II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P 2
2 Is there any possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? Does the total disregard of anything it teaches make anything but sense? Is this the teacher to whom a Son of God should turn to find himself? The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything. Simply on the grounds of your own experience with its teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher? Yet the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of what you have. When you are taught against your nature, however, you will lose by your learning because your learning will imprison you. Your will is in your nature, and therefore cannot go against it.
I am absolutely convinced that the ego misleads me. It takes me down the path of confusion, fear, guilt, doubt, pain, suffering and finally it kills me. I know this with a certainty. When I am unhappy I know where that came from. I must be listening to the ego again. If I feel sad, I am listening to ego. I may not be able to pick out the exact thought, but I know it is ego.
If I am angry with someone, I don’t look for justification in his behavior, I simply know I am listening to ego and I ask Holy Spirit to correct my perception. If I am worried about something that might happen, I don’t turn to the ego for a plan. I remember that the peace of God is all I want. The peace of God is mine as long as I don’t have any other goals. I don’t need other goals; I rest in the certainty that all else will be added to me according to my needs.
If the body is sick, I don’t wonder what caused it. I don’t wonder what outside source was the cause. I know that the cause is in my mind. I ask the Holy Spirit what He wants me to know about this. I open my mind to Him and accept the Atonement. All that is not joy and peace in my life is the result of listening to the wrong voice and unhappiness will be the inevitable result. I also know the solution, which is the Holy Spirit.
Now Jesus is telling me that as destructive as it is to listen to ego, as bad as it makes me feel, that is not the worst of it. Believing what I hear from the ego imprisons my will. The ego calls this free will, this ability to choose the voice I will believe, but the choice itself prevents free will. As I follow ego I imprison my will within its insane objectives, and I need help to free myself. That is the reason the Holy Spirit was placed in my mind, alongside the ego exactly where I need it, not to change me but to free me to be my Self.
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