A Course in Miracles Workbook: 12. What Is the Ego? Year 2022

ACIM 13. What Is the Ego? 1. The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death.

12. What Is the Ego?

1. The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death. ²It is the “will” that sees the Will of God as enemy, and takes a form in which it is denied. ³The ego is the “proof” that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true.

My son came home for Thanksgiving. I love him and enjoy his visits. But the ego has thoughts about him, such as he isn’t sleeping well and has been sick. And there is concern that being on the road with all the other holiday traffic is dangerous. In other words, my son is this frail body, born to suffer and die. His body itself is proof that he has overcome the Will of God. And just like that, a sweet visit becomes stressful, and Love becomes a fearful thing. These thoughts of loss run through the mind and seem to prove that the ego is real and God is not.

2. The ego is insane.

²In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. ³In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself. ⁴And in its terrible autonomy it “sees” the Will of God has been destroyed. ⁵It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams; its enemies, who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them.

How could the idea of a lovely visit from my son and a wonderful meal with family suddenly become so stressful? When we identify with the ego and think we are a body, our true identity is obscured from us. We think we are apart from each other and from God. There is a hidden belief that we have overcome God and that He will punish us for our betrayal.

Our unacknowledged guilt is, nonetheless, sensed and is then projected onto the world. Everyone is seen as a potential enemy, even our loved ones. We are ever on guard to defend ourselves. I used to experience this as an underlying stress that I would say the wrong thing and offend someone I cared about. I would defend myself by acting as if I didn’t care.

If a problem did occur between us, I would tell myself that they were overly sensitive. In other words, I would project my guilt onto the world, making even loved ones the enemy. Then in my fear, I would defend myself by projecting the guilt for the problem onto them. In so doing, I would make it their problem and thus impossible for me to correct.

3. The Son of God is egoless. 

²What can he know of madness and the death of God, when he abides in Him? ³What can he know of sorrow and of suffering, when he lives in eternal joy? ⁴What can he know of fear and punishment, of sin and guilt, of hatred and attack, when all there is surrounding him is everlasting peace, forever conflict-free and undisturbed, in deepest silence and tranquility?

This is the truth of our nature, who we really are. Because this is the Will of God, we cannot be otherwise. Therefore, who we think we are as bodies is an illusion, a dream of existence. No matter what happens in the stories, no matter what happens to the bodies in these stories, we are safe. We cannot be hurt. We remain at peace, undisturbed, in the deepest silence and tranquility. Oh, my!

4. To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts,…

its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails. ²In suffering, the price for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare to die.

We are so accustomed to suffering that we often fail to recognize it. Even in the happiest of moments, our mind continues to plan its defenses against inevitable losses. How could that be happiness? Regardless of the life, we live, only death awaits us. Could that be happiness? Choosing the ego as our identity is choosing daily crucifixion. This is not happiness, and it is not necessary.

5. Yet will one lily of forgiveness change the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself.

²And peace will be restored forever to the holy minds which God created as His Son, His dwelling place, His joy, His love, completely His, completely one with Him.

Let us forgive the idea of the ego and its separation devices. Let us forgive the idea that we could be less than God created us to be. That is what I did the morning of my son’s visit, and the ego presented me with its dark gifts. I forgave the belief that my son is endangered in any way. He is the Son of God and always has been and always will be.

He is not this body and not this story. What will happen in the story of Myron and her son? I don’t know, but I do know that what happens in the story does not happen to either of us. We are safe, and we are deeply and forever loved because we belong to God. We are what He created and where He established us. I will not crucify myself by giving belief to ego thoughts otherwise.

And so, what is going on with this persistent belief?

The ego is a belief, a belief with awful effects, but still, just a belief.  It can be overcome simply because it is only a belief, and beliefs can be changed. The ego is the belief that the impossible could be true and that God can be destroyed and replaced. It is the belief that we can be our own God. It is the belief that separation could be possible and that we really are separated from each other and from our Creator. The ego is the belief in suffering, guilt, and in death. We are not the ego, and believing that we are the ego does not make it true.

What are we, then, if we are not the imposter self? We are the Sons of God, as we always have been and always will be. We cannot be guilty or make guilty because it is not in our nature to do so. It is not even a belief in our mind. We cannot suffer but only live in eternal joy. We cannot die because we are eternal.

How very strange that we became so absorbed in the impossible idea that we began to believe in it. Stranger yet that we could be so immersed and entangled in the effects of this idea that we could become afraid of letting it go, afraid of what we are. But we can and will do this, and some already have, and many are returning to sanity even as we read this. All will eventually do so. We must because we are already that.

This is a past entry from when I began to understand the ego.

I am adding this because everything we know about the ego is important if it helps us learn to recognize the ego and learn how to deal with it.

It all seems so very simple. The ego is the insane thought that what God created could be altered and that His Son could be separate from the Father. The world, life as we are experiencing it, are the effects of that belief. It is painful. The solution is simple, too. To back out of this dream world, we need only forgive the idea of separation by forgiving the effects as they appear in our lives.

The resistance to doing this seems to stem from the guilt, deeply hidden and unacknowledged, that comes from the belief that our foolish illusions have some real effect, that we really have hurt God, and that He is very angry at us. We seem to believe that our only hope of surviving God’s wrath is to remain hidden from Him in this body and in this world that seems so real to us.

I have been asking the Holy Spirit to correct my crazy thinking for a while now. So, when I notice that I feel angry at someone, instead of trying to figure out how to win this argument, I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief that I need to defend myself. I ask Him to heal the belief that I can win by causing my brother to lose. As I realize I want this healing more than I want to be right, I have taken a step back out of the illusion of separation. As I undo the ego in this way, I loosen my hold on the idea that I need to hide from God. I have opened my mind to another way of thinking.