VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 8
8 I have repeatedly emphasized that the ego does believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that you have done this. If the mind cannot attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the belief that you must be a body. By not seeing you as you are, it can see itself as it wants to be. Aware of its weakness the ego wants your allegiance, but not as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its own delusional system, because otherwise the light of your understanding would dispel it. It wants no part of truth, because the ego itself is not true. If truth is total, the untrue cannot exist. Commitment to either must be total; they cannot coexist in your mind without splitting it. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time. This requires vigilance only as long as you do not recognize what is true. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems share truth, your need for vigilance is apparent.
The error I make is in confusing myself with the ego. I am not the ego. That is the truth and that makes all the difference in the world. The ego really does believe it can attack God, and it tries to convince me that I am the one attacking God. When I identify with the ego, I believe I have done this and so the guilt I feel is immense, so immense that I hide from it instead of bringing it into the Light for healing. As I have allowed more and more healing of my mind, I have withdrawn my allegiance from the ego.
I see that I cannot keep dividing my allegiance between ego and Truth. This has split my mind and put me in a perpetual state of conflict, which has become intolerable. I have made a decision to choose God once and for all. For the time being this requires vigilance on my part to be aware of the tendency to choose conflict over peace.
I never stay with conflict when I am aware that I am doing it. If I see that I am angry with someone, anyone, for any reason, I choose to forgive. I forgive the person, the situation, and myself. I cannot have this conflict and be at peace, and I choose peace every time. I might have to talk myself into making this choice but even that is not necessary most of the time.
My vigilance must be strongest for the conflict that is not as obvious. Sometimes I notice that I feel anxious and don’t know why. This is conflict that I am hiding from myself. I become willing to see it, and my willingness exposes the problem. Then I can confront my conflicted thoughts and ask for and accept the Atonement for them.
Yesterday I noticed that I was feeling little twinges of anger at one person then another. I felt impatient with them. This is unusual enough for me to take notice and ask Spirit for clarity. Suddenly I felt grief stricken and cried. I realized that what was really happening is that I was trying to avoid feeling upset about my sister-in-law being close to death.
It was like I had two thoughts in my mind; “Brinda is going to die” and “I am not going to think about Brinda dying.” There was a little battle going on in my mind, and in trying to be unaware of this inner war, I was projecting the upset onto other people. But I am very vigilant for conflict, and my truest desire is to be free of conflict, so I let Holy Spirit show me the problem and I accepted healing. I let myself feel the grief rather than shielding myself from it.
I want peace and so I am determined to give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time.
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