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

will said…
Politics, Trump, Liberals, The Media, Hate and leaving the World Behind.

T-12.VII.7-8
will said…
PROJECTION (to project): Egoic mind

EXTENSION (to extend): God, Truth, Holy Spirit, Jesus
will said…
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will said…
T.12.VII.5-6

Dig Deep, Get Real, Be Alert. Degrees of misperception matter here.
will said…
Dig Deep, Get Real, Be Alert.

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.
will said…
Thoughts…

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…
Unknown said…
Hey Liz - Can you give examples of the sort of things . . . . arise as ego responses for you that you are now honoring?

thanks
ACIM Mentor said…
Unknown, I do not honor any ego response. I honor my will, which sometimes expresses as an ego.
Deb said…
The loving content, the strength and power expressed here, I feel so blessed in this instant.

Holy Wholly Beautifully Compassionate Love.

Gratitude always, Deb
will said…
Not selling anything. Just came across it.
Lent: March 6th - April, 20th
will said…
Extension(to extend) = The Slipstream

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.

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