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.
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