Ask: Can you shed some light on ego making choices?

           “Can you shed some light on the magic trick of the ego that feels/thinks that IT is doing everything and anything…surrendering, taking its will back, praying the Course’s prayers, doing the lessons and so on.  Is it not the case that “I” am literally doing nothing?  That God is simply God being and this little side trip into consciousness is merely unfolding…no agency whatsoever?  That the belief in the reality of this dream, by definition, contains this ever present belief that we are making choices?” –MG 

So, here’s what my experience since The Break has shown me, contrary to what I expected as a student of A Course in Miracles: No part of truth, whatever you want to call it, God or pure consciousness (my preference now), entered a “dream” or “side trip”. Ego, it turns out, was an idea playing itself out. The idea is a false reality where an “I” lives as a person in a body in a world. Some see this “I” as also having a soul, or a disembodied version of itself, that lives many lives. These are all just ideas and none of them are from or touch truth, reality. It’s not so much like a play being put on, where an actor takes on the role of a character. More like animation, where everything, scene, props, characters, are contrived. There is no real “I” that enters it and then realizes it was having a false experience.

This…depiction…plays out in the “space” of truth, or pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is just being, completely apart from this idea playing itself out. Is it watching? Mmmm…not deliberately. More like passive observing because this thing is here. Pure consciousness understands it is a total mirage. Nothing real is occurring. It has no thoughts about it, anymore than you give thought to heat shimmering off the highway on a hot day once you learn it is only a mirage and not really water up ahead.

So, within the mirage, the depiction, the mere idea, there is an “I” that is doing—a lot. It’s a big-time doer, that’s its seeming existence. Ultimately, what it is doing is nothing, as you said, because none of it is real at all. And some of its doing is seeming to make decisions. The depiction is predetermined, like an animation it is following a script, so there are really no decisions being made on the spot, it just seems—and feels—like it. That’s actually just part of the play, what it is, this whole idea of a reality where real things are occurring.

For some of the characters, truth comes to conscious awareness. They become aware of something greater than just this little ego experience. But ego cannot acknowledge it is not real, so it weaves this awareness into its story and suddenly the character is on a religious or spiritual path, making different choices. Now, ego, the “I”, thinks it is going somewhere. Some characters feel they must attain something. Others feel they are “returning home”. The truth that is sensed is real. The journey is not. Ego is not and never will be part of truth. However, the religious or spiritual practice an ego feels moved to make expresses the awareness of truth. In other words, cause and effect are the opposite of how ego sees them.

So, let ego and the person go to do as they are moved to do, without judgment. They are not foolish for learning to let go or for praying, meditating, practicing, etc. When those things are sincere, they are expressions of truth rising to conscious awareness.

 

>>>> 

If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and indicate that you want it answered in this newsletter/blog.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The dream may not be real by definition but it has a purpose. The Holy Spirit was placed in it. Do you know why? Do you know why we are watching a rerun of the dream?
10:59 AM
Anonymous said…
Mid term exam
11:29 AM
Anonymous said…
It has no purpose. The "Holy Spirit" is there because truth cannot be absent anywhere. Within it, while it's still real to you, you can choose to see it has the purpose of remembering truth.
We're not watching a rerun of the dream. The dream contains time, so the moment that was over before it could even begin seems to play out over time. That moment of an impossible idea arising and being simultaneously undone is what is depicted in time.
9:40 AM
Anonymous said…
My take on ACIM has always been the purpose of the rerun was to remember truth. God placing the Holy Spirit within the dream as the only means of awakening.
1:10 PM
Anonymous said…
the place of atonement
1:18 PM
Anonymous said…
If a person has not had an experience that shows otherwise, we must work within the frame work that we are in a dream containing time.
Unless the HS gives that insight ACIM is a waste of time.
2:33 PM
will said…
The purpose is, it is the place of the Atonement.
2:54 PM
Hannah said…
My experience has been very similar, though not exactly, and I cant tell if this discrepancy is just due to using language differently.. obviously no one pointer is going to suit all 'minds'.

'Here' the recognition is that to call the realm of experience 'false' is inaccurate, because nothing that is appearing is in any way apart from Sentience (emptiness is form, form is emptiness). All that could be called illusory is the conceptual 'individual self' which imagines it possesses it's own awareness, makes choices, thinks, acts etc.

I was at a roadblock for many years, trying to make it all fit into two categories, Real and not real.. though this simple distinction remains perfectly accurate in terms of the separation the 'ego' believes in. I found that from the perspective of Sentience containing experience, it all fell into place once it was seen in terms of "absolutely real' 'relatively real' and 'purely conceptual'. Until that point, the thoughts were stuck in a vicious cycle of trying to dismiss as false that which is impermanent.. ie all experience. And of course 'it' could not sit with that, having seen that there was not two.
10:36 PM
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