thoughts. This happy and peaceful person is much closer to my real self. This is the reason it matters that I chose not to be afraid last night. The fear made me forget who I am. Letting it go reminded me of the truth.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.