Respect Your Will, Respect Yourself
Something
that shifted in the past few years after the ego (personal thought system) fell
away, leaving its diminishing echo behind, is I started to honor, not the ego
itself, but the mind behind it. My mind.
Honoring my
mind showed up as allowing the ego to have its responses without judging myself
for them. I didn’t realize at the time that honoring was what I was doing. I
had undone guilt (see my book, Releasing
Guilt for Inner Peace), so I no longer felt a need to judge myself for the
ego’s judgments. I no longer feared the ego, because I no longer felt guilty
about it. I simply found that if I pushed away egoic responses they lingered
and if I allowed them, they dissipated. I had no idea that this was how to
respect my own mind! But of course it was. The ego was a part of my mind, even
if false. Letting it have its say was how I respected, not the ego, but the will
behind it. And that was me.
I think of my identification with ego
as the “little will”. It’s like I broke off a bit of my True Will, laid the ego
over it, and identified with it. In that identification, I confused my will
with what was willed—the ego. So it felt to me like letting go of the ego would
be letting go of myself—my will.
But I didn’t lose part of myself when
the ego fell away, because it was just a thought system. And that awareness has
dawned as I slowly reclaim the little will as part of my True Will. I grow in
my awareness of my Strength and Power.
Whether I experienced the Awareness
of Truth or the ego, it was my will.
This means even in weakness—identifying with the little will/ego, and all that that
entailed—I was exerting my will. I obscured this from myself by thinking the
little will wasn’t my real will. It wasn’t my Whole Will—but it was my real
will. What I willed was false—but
what willed it, is real.
Now that I feel
this, I understand I made a choice, first to identify with the ego, then to let
it go. It was the choice between What I am and what I made. My mind, my will,
has been wholly in play the whole time. If I don’t respect that, I deny my own
power. So I don’t look back, as the smoke it left behind continues to dissipate
in my mind, in regret at having chosen the ego. I was fully at choice; that was
my power all along.
>>>>
Will,
power, strength, choice: These are yours. If you want to learn how to reclaim
them, email me at Liz@acimmentor.com to set up an appointment for mentoring. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.
Comments
T-12.VII.7-8
EXTENSION (to extend): God, Truth, Holy Spirit, Jesus
Dig Deep, Get Real, Be Alert. Degrees of misperception matter here.
True Story: For ten years I struggled to understand “Extension (to extend).” I could not get it. Many times Liz attempted to explain it, but could not get past the block. To understand Extension (to extend) you must understand the process that leads to it and this is where the ego had made its stand. I don’t know when understanding came. I believe it was there long before I even realized it. But seeing the simplicity of it and the intensity of the block to understand it gave me a clear understanding of how serious the Ego takes its Agenda.
Pissed off at God, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or the Course…or even other students?
It reminds me of Jesus on the Cross. The ego right there with him to the end. One of the criminals who hung there with him hurled insults at him, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” Then, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
Did this really happen? We don’t know and we certainly don’t know the dynamics if it did. But as students of the Course all we need to know is the ego inserted itself in the mind of the author at this critical point to say forever and ever as truth, “See, I told you of my power. I am here with Jesus as he dies and that is all you will ever get. Pain and death!”
On a more mundane level our frustration and anger with the powers that be is the way the Course seems to be forced on us. The ego tells us we are capable of biting off huge chunks of Truth like it did with me and Extension. But that isn’t the deal. Everything is in bits and pieces. Sometimes (most times) so small that we have no idea we learned something. After a lifetime of kneeling at the alter of intelligence we find ourselves back at square one. Of course we’re frustrated and pissed. It’ll pass…
thanks
Holy Wholly Beautifully Compassionate Love.
Gratitude always, Deb
Lent: March 6th - April, 20th
Open, Available, Calling to Everyone. Close your eyes, picture the tail of a comet and jump in. The Holy Spirit will take it from there.