ACIM Chapter 11. V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 12, 13

ACIM Chapter 11. V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 12, 13

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 12

12 God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because His Autonomy encompasses yours, and is therefore incomplete without it. You can only establish your autonomy by identifying with Him, and fulfilling your function as it exists in truth. The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. But it is given you to know that God’s function is yours, and happiness cannot be found apart from Your joint Will. Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness. Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you believe. Yet God’s Son is not insane, and cannot believe it. Let him but recognize it and he will not accept it. For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. But the sane realize that only attack could produce fear, from which the Love of God completely protects them.

Oh, Wow! That first sentence!

Reading something like that first sentence, which tells me that God is as dependent on me as I am on Him, makes me cry. He cannot want anything but love and peace, joy, perfection, all good things for me, because I am of Him, in Him, part of Him. When Jesus says that God is incomplete without me, I am truly humbled, and I cry again from happiness and notice that I also cry in relief. I guess that I still fear God, though I tell myself otherwise. I must be because here I am, hiding out in the fantasy world. Well, something else to give the Holy Spirit and to accept the Atonement for.

Here is something from an earlier journal.

Here is what really caught my attention this morning. “Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness.” I started thinking about how ego goals bring fear. When I think about the ego goal to retire, I am excited as I realize it could happen within two years.

But I am also afraid because all sorts of things could interfere and prevent that goal from being fulfilled. This is true of all ego-driven goals. Even fulfilled, they are fearful. What if I retire and the financial change is too much, and I regret the decision to retire? What if I retire and I hate retirement? That last one was purely hypothetical. Ha ha. But you get the picture.

The ultimate goal, and the goal all the others stand for, is to be successfully independent of God. That is what the ego wants. It appears in many different ways; that is, it takes many different forms, but they are all just symbolic of the one desire. That desire to believe in separation and to experience the different forms separation can take is the source of all the problems in the world and the world itself.

And now…

Hurricane Beryl is moving toward the Gulf of Mexico. It is not forecast to affect my area, but I have been through enough hurricanes to know that I need to keep an eye on it. Everything can change once they enter the Gulf. I don’t hang around for hurricanes, so I will not be in bodily harm, and I have insurance for any damage. But it is exhausting to go through all of that, and I find myself feeling tense when I think of it.

This is how the ego works. It offers us solutions for the scary stuff designed to lessen fear but never undo it. Fear is of the ego alone. If I am in fear, I am in the ego. If I think from the split mind’s perspective, I will be in fear. It is unavoidable. Is this what I really want, to live in fear? I have a choice. I can awaken from this fear dream. If I do so, I will remember my true Self and my Creator. I will live in perfect peace and harmony with all that is. It is up to me.

Thank God … really … thank you, God, that I can choose to return to my real self. I can choose the goal that is mine as God’s Son. As I begin to realize that this small individual will is nothing, I will no longer want to pursue it. I begin to realize that my will is God’s Will and all that means, all that offers me.

V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego, P 13

13 The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to break down or to separate out. The attempt to understand totality by breaking it down is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack. Unaware that the belief cannot be established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.

So how is it that I analyze instead of accept?

What does Jesus mean by this? I was sick one day. The ego mind thinks about what this means. How did I get sick? What caused it and what would fix it? What medicine or action would make me feel better? I think this is analyzing the sickness, breaking it down into what feels like more manageable parts, and then dealing with each one.

How would acceptance look? The body is a communication device that tells us where we are mistaken in our thinking. Because of the use I gave it, the body is very valuable. This morning, instead of analyzing the sickness, I accept it as a message that my mind is sick and needs healing.

There is only one problem and one solution.

The problem is separation; analyzing the sickness just increased the separation beliefs in my mind. Separation thinking says this sickness is different from other sicknesses I have had before. This one is not as serious as some, but because of the symptoms, there are certain things I will not be able to do. 

Maybe I got this stomach upset from eating too much rich food, or maybe I caught it from someone. Maybe I need some medicine, or just some time and rest, or maybe I need to see a doctor. So many parts to the problem and so many possible solutions if I keep listening to the ego.

If, on the other hand…

I accept that I am listening to the wrong voice and that is my only problem, then the solution is simple. I stop listening to the ego interpretation of the problem and the ego solutions. Instead, I listen to the Holy Spirit. Problem solved. If there is anything that needs to be done in the world, I will know what it is. But the problem itself is wrong-minded thinking, and the Holy Spirit is the Answer.

Jesus says that the ego believes that power, understanding, and truth lie in separation, and from looking at the way the ego tried to solve this problem, I see how true that is. If the ego could not categorize the problem, it would not know how to find an answer. In the case of sickness of the body it needs to know the symptoms of various diseases and the medicine appropriate for each. It needs to know what sickness is serious enough for medical intervention and which just needs time. The ego believes that power lies in how it separates things and how much information it has for each separate part.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t separate at all. It sees only one problem, and that is a confused mind. It sees only one solution, and that is a clear mind. This is true if I have a headache, a virus, a cold, cancer, or if I am dying. It’s all the same to the Holy Spirit, and so the answer is obvious and simple. The ego needs to attack the problem by dividing and separating, and the result is chaos. The Holy Spirit accepts that the problem is one and the answer is one, and so the result is peace.