ACIM V. The Ego-Body Illusion, P 1, 2, 3. All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego’s judgment.
ACIM Chapter 4, V. The Ego-Body Illusion, P 1, 2, 3
V. The Ego-Body Illusion, P 1
1 All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego’s judgment. The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness, and this is not the way a balanced mind holds together. The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from your awareness, and raises control rather than sanity to predominance. The ego has every reason to do this, according to the thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego, and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation.
I often hear people say that all things work together for good, and I say it myself, but I know I don’t always believe it. If I did believe it, I would not be anxious about things. As I sit here writing this morning, I am anxious about the time. I have an appointment I can’t be late for. I ask Jesus to adjust the time for me as I often do. But I still feel the need to rush, watch the time, and stay in control. Obviously, I don’t think all things work together for good. I seem to believe that if I am late for this important appointment, that would not be good and that I must make all of this happen, the writing and the arriving on time part.
Maintaining Control
Maintaining control is the ego’s primary objective this morning, and I guess always. It allows only what it wants to believe into awareness. I have studied A Course in Miracles for over 40 years. I “know” a lot of stuff just from reading it for so long, and even more stuff from practicing it. But at any time, I forget parts of it and take into my awareness only what the ego wants to remember. This is one of the ways the ego maintains control.
The ego says it is our job to use common sense about time and to keep an eye on the clock. It says that we have to decide if this appointment takes precedence over my commitment to this time with Spirit, and it decides that the appointment is more important. After all, what is one day out of the hundreds I have been doing this? When I remind myself of the miracles I have experienced around the belief in time, the ego draws my attention to the times I have fallen short in faith and given into fear.
According to the ego, my faithlessness means I don’t deserve miracles.
Ego Hijack
Do you see how the ego hijacks the knowledge in my mind? When I ask for help from the Holy Spirit, I am given the thoughts that lead me to the truth. But then the ego begins a relentless battle for control over knowledge. Here is what I am doing today. I notice the anxiety that manifests in my body as a tightening of the jaw and clenching of the stomach. I know what it means. Though I hear the ego warnings, I know I can ignore them. I hear them, I am tempted to believe them, but I return my mind to the Holy Spirit instead. I trust.
The ego is in constant battle for my mind. It wants this body to control and, in doing so, believes that it controls me. It keeps me as distracted as possible to prevent me from remembering the truth. This would be the end of the ego. The ego does its best to convince me at every opportunity that I am this body. And that I am very vulnerable, and that my only hope of survival is to control everything in my life. It works vigilantly to keep my attention on the illusion so I will not glimpse my freedom.
Pure Suffering
It has become my job to be vigilant against the ego and for God. As I have done this, I have become convinced that I cannot be the ego since I am the one who is vigilant against it. I still forget sometimes and allow the ego to narrow my focus to the ideas it wants in my awareness. But I can only be fooled for a little while now, and then I return to sanity. I look back over my life before this practice and wonder how I kept any degree of sanity in believing every thought in my mind. I would regret that wasted time, except I see how important it was as it is how I learned to disregard ego impulses. It was pure suffering and the motivation to shift my allegiance to the Holy Spirit instead.
V. The Ego-Body Illusion, P 2
2 A major source of the ego’s off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the Thoughts of God. Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego, because they clearly point to the non-existence of the ego itself. The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them. It cannot, however, make them cease to be. It therefore tries to conceal not only “unacceptable” body impulses, but also the Thoughts of God, because both are threatening to it. Being concerned primarily with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego perceives them as the same. By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to save itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge.
A Thought of God
I am a Thought of God, as are you. But up until now, I didn’t think of myself like that. I thought of myself in terms of my personality and my body. I defined myself by my job, the roles I played, and how others saw me. And I still do that sometimes, but mostly I notice these tendencies and ignore them. Or when I see that I want them to be true, I put that desire on the Altar. The Holy Spirit and I look together at it before His Light shines the darkness away.
There is the Thought of God, pure and unadulterated, glorious and perfect. And then there is the ego, and it is the ego thought that blinds me to my true Self. As I bring those false thoughts to the Altar, I undo the ego. This allows my brilliance to shine bright and clear as ever.
The ego mind resists this with every trick it has. It says that I am the body, and to lose the body is to lose myself. The ego is so certain of that belief that I have believed it too. But the ego is not trying to preserve me, but only trying to preserve itself. To know who I am is to see the ego cease to exist in my mind. If it does not exist in my mind, it does not exist at all.
Giving God a Body and Human Attributes
To further convince me that I am this body, it convinced me that God has a similar body. With God embodied, it was simple to see Him with all the personality traits I accepted as part of me. He became angry and vengeful. He had favorites, and I had to behave so that I catch his attention in a positive way. Also, He gave favors to some, and to some, He did not. I learned to beg and bargain for what I thought I needed.
The ego mind is very clever. First, it convinced me that I am this pathetic, unstable personality in this vulnerable and fragile body, forever at the mercy of the world. When I argued that I had to be like my creator, it readily agreed. It gave me a god just like me, a body with an unstable personality, a personality in constant need of adoration, obedience, praise, and victims.
Now that I have chosen to remember the truth, the ego fights for its life. When I feel like the beloved of a God of perfect Love, the ego reminds me of my many faults and awful sins. This is how it tries to convince me that I do not deserve forgiveness. It argues that my daily thoughts and actions prove I am neither loving nor lovable.
Jesus Makes it Simple
It projects its vengeful thoughts onto the body as sickness and pain. This is to prove I deserve punishment and that God is untrustworthy. Do you see how it tries to confuse the Thoughts of God with the ego thoughts? This keeps us so off balance that we can’t discriminate between reality and illusion. We are so bewildered by the conflicting thoughts in our minds that we are no longer completely sane.
Jesus makes it simple for us. He says there are only two Voices. There is the ego voice and the Voice for God; only the Voice for God is real. When I ask how to know which one I am hearing, I am told that if it is not completely loving and joyful, gentle and kind, it is not God’s Voice. There is only love (God) and fear (ego). Easy to tell them apart.
I am told that I don’t have to do anything to fix this problem other than to want to heal more than I want the problem. The actual healing is done by the Holy Spirit, and so is not my concern. I am asked to be vigilant for my thoughts and to place the ones that are unlike Love on the Altar and allow them to be healed. As these thoughts are purified, the truth is revealed. I am told to disregard appearances, that what the body’s eyes show me is a lie. It is simple, and when it feels hard, it is only because I resist the truth. But even that resistance is forgiven as I place it on the Altar.
V. The Ego-Body Illusion, P 3
3 Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane. Yet this confusion is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself. In one sense the ego’s fear of God is at least logical, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, makes no sense at all.
The idea of God dispels the ego, and I chose this weekend to dispel the ego more quickly and completely. I chose to shift the idea of God’s Will in my life to something more inclusive. For a while now, the idea that I want God’s Will has been playing around the periphery of my consciousness. I would consider doing something and then ask, “Is this God’s Will for me?” Sometimes I would even wait for an answer to form in my mind. ~smile~
One day, I read an article by Nouk Sanchez in which she used this prayer:
I choose only God’s Will for me from this moment onward. In so doing, I choose to forfeit my own independent will in every area of my life.
I knew immediately that this is the prayer I had been moving toward. Though I didn’t realize it then, my previous prayer prepared me to choose God’s Will.
Holy Spirit Gently Guides
Later that morning, while studying the Course with others, I noticed a slip of paper on the table. It had the same prayer on it. One of the women I was studying with had been using this prayer. It turns out she had gotten the prayer from me. I had seemingly forgotten about it. I don’t think I really forgot about it. I think I was not quite ready for this total commitment. Now I am.
I see the Holy Spirit’s gentle hand in this. He guides me a step at a time so that in each instance of change, I am ready for it. I recognize some resistance to the idea of forfeiting my independent will in every instance. I also realize how nonsensical this is. To be afraid of God’s Will is to believe that He wants me to suffer. It is to believe His Will might be something bad for me.
The Last Obstacle
The fear of God is the last obstacle to peace, and I choose to overcome that obstacle now. Just as I have done many, many times, I see the fear and the resistance. And so I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. This is a mighty thing I do, and I do it for the Sonship. This is no time for false humility. I step up and take my place as savior of the world.
It’s funny really, because this all began with the thought a few months ago that I was tired of dieting. I was tired of worrying about what I ate. How was I to know what was good for me and what wasn’t? That this decision has led me to be the world’s savior seems way over the top. And yet isn’t that our function? Lesson 206 says clearly that the salvation of the world depends on me. And what does it matter, the story that leads us to that function? They are all just stories, some funny and some dramatic, but always just stories. One is as good as another if we use it as an opportunity for healing the mind.
To read Pathways of Light Insights for this section, CLICK HERE.