The Ego

“So what is egoic consciousness?  You all know what it feels like to be absolutely certain that you are separate and alone, that you must rely on your own thinking process, and that no one beyond—not just the boundary of your body or skin—but no one beyond your unique, contracted sense of ‘I’ has any connection to you whatsoever, and no one cares.  And you lament, ‘I am alone.  I am separate.  How on earth am I going to make it?  I’ve got to figure my own way.  I’ve got to figure out how this world works.  I’ve got to make it happen for myself!’”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 16, Page 194)

This lengthy quotation gives an excellent understanding of what the ego has done for us. And we all can understand what it means, because we have all been there–with the ego.

But when we come to realize what this ego is doing to us, we reassess and move into a better world. We are not “separate and alone,” because we have each other. When we lapse into competitiveness with each other, we forget that we are all in this together.

Let us not forget today that there is a reason that we are in a world with billions more people–our brothers and sisters–in it with us. We can reach out and touch any one of them today, even just now. And our sense of isolation will disappear.

Reach out today. Know that God is blessing our “reaching.” He knows that we are not happy when we are all alone in our conception of ourselves. Let us tune into what reality really is–today. We can do so. We must do so.

Looking to the Light of Our Soul, Pure Spirit

“Now, think about this.  If you feel constrained in this dimension, it does not mean that you are constrained.  It simply means that one tiny ray of your light is temporarily having a certain kind of experience.  If you trace that ray of light back to its Source, you find something brighter than ten thousand of your suns, something far more vast than the sun that lights your physical universe, something so vast that out of it has come forth a multitude of universes!

“That light of your soul, pure Spirit, remains undefiled and unlimited.  That tiny ray can become aware of the whole, and that is the process of awakening.  It doesn’t really change anything at all, since you begin to become identified, not with the tiny little ray that is having a temporary experience, but that field out of which the very power to experience the space-time dimension is coming forth.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 13, Page 159 – 160)

All of us certainly do feel constrained now, with isolation in our homes mandatory because of the coronavirus.  This means, as Jesus says, that “one tiny ray of. . .[our] light is temporarily having a certain kind of experience.”  Our Self is not affected by temporary conditions.  Our “light. . .pure Spirit, remains undefiled and unlimited.” 

I am just going through The Way of Mastery’s second book, The Way of Transformation, page by page with quotations meaningful to me.  But this one day, which just came in order, seems very appropriate to our situation.

Let us realize that only one bit of ourselves is having to experience this quarantine.  The glorious Self is free of constraints.  And it is to this glorious Self that we can look.  Our Self is much better and bigger than the persona that we have while living now on earth.

Let us ask the Self for the wherewithal to live with acceptance, making the best of a different sort of life—what we have to do for a while.

Sharing Is Better than Splendid Isolation

“You must forgive God for creating a shared reality before you can understand it is the only one you would want to have. You have to forgive this reality for being different than you have always imagined it to be.” (ACOL, 6.1)

We often want things for ourselves alone. We don’t want to share.

This attitude probably came from childhood, when our parents tried to get us to share with our brothers and sisters. Children don’t like to share. Now that we are adults, we often feel the same way. We want mine!

Sharing is the way of God’s world. We are not independent creatures, set in isolation in this world. We are amid many, many other individuals, our brothers and sisters, with whom we share our experience here. We need each other. This is a sometimes disturbing truth about our lives. We don’t want to need others. We think (along the ego’s thought lines) that if we are autonomous, we will not need anybody else. We will stand on our own two feet, independently; this is, we think, for maturity is all about.

But we are wrong. And when we recognize that maturity doesn’t demand autonomous living, we will open our hearts, at first ever so little, to other people.

We will live better when we have opened our hearts. Indeed, the heart is the way that Jesus is reaching us in A Course of Love. The heart knows truths that the mind cannot fathom. And we know better how to live when we let the heart guide.

Try sharing just a bit of yourself today. If this seems too threatening, tell yourself that it is just an experiment. See if you don’t have a day that flows better.

Sharing works. Sharing with our brothers and sisters is the way that we are meant to walk in this world. We don’t lose anything by sharing; all gifts belong to all of us, but nothing is taken from any one.

God will bless you when you reach out to others, giving your gifts freely to others, even as you enjoy those gifts also. The way back home is walked two by two, holding our brother’s hand, holding Jesus’s hand. There is no better way to live maturely.

We have truly grown up when we recognize that keeping our gifts close to our chests does not help anybody, lest of all ourselves.

Give Up Isolation as a False Idea

“You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. In your madness you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look.” (ACIM, T-13.V.6)

Reality is not isolated, a theme that I have emphasized in this blog. We can derive great comfort from hearing that we are not meant to be fiercely independent, separate from each other in splendid isolation. We are meant to lean on each other, to share, to join. We are not going to be able to live independently all the time anyway; life will pull the rug out from under us at pivotal points, and we do not need to rue this experience. We may chastise ourselves, thinking that we are too “weak” at such times. But this is a misnomer. We are never meant to go it alone. We don’t have to do so. Nothing in life or in our experience demands this of us.

What a blessing this actually is! We now know, if we take to heart this quotation, that we are joined to one another. We are differentiated in relationship, but we are in unity as One. And so we are actually joined one to the other.

We need to communicate with each other. We don’t need to stay in madness, with a split mind of separation and unity vying for ascendancy. The mind is split, all of our minds. The Holy Spirit (as A Course in Miracles would say) or the inner Christ mind (as A Course of Love would say) are “struggling” to take over, thereby freeing us. But there are probably still elements of the egoic, separated mind that vie for ascendancy.

But we know enough now that we don’t want the ego to try to run our lives. This ego is actually the “devil” or “Satan” that we have feared. But as a product of our own thinking, the ego does not require our fear of it. It is just best turned aside from. Not in resistance, for that will make the ego strong, because defense makes what it would defend against. Instead, just know that we need a whole mind, split no longer between unity and separation. The way is clear. Just sense our joining one with another, and our ego will be undone. Immediately, though it may arise from time to time, over and over, until banished for good in Awakening or Christ-consciousness.

No Longer Isolated, We Are One In Relationship

“Relationship is the invisible reality only expressed in form.” (ACOL, Dialogues, Day 14, 14.9)

We are individuals meant to be in relationship one to the other; we don’t have to imagine that the best way is to be isolated, alone, independent, doing it “our way.” We are meant to share with others this existence on earth. We were created for each other. That is why there are so many of us.

So: Relationship is the reality, expressed in form. If we didn’t have our physical bodies, our forms, we would be less inclined to imagine that we ought to remain concretely separate. Since we do have form, but we know that we are really One in unity with the All, then it is in relationship that our identity is best expressed.

This assertion, in the quotation above, is a milestone in our attempts to understand what Jesus is saying in A Course of Love. If we can understand unity (we are One) and relationship (we are nevertheless many), then we will have solved a great puzzle. And we won’t stand independent and isolated, by choice, any longer. We will know that we were created for each other.

Your Uniqueness

“It is in the different relationship of one aspect of creation with all the rest that the difference you so prize as your uniqueness exists.  And only there.  Only in relationship are you uniquely you.  Only relationship exists.  For Love is relationship.  (A Course of Love, 32.1)”

Affirmation:  “Only in relationship do I come into my own.”

Reflections:

1 – Relationships

We exist and live in a world of relationship, not only with our deepest Self but with all others.  And “others” includes nature as well.  We are not alone in any sense of the word.

2 – Why Isolate?

Why do we so often want to isolate ourselves?  This is actually the sheerest folly, even for introverts.  All of us need to reach o ut in some fashion, and when we do reach out, we come into the full expanse of our powers.  We give and we receive.  We are part of the whole, the All, part of God.

3 – Ego

We prize our uniqueness, but if this uniqueness is an ego-mind aspect, we are led astray.  The persona that we show is an ego-oriented self, and it remains the personal self, not the Self.

4 – Abide in Love

We are meant to abide in Love, and Love is of God.  Only this much will satisfy us.  We deserve better than what an egoic notion of our self could provide.  God would wish more for us.

5 – More

Let us find that more today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would focus only on my uniqueness as a function of what God has given me.  I would not seek a self-image, a persona, that is informed by the ego.  And this will mean that I cast aside egotistical ideas about my physical appearance.

So many of us focus on the external.  Help us today to focus on the internal, the uniqueness that only God can give.

Amen.

The Reason for Unhappiness

“Yet you must understand that nothing that is not part of God is worthy of joining, nor can join with you.  What you have sought to join with is the reason for your unhappiness.  For you seek to join with what cannot be joined, and you seek separation from all that could be joined with you and all that would fill your dark and lonely places with the happiness you seek.  (A Course of Love, 12.4)”

Affirmation:  “I would join, metaphorically, with all today.”

Reflections:

1 – Joining, Not Separation

The passage for today is obscure, but it is likely that Jesus is referring to our belief in a separated state, and the idea that we can join with special others when we wish, and depart from those same special ones when we wish (from the Manual of A Course in Miracles).  But nothing separated can actually be joined.  We need to, at least tentatively and temporarily, share an idea of Oneness with all.  And then the joining is easy.

2 – Spending Time with God

Jesus is not speaking here of physical joining, though he does speak of this joining elsewhere.  He indicates that this physical means was meant to remind us of our desire to one, not to be separate.  We are meant to be in relationship one to another; we are never meant to spend lives of isolation.  I do not mean for this statement to be controversial.  There are introverts who prefer solitude to the company of others, and shy people sometimes choose solitude also.  There are many religious individuals in religious orders that spend a good bit of time in prayer and meditation, and for these activities they may be alone.  But God is always with us, and He wants our companionship.  The opening pages of the Text of ACIM says that God is lonely when the minds that He created do not commune with Him.  He knows that we have fallen asleep and must be awakened.  And He seeks to do just that.

2 – Joining in Onwness

So, we learn today that joining in Oneness is the intention of God for us.  We are in unity and relationship, a recurrent theme of A Course of Love.  The unity makes us One; the relationship makes us differentiate from one another so that companionship can occur.  We are actually talking with a part of ourselves when we speak to another!  And we would not wish for ourselves a bad day, and so let us be kind and loving, sparing of anger and attack, when we are with others.  Our brothers and sisters deserve this of us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I never be guilty of choosing isolation from You.  And, except in special and particular times, I would not choose isolation from other people.  Be with me today as I seek to be sensitive to the interpersonal needs of other people, and to share my life with theirs, to the extent that we both desire.

I would thank You for leading me from too much introversion to a blend of being both introvert and extrovert.  I learned years ago that I get along better when I share my life with others, including the personal aspects that previously I kept between myself, my journal, and my God.

We do best when we join with others, not taking the idea of separation so seriously.  Separation, especially the independence that is so prized in our culture, is actually not always wise.  And separation, by itself, is never wise.  

May we seek and find You in the companionship that You would wish to have with us.  May I speak to You often today.

Amen.

Do Not Isolate Yourself

“Salvation is a collaborative venture.  It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are disengaging themselves from me.  (T69)”

Affirmation:  “Salvation is collaborative”

Reflections:

1 – Don’t Isolate Yourself

We are not meant to isolate ourselves in this world–even to study the Course.  We are meant to stay in the world ,and to minister to our brothers and sisters.  Our brothers and sisters are the Sonship.  (Note:  Scribed in the sixties, A Course in Miracles uses the same masculine terminology that the Bible does, but in the sixties, the masculine gender was recognized by everyone as including both genders, male and female.)

2 – Let Jesus In

Jesus, in this passage, indicates how important it is that he be a part of our lives.  This is his wish, but it is not mandatory.  Indeed, Helen and Bill were reluctant, when introducing the Course, to tell their listeners that their considered opinion was that the speaker was Jesus.  They knew how foreign this would sound to some hearers of the new message.

3 – Jesus as Elder Brother

Jesus can do more for us if we consider him a friend, an elder brother.  He speaks at one point of how we can imagine him holding our hand as we walk along, and he indicates that this will be no “idle fantasy.”  We cannot understand how this is possible, but we can take him at his word and see if it does not appear that he is with everyone who gives an insistent call.  He will come at the first “unequivocal” call (from the Text).

4 – The Consequences of Withdrawal

When we withdraw for too long, we also withdraw from Jesus.  And we cannot do that, because he and the Holy Spirit are our guides to better living.  He is the elder brother who catches us when we fall, and the Holy Spirit is the inner guide that leads us every step of the way–guidance.

5 – Salvation for Ourselves AND Others

Surely we do not want to disengage from Jesus.  So this passage has a warning for those of us who would seek our own salvation and not frequently enough think of the Sonship.  The two go hand-in-hand.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

When I am tempted to withdraw, help to remember my contribution to my brothers and sisters.  They need me, as I need them.  Salvation lies in our relationship.

May I learn from the Course with careful study, and then may I take that learning into the world.  This is the solution that will work for the world and for me.

Amen.

Isolation, Deprivation, and Lack

“A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack.  (T6)”

Affirmation:  “I wish the strength that comes from miracles.”

Reflections:

1 – The Oscillating Nature of Life

All too often our experience in the world, over the course of our lifetime, is not good.  We know some “happy” times, but these are balanced by dark times.  A Course in Miracles indicates that this oscillating nature of life is to be expected.  The sustainability of peace and joy does not come suddenly, unless revelation reveals the end to us.  And this revelation may not make Awakening sustainable.  In the beginning, it is likely that the glimpses will not last, but they will prepare us for what will last, when that time comes.  As long as we caught by the ego, we will know a movement forward, followed by a movement backward.  If we think about this, we will realize why it is true.  We have not been fully prepared, though the means are being carefully explained to us by Jesus in ACIM (from the Text).

2 – Miracles End the Oscillations

The “expected” nature of oscillations will happen until we come under the benign grace of miracles.  We then no longer feel so alone and lacking.  Jesus notes that this sense of isolation is a “false” sense, as we are indeed surrounded by the grace of Heaven.  Jesus promises that he will be with us when we ask.  He also mentions “Teachers of teachers” (M64) who help us when the need is there.  (And is there ever a time when the need is not there?)

3 – Ask for Miracles

We can ask for miracles and they will be ours.  All too often even advanced students/teachers of ACIM forget that “asking” is necessary.  We think, erroneously, that all should be given us without this humble plea.  But “ask and yet shall receive” (from the New Testament) is still the concept of ACIM.  This is the reassurance of Jesus, when he walked the earth, and, now, when he channeled ACIM.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I ask for miracles today, in my own life as well as the others whom I encounter, plus the readers of this blog.  May we not oscillate from dark to light and back again.  May we know the stasis of peace and serenity always.

If the day seems to turn dark, may I know that this is an illusion.  Regardless of how difficult the outward circumstances appear, it is my dream.  May I invite instead the dreams that the Holy Spirit brings.  And may You be there to comfort me as I walk through this sometimes troubled world.  I know that projection makes perception, and I would project aright today, so that I might perceive aright.

Thank You for Your felt presence.  This means more to me than anything else, especially on days that are difficult.   Be with my loved ones today, and that includes people I have not even met.

Amen.