ACIM Chapter 11. God or the Ego. Introduction P 1, 2

ACIM Chapter 11. God or the Ego. Introduction P 1, 2

Chapter 11: God or the Ego

Introduction, P 1

¹ Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them. Nothing alive is Fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, “Who is my father?” And you will be faithful to the father you choose.

Holy cow! Am I choosing the ego to be my father?

This is crazy! I pray to God as my Father, but I see that I also pray to the ego. An example of this is when I feel sick and look to my ego for an answer. I ask the ego what caused this sickness and what I should do about it. The ego says that I caught it from someone, making them not just separate from me but guilty for giving me their sickness.

The ego says I must go to the doctor who is separate from and above me. It says the doctor will be my savior, and I must listen to and obey him. The ego says I need medicine, and the medicine will be my savior. The ego says I should not listen to the Holy Spirit, Who says that the illness is not in the body but in the mind. It insists that if I listen to this crazy stuff, I will get sicker and sicker, and my punishment for my foolishness will be death. The ego is a harsh God!

When I acknowledge God as my Father and pray to Him, I am shown that the problem is not something that happened in the world but is a mistaken belief within my mind. I am told that I am very holy, that I am powerful, that I made my own problem. And with my permission, this wrong-minded thinking will be corrected. All I am told points to my true nature as an extension of God. It points to my power, my perfection, and my innocence. It points away from fear and guilt. The truth points to the unity of all things and our unity with God.

I understand both systems, and I now accept that this is true.

The only problem I have is that I am still trying to use both systems and as they are diametrically opposed, my mind is conflicted. Conflict causes suffering. In conflict, there is no resolution, and so I am sick, and I am healed, and I am sick again. This applies to all areas of life. My relationships, my finances, and my health all suffer from conflicted beliefs, from my desire to live in both worlds.

The solution is simple and obvious. The ego is insane and not sustainable. The ego is suffering. I have learned that the ego is not my father, and in fact, I am the maker of the ego. I guess you could say that I parented the ego. It is crazy that I should listen to the ego as if it had power over me rather than vice versa. As the maker of the ego, I can reject it as an interesting experiment, but one which fell short of the expected results. Clearly, it is time to let it go.

The Course is always practical.

Jesus knows that we will experience doubt and fear as we make this complete turnaround in our thinking. I was talking to Jesus about the thoughts in my mind the other day. I have begun to do this each morning, asking him to show me today what in my mind needs my attention. The way it works is that I ask the question and then a thought shows up that I need to question.

This time, I had the thought that I was letting both of us down because I was using magic to correct a magical problem. This was a physical sickness, and I was taking medicine. The answer to my question was gentle, loving, and absolutely clear. The corrective thought he gave me sounded something like this to me. “Oh, Honey, feeling guilty for your compromise is more of a problem than not having trust in your process.

The word compromise reminded me of a passage in the Course.

⁵Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the Atonement. ⁶In this case it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the outside is temporarily given healing belief. ⁷This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. (ACIM, T-2.IV.4:5-7)

So, I take medicine for the problem as I continue to let him show me the unforgiven thoughts and beliefs in my mind that are the cause of the problem. I know that, ultimately, there can be no compromise between the two thought systems, but for now, this is the more helpful approach. I also noticed that he doesn’t say the medicine is powerful on its own but that it works because I decided it would work. So, even in the compromise, I am teaching myself that what I believe is true for me. May I continue to use the power of my mind to bring me closer to the truth.

Here is another example.

This one is trying to use both thought systems in a relationship. Suppose I have an acquaintance who seems to always be attacking me. John doesn’t agree with my view of reality and wants to argue about it or make snide remarks. I try to forgive him, but I get tired of it and decide his friendship is toxic, and I need to end this relationship.

I am going to feel better with him gone, and I think the problem is solved. But if I try to solve the problem from within the problem, any relief will be temporary. The next person shows up with an attitude I don’t like, and I am starting all over because I am still attached to the problem.

I need to step outside the ego thought system and look at it with the Holy Spirit. He may have me do some self-inquiry to get to the bottom of the situation. I question why John’s opinion is a problem for me. I realize that I am upset because I have doubts and I don’t want to think about that. Now that I am at the root cause, I can forgive that belief, and I am free. The next person who shows up with that attitude will not bother me, and I can just love them rather than think they are a problem to be avoided.

Introduction, P 2

² Yet what would you say to someone who believed this question really involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict, because the ego was made out of the wish of God’s Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.

Oh, dear. Here we go again.

“The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this.” Ugh. Here it is again. I made a thought system, a delusional thought system so that I could make my own father. My first thought is to remind myself this is not cause for guilt. It reminds me of when I was a kid, and my friends and I would play at being a family. One of us would be the mother and one the father and the rest would be the children. It was play, and it was innocent. My actual mother was not hurt by my play, nor was she angry that, for a while, I usurped her role. Nor is God upset with us for our play.

In another place in the Course, Jesus talks about us taking a detour into fear and guilt, which is what we did. We made a decision not to laugh, and we took our decision to replace our Father very seriously. Thus, fear and guilt were made and experienced. This necessarily led to projection and amnesia. Now, Jesus is helping us to understand that the ego is the system that allowed us to replace our Father with one of our own making.

But now we had a quandary.

How can the ego be the maker of us when we made the ego? We seem to have many conflicts in our lives, but this authority problem is the source of all conflict. The conflicts we are aware of are just outward reflections of that one conflict. Different forms of the same problem. All conflict, all problems, are corrected as we accept that the ego is only a delusional thought system, a thought system we made to be our father. This is impossible and meaningless. Now that we are through playing it can easily be undone as we acknowledge God as our Father.

The solution is so simple and I know I am ready for the solution. But I am learning to be gentle and patient with myself as I shift my thinking.  I still turn to the ego for my answers sometimes. For instance, I want to lose weight, so I look for a good diet to make this happen as quickly as possible. This is asking the ego for an answer. 

My friend tells me about being sick, and there is an urge to tell her about an article I read about a good way to get well quickly. This is asking the ego for the answer. I saw an article about saving for retirement, and I felt stupid because I had never thought to make those plans. That ‘I am stupid’ decision is the answer the ego gave me when I asked.

My Father has answers to my problems, too—loving answers.

But to hear His answers, I must stop asking for and listening to the answers from the ego. This is not hard, but it does take consistent vigilance. I pay attention to what I am doing and am willing to be corrected when I forget and turn to the ego as if it were my father. I stop kidding myself that the ego could actually be my father when I am the one who made the ego.

Then, I remind myself that not only do I have a Father, but my Father is Love, and so can only love me. I read, study, and do the Lessons, and all of this brings me to the one thing that actually heals my mind: it brings me to desire. I realize that I desire to acknowledge God as my only Father. As my desire for God becomes whole, the ego thought fades from my mind.

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