Bringing Me Home

I don’t quite remember when this happened, but sometime before I dismantled the old life I was out walking one morning and I had a distressing thought or question cross my mind. My split-mind turned toward the Holy Spirit (Awareness of Truth in my mind) and received an answer. But I was startled because this time I heard the question and I answered—I was not the questioner turning to the Holy Spirit. I was the Holy Spirit answering.

            Suddenly I was no longer the split-mind, but the “other side” of the split, the Teacher. As significant as it was to me at the time, it of course now stands out as a telling moment. This was the first time I was conscious of the shift in my mind, although I didn’t recognize its full implications. I was confused: I figured once I shifted to identifying with the Holy Spirit the split-mind would be gone. Was I now, as the Holy Spirit, to mentor the split-mind? Anyway, I couldn’t force myself into that position and I didn’t feel a moment like that anytime soon after.

            The split-mind was split between the ego, the thought system of my identity as a self (body/personality), and the Holy Spirit, the thought system of Truth in my mind. When I began A Course in Miracles I was almost wholly identified with the ego. Down through the decades I went through many shifts in self-concept and one of them was from ego to the split-mind. First, I was a person with a mind split between ego and the Holy Spirit. Later, after another shift, I was aware I am a mind and that mind was split.

            And that was the beginning of the end of the split-mind for me. I have said that the ego did not fall away all at once, but it dribbled away bit by bit until one day the spot where it was, was empty. My awareness of myself as a mind was actually a gushing away of the ego, because the ego was my belief that I was a self. And when the ego fell away my mind was no longer split. It has only one thought system now.

When a drop of water catches a glimpse that maybe it is not just a drop of water but is an ocean, it imagines itself expanding to be that ocean. In other words, it imagines a bigger drop of water. But an ocean is not a big drop of water. It is a significantly different body of water from a mere drop. And so it was when I glimpsed the Existence I am. I could only understand It from the context of the person I thought I was. I did not understand that dropping the boundaries of identity would result in a wholly different existence rather than a boundless existence as what I thought I was. This is why I watch a part of my mind move through grief, from resistance to acceptance, over this shift in consciousness.

            I have heard from others that after the ego falls away it takes a while for the habits of thinking and identifying with it to wind down. When this all began I referred to the part of my mind going through this as the “ego-identifier”. I moved away from that term for a while, only to return to it as the best description. When my mind was split, part of it over-identified with the ego, and it is this that is coming to grips with its corrected existence. The ego was never a part of my mind, but the part of my mind that identified with it is. It is what grieves the loss of the former way of existing. It is what is “coming home”, as it were.

I have often said this process is between me and me, an awareness that would wash over me intensely at times. Well, I have traded places, no longer the split-mind-me calling on the Teacher-me, but the Teacher-me reminding the ego-identifier that I am it, as I have always been. This mind was never really split.

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You do not have to walk this path alone. If you want support and guidance from someone who has been there email me at Liz@acimmentor.com to set up an appointment for mentoring. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.