Identity Falls Away With Ego

          When this mind was first a student of A Course in Miracles, ego was confused to find in the Clarification of Terms in the Manual for Teachers that ego was juxtaposed with the miracle (C-2). It had expected the opposite of ego to be an identity, which it would call the Holy Spirit or Christ, because it saw those as identities. It expected that something here would go from identifying as an ego to identifying as the Holy Spirit or Christ. So, it was baffled, in fact disconcerted, by the Course saying the opposite of ego was the miracle.

Of course, yes, technically the Holy Spirit is a miracle, at least as the Course defines miracle, a shift in consciousness toward truth. But what this section of the Course makes clear is that the necessary shift comes not in identification but to perception, or really, which consciousness, ego or the Holy Spirit/Christ, occupies one’s conscious awareness (your immediate experience) and therefore how it sees. This shifts the focus to consciousness rather than identity. Ego focuses on identity because it must assert a reality it has made and identity is the shape that takes. Identification implies something with which to identify and for ego that is the person. A person has many traits and roles. These are just facts about it. But ego turns these traits and roles into identities that are paramount to it. They must be defined and defended because this is ego’s chosen reality. So naturally, ego expects that a spiritual journey is one of changing identities, of a transformation of ego and, by extension, the person.

Ego calls only the negative aspects of ego ego and then hides in the idea that there is a third thing here, a soul, which is really a disembodied ego. This ensures, to ego’s thinking, that it goes on, to either another identity as the Holy Spirit/Christ or another body in another life (reincarnation). However, that new identity as the Holy Spirit/Christ never comes, except in ego’s delusions. Ego is only a temporary idea and is not an eternal soul. Consciousness—truth—does not identify. It is not a doer or an actor. It just is.

The shift in consciousness that is enlightenment is not a change in identification but a dropping away of identification. The identifier, ego, falls away and what is left is the “space” in which it appeared, consciousness, and the thing with which it identified, the person. Without ego, the person is seen as it truly is, just an idea, a mirage, appearing in consciousness, as was ego and its thought system that is left behind to wind down.

Last week’s article was about how conscious awareness, the aspect of consciousness that ego occupied and blocked from the fullness of consciousness, uses the designation “I” for whatever occupies it. When ego drops away, the “I” goes from representing an identity claimed by ego to simply registering the present experience of pure consciousness in conscious awareness. The identifier is gone, so the mind does not identify as something new. There is no identity, but what was always here behind identity, truth, pure consciousness.

“The miracle forgives; the ego damns. Neither need be defined except by this.” (C-2.10:1-2) Forgiveness, as the Course defines it, is seeing a mirage as a mirage and seeing a representation of truth instead, light where there was darkness; love where there was fear. Ego’s “damnation” is seeing a mirage as reality, which makes it an illusion, or something that is not real but is believed to be so. A miracle reveals truth is untouched by ego’s delusions, including identity.

 

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