ACIM Chapter 11. V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 10, 11

ACIM Chapter 11. V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 10, 11

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 10

10 Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it. Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. If you overlook love you are overlooking yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, you are believing that attack has power. Very simply, then, you have become afraid of yourself. And no one wants to find what he believes would destroy him.

Whatever seems to separate me from God is only fear and fear is not real.

So nothing real separates me from God. My work right now is to let go of the persistent belief that fear is real and meaningful. Here is how I practiced this one night. I was driving late to get to a hotel and crossed the Mississippi via an unfamiliar bridge. I don’t see all that well in the dark. And the Mississippi is very wide and the bridge seemed to go on forever. I felt a stab of fear as I peered into the darkness to see the stripe dividing my lane from the other. Then I remembered my purpose and I surrendered the fear and drove the rest of the way in peace.

As soon as I let the fear thought go, the fear was gone. The fear was just a false thought in my mind and had no power and no reality other than what I gave it. This is how I am allowing my mind to be healed of the belief in fear. In my fear, I had seen myself separate from God. In releasing that thought, I felt closer to God. I felt happy and I laughed at myself for my fear thoughts. This happy and peaceful person is much closer to my real self. This is the reason it matters that I chose not to be afraid thatnight. The fear made me forget who I am. Letting it go reminded me of the truth.

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.

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 ourselves 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.

Here is a passage from the Course that has been helpful to me as I forgive the idea that the world is real.

T-6.II.6. How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there? 2 You cannot be anywhere God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. 3 That is both where you are and what you are. 

We made the body and the eyes 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 that 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, loneliness, and poverty 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. Jesus 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. His Voice will direct our thoughts and heal our minds of these strange beliefs.

Here is something that happened a few years ago.

One morning, I woke up in the early hours and lay tossing and turning in 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 had to participate in the MiracleShare Conference’s question-and-answer section on Saturday morning.

This thought startled me fully awake because I had been so focused on remembering all I had to do to prepare for Saturday’s wedding that I had not considered the conference. 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 ensure 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. I remembered that the Holy Spirit does it for me. I only need not take on the burden of directing my own life. 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. Normally, I would worry about not getting all my work done tomorrow. Or I could worry about some repairs for my house. I could worry about 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. I made an ego and it has replaced God. It is laughable, this fear. God’s purpose cannot be undone by my imaginings.