ACIM IV. The Only Answer, P 1, 2. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question.
ACIM Chapter 6. IV. The Only Answer, P 1, 2
IV. The Only Answer
1 Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. The ego always speaks first. It is capricious and does not mean its maker well. It believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from it at any moment. If it meant you well it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He has brought you home and you no longer need His guidance. The ego does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary error, the foundation of its whole thought system.
The more I learn about the ego, the more I wonder how we manage to live in this way. We made the ego, yet the ego does not see itself as part of us. The ego does not love us, nor does it wish us well. The ego is suspicious of us because it is afraid that we will withdraw our belief in it, and it is right about that. When I think of the ego, I think of science fiction stories about Artificial Intelligence gone awry.
I was reading a book just the other day about a computer designed by a genius to learn to think for itself, to become more intelligent. He gave it a personality and developed a relationship with it. He began to see that it was growing in ways that could not be predicted, and it was both fascinating and scary. Then he realized that it thought of itself as a being, and he never told it that it was just a machine.
I imagine the ego like that.
We made the ego to serve us in a specific way, and we seem to have lost control of the situation. The ego thinks it is something separate from us, and we think the ego is who we are. Our relationship has become strangely entwined and ultimately destructive. It is like the story of the computer that thinks it is human and the human who thinks it is in a relationship with a computer.
In the science fiction story, the human taught himself to depend on the computer for companionship, and the computer became possessive of the human but also suspicious of him. In our own science fiction story, the ego suspects it depends on us for its existence, and so tries to keep us involved in its endless stories so we will need it. It uses fear and guilt for the same reason.
Envisioning the ego as a vast computer system with extreme Artificial Intelligence capabilities helps me to see how insane our relationship with the ego really is. The ego is afraid we will unplug it, and we are afraid the ego will turn on us. We are both right. The time has come to let go of the ego and to realize that we are not symbiotic creatures. We will not cease to exist when the ego is undone.
When we let go of the idea of the ego, we will lose nothing.
Actually, we will benefit greatly. This is the secret the ego works desperately to keep from us, but it cannot succeed because this secret is in our minds and simply waiting for our desire to Awaken to activate it. This process has begun, and we are letting go of our confused beliefs about the ego, and the ego is making a last-ditch, frantic effort to keep us engaged.
In the end, we will “unplug” the ego. It will be that simple. All the effort we are making is to reassure ourselves that we don’t need the ego, and it is not worth keeping, and that no harm will come to us as we let it go. The character in the science fiction story had to destroy the computer in the end, and because he had become confused about the relationship, he chose to die with it.
Our fear is that if the ego ceases to exist, so will we. Our confusion is so great that we literally choose physical death rather than letting go of the ego. And so we dream awhile of life and then dream awhile of death and repeat this cycle endlessly. Our way out of the cycle, the way to choose Life, is to finally let go of the ego and re-discover who we are.
IV. The Only Answer, P 2
2 When God created you He made you part of Him. That is why attack within the Kingdom is impossible. You made the ego without love, and so it does not love you. You could not remain within the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom is love, you believe that you are without it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes you are separate and outside the Mind of God. The ego, then, raised the first question that was ever asked, but one it can never answer. That question, “What are you?” was the beginning of doubt. The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than obscure the question, because you have the answer and the ego is afraid of you.
When we decided to have an experience outside of Love, we made the ego, and being made without love it does not love us. In fact, the ego is afraid of us, and with good reason, because having made the ego, we can change our mind at any time, and it will cease to exist. This is exactly what we are doing right now. We are changing our minds. We have had our experience and are now choosing to let it go.
For me, the problem was convincing myself that I was not the ego. I had been identified with the ego for so long that I nearly completely forgot my identity. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is placed in my mind to keep that memory intact, so it is always possible for us to recover our true identity.
I am now asking the questions that matter, but I am not asking the ego.
I am asking the Holy Spirit. Who am I? What am I? But I am also reminding myself that this information is available to me and that it is actually right there in my mind where it is always available to me. So, I also use a mantra: I know what I am. I know who I am. I know how I serve. (Paul Selig: I am Word)
I remind myself that I know this because I am not afraid of finding the truth. My desire to wake up is much stronger now, so it is happening. In each moment, I receive as much help as I can use because, on this one thing, my will is in alignment with God’s Will. It is God’s Will that His children return their full minds to the truth, and now that I am getting in touch with my true desire to do this, how could I fail?
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