by Celia Hales. Published in Miracles Magazine; Jon Mundy, publisher; Glenn Hovemann, editor.
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I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. (ACIM, COA ed, W-23)
When anyone attacks you . . ., they are merely crying out in their own fear and insanity. (WOM, Part 3, Lesson 31)
The time has passed when the forces of ego attacked the truth with all their ferocity. (CHOL bk 7, 5:I)
No one who has studied A Course in Miracles can forget the first quotation above; it is a mantra. The world in Workbook Lesson 23 (of 365) is a world in which attack rules because we have not traveled far back to God. Our first step is to change our own attack. When we drop attack, we find that the sword we have been pointing at our heart has a blunt end.
The next lesson is a reassurance about the attack that we still perceive from others. The Way of Mastery says that what we are seeing from others is really coming from fear and insanity. I have found that when I say internally, to myself, “This is just insanity,” my own insanity subsides; I don’t want to attack in return.
Finally we reach the place of Choose Only Love. Our world has become calmer now, and attack has taken a much secondary place–if we see it in ourselves or others at all. Attack has actually been a ploy of the ego, and when the ego and its egoic patterns have been sufficiently weakened and then dissipated, we are living in a new age, the time of Christ. Now life will get better, a lot better. We will find in most of our moments that we experience the happiness that God wishes for us. Perhaps happiness has been a long time in coming, but come it does. Life without an egoic propensity to attack–and be attacked–takes on a mellow, pleasant aspect that is the essence of God’s peace. And where God’s peace reigns, happiness reigns.
We see this in the spirit of Christmas, which as I write is ending for another year. Even egoic people drop their defenses once a year. If we retain God’s spirit, we know the spirit of Christmas year-round.
And that is what leaving the ego behind does for us.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 