Actions and Motivation
I’m often asked by my clients and readers: Now that I have
peace and the self is falling away, why do anything? What motivates me to
direct the self to act? Ah, that is so thinking like a self! A mind thinking
like a self thinks it does things because it is motivated, usually by guilt,
desire, or duty to do it. And the basis for these motivations is the belief
that the self is you and you need to get or to express something, tangible
(material) or intangible (feeling). And without those motivations a mind identified
with a self cannot understand acting.
I’m going to tell you something that I don’t know if you can
understand until you can see it for yourself, but it is amazing:
The self acts not from motivation, but because it is going
to act. There is no other reason. And here’s the mind-blowing thing I’ve come
to see as I have learned to simply watch the self act without judging it: The
self has never acted from personal
motivation! It has always acted because it was going to act. Its actions are
the result of cause and effect at the level of form. All the rest—motivation,
interpretation, judgment—was simply going
on in my mind.
I’m sure you’ve had experiences where you didn’t know how to
act because you had conflicting motivations. You want to do something, but for
some reason you felt guilty about doing it. So should you or should you not do
it? The fact is, the action of the self is not related at all to your conflict.
If you do it and you feel guilty the source of your guilt is not the action but
your thoughts about it. If you don’t do it and you feel deprived because you
really wanted to, the source of you inaction was not really guilt, either.
That’s just a story in your mind. So is your sense of deprivation. All of
your thoughts and feelings about the self’s actions are completely unrelated to
the self’s actions, before, during, and after the actions!
Another way you may feel conflicted about an action is that
you are motivated by both the ego (personal thought system) and the Holy Spirit
(Awareness of Truth in your mind). For example, you may be on a spiritual path
out of a genuine desire to know Truth. But the ego may also encourage the path
so that you can be a “spiritual person”. But neither of these matter! Your
self’s path is going to unfold as it will unfold as an expression of the
Undoing manifesting through it. The rest is just a story you tell yourself in
your identification with a self. These
stories are how you identify with the self.
Sometimes feeling motivated toward an action is the ego. In
that case, your sense of motivation has no relationship to whether or not the
self takes that action. At other times, your sense of motivation to act or not
act is the story of the universe unfolding through you. How can you tell which
it is? Sometimes it is very clear. You know something will unfold as you feel
it will. But at other times you won’t know clearly where the motivation is
coming from, especially if the ego feels strongly about it one way or another.
Then all you can do is let it unfold. You won’t know until you acted or not if and
you were to act or not!
So my approach to directing the self in its actions is to
live in “I don’t know”. I don’t know which of my feelings is coming from the
ego and which from the flow of the universe. I don’t know if I will direct the
self to act or not in any given situation. I just get the self up each day and have
it do what it is given to do that day. And I know that all my thoughts and
feelings about its actions, before, during, and after, are really quite apart
from its actions. They are just stories in my mind.
>>>>>
Still sorting out what is the ego
and what is the Holy Spirit? That is one of many things I help my clients with.
Email me at Liz@acimmentor.com to set up an appointment. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.
If you have a question the answer to
which you think will help others email it to me at Liz@acimmentor.com
and indicate that you want it answered in the newsletter/blog.
Comments
n
Life is basically out of your control, a film happening on the screen, and yet, our Minds are identified with these characters, these bodies. That's where all the suffering (and happiness) comes from, the Mind watching the movie.Thank you for sharing your experience liz, very insightful.
The experience of guilt and fear around any script is the belief in the story and related actions as mine. Listening to the inner judge. The emotions trailing from the thoughts and beliefs and the desire to preserve the form, the autonomous self.
The identification as the personal self as separate is the ego. The Self as whole, complete, innocent knows what It sees is false and Is detached from the picture show Is the Holy Spirit.
I have taught for quite a while that it does not matter one iota whether or not one becomes aware of Truth. Whether or not one does is their part to play in the Undoing (Atonement). Some are manifest undoers (aware) and others are unconscious undoers. Their part is part of the Undoing because everything is, but they do not seem to "play it out" as manifest undoers do. ACIM is for manifest undoers as they are just starting out.
What you experience as your choice and your motivations is the universe of form flowing through you. You experience things as though it is "you", but "you" is part of the whole.
Frankly, what I have written lately would have been hogwash to me when I started out. And probably up until not long ago. Only now can I see this all so very clearly. It is what I see now that guilt is out of the way. I could not have seen these things before.
My article next week answers questions about what I have written recently.
'Sometimes feeling motivated toward an action is the ego. In that case, your sense of motivation has no relationship to whether or not the self takes that action. At other times, your sense of motivation to act or not act is the story of the universe unfolding through you. How can you tell which it is? Sometimes it is very clear. You know something will unfold as you feel it will. But at other times you won’t know clearly where the motivation is coming from, especially if the ego feels strongly about it one way or another. Then all you can do is let it unfold. You won’t know until you acted or not if and you were to act or not!'
maybe we can discuss this in our next session as well. this just itches my brain, especially the first two sentences! i feel maybe if i got them, the rest of the paragraph would become clear!
The first two sentences mean there is no relationship between your *sense* of motivation and the action the self takes. Let's say you feel motivated to direct the self to pull weeds in your garden. Whether or not the self does it, however, is the result of cause and effect at the level of form, not your sense of motivation. Your motivation may or may not line up with the actual action.
Your feeling motivated to pull weeds in your garden at a certain time may be your sensing this is what the self will do. You are in the flow of the universe. Or it may be coming from your own desire to clean up the garden or to pull weeds. This only has to do with you and nothing to do with your sense of motivation.
is that last line saying the same thing as this? 'Sometimes feeling motivated toward an action is the ego. In that case, your sense of motivation has no relationship to whether or not the self takes that action'.
hang on! earlier today i found this writing on my bedroom floor, dunno where it floated from!
'the self is NOT the ego! the self is the body/personality. it is neutral. the ego is a thought system in your mind that tells you that the self is you!'
is that writing even true? im so confused right now, i feel i cant hold the basics!! and if so does it help explain the above paragraph??
the message that i am finding to be really helpful in this blog is not so much even the information itself, it is what is implied/unveiled in the above recognition, the information is just like a conduit of undoingness, lol.. and the only thing that can (appear to) be undone is the unreal. this blogs just sings 'Innocence, Innocence, Innocence! in the gaps between the words!" this blog helps clarify what is not, which as acim says repeatedly, simply removes the blockages to awareness of what is. acim also says that the ego is but the desire to be autonomous; individual gods, somehow, impossibly, apart from eternally unified Truth, with the power to make our own destiny so to speak, to be the cause of our own effects. and it also says that this is in truth impossible.. this blog is an explanation of how we believe in the impossibility ACIM speaks of.. and as such oh BOY! how it can show you the Innocence that is all that is True 'in you', how forgiveness does not forgive anything! there is nothing to forgive because everything is neutral except in the personal thought systems interpretation! motivation is about interpretation, purpose, desire for change!
something else that has become clear in the last few days is that it is in neutrality that True innocence, not innocence as a state comparative to guilt is found. so the quote? i wrote out above 'the self is NOT the ego! the self is the body/personality. it is neutral. the ego is a thought system in your mind that tells you that the self is you!' does tie in with this blogs message and kinda explains why its message is so liberating. as ive heard Liz say many times to us, but put in my own words ;) "you done been conflating the mind with the self, sugar!" and it is the PTS that does this.. or at least so it tries, via the stories it tells about the self and its actions!
and none of this matters one iota.. as acim says, the tiny mad idea was undone the minute it was thunk, so to speak, by the nature of What Is. all of time and space IS this one expression.. and this undoing, this IS all the actions. inevitable.. cause and effect completely outside of/unrelated to the personal thoughts system's motivations.
so thats where this took me.. thoughts on this Liz? anywhere where im getting this arse up??