The Ego’s Madness in Our World

“Seek not to make the Son of God adjust to his insanity.  There is a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of truth and who will wander off. . . .Ask not this transient stranger, ‘What am I?”  He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.III.7)

We are all insane to one extent or another, if we have not yet awakened, that is.  And most of us have not yet awakened.  This quotation gives a particularly poignant description of the “stranger” who has wandered in and occupied the place of our Self.  This stranger does not know who he is, and this stranger is our egoic self.  So we do not know who we are, even though asking “What am I?” has become the preoccupation of most of us.  We are bade not to ask of this stranger what we are, for the egoic self does not know.  The egoic self puts faith in things of this world, seeking always more, more, and more.  This is the way of the ego’s version of truth, for “more” is insatiable for this egoic self.

We need to set our sights higher, to the Guide we have been given.  The Holy Spirit will answer our query about what we are, and He will answer us immediately.  We are the innocent Son of God, occupying a self who has lost his way a little while, wandered into madness, and will eventually wander out, never to return.  This self will be transformed into the Self that is God’s Son.  And then the pain that we have known in the self that we have occupied so long will be no more.  We will know ourselves to be an innocent risen Self, at home at last in God’s world.

If we doubt this, we need only take a look at what the egoic self has made of this world.  Do we really think that this sad and dreary world is of God’s creation?  If we look in all honesty, we would have to say that either we are insane or God is.  Is it not more likely that we ourselves are insane, making a world that knows not of God, and knocks us about in hostile and profane ways?  

The way home to God may seem long, but once begun the end is certain.  And we will find our way home, never fear.  We walk an easy way when we turn to go back to God.  Our times smooth out, and we know joy again, for the dreams that we dream become happy, because these dreams are given by the Holy Spirit.

Our minds are no longer fully asleep, and we are not longer fully mad.  We will know joy again.  And in this assurance will we know peace, even in this world.

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