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Ask: Could you please explain the difference between the ontological and psychological ego?

          “Please explain the difference between ontological ego and psychological ego. I've reread your blogs and asked ChatGPT but I'm still confused.” —Anonymous   Your confusion is understandable. I would not know this distinction if the ontological ego had not fallen away. So, I’m not sure the difference can be conveyed. The psychological ego, or the ego thought system , is easier to discern because it is what blathers away in your mind much of the time. The ego thought system is what you must deal with to improve your living experience; it is what psychology and A Course in Miracles address. It is all that you can address. The ontological ego is harder to describe because it is an experience of existence—a living experience. It is not just thoughts and feelings, but the I/me experience. It may help you understand if I say that Liz fell away here. The person who was here is simply gone. Many who have the experience of the ontological ego fal...
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Emotional Intelligence and Spirituality

             Years ago, I had a friend who bought into the idea that men are rational and women are emotional. I laughed and asked her if she ever watched a football game where most of the spectators are men. What did she think the excitement, cheering, high-fiving, booing, and despair were if not displays of emotions? It seemed her definition of emotional came down to “cries easily”. What about wars, are they ever rational? We’ve been in a patriarchy for ten thousand years, men have overwhelmingly been responsible for wars. Some bully, who has absorbed his tribe or nation into his identity, has gotten his feelings hurt and now he feels he must display his superiority over another man/nation in the guise of doing it for his people. It might seem like war is about territory or resources, but those are things that could be rationally negotiated if emotions didn’t get in the way. Humans are emotional, period. The only question is, who has more emotio...
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ACIM and Truth Arising Randomly

             So, is it contradicting A Course in Miracles to say, as in last week’s article , that truth rises randomly to conscious awareness when the Course says everything that happens is planned? No, because we’re talking about two worlds, or, really, two different views of consciousness and what is appearing in consciousness. The Course appears in and is concerned with what is happening in ego consciousness and in ego consciousness there seem to be such things as deep time and meaning and purpose. Notice that meaning and purpose are always given after the fact. In the middle of an occurrence, you often admit you don’t know why this is occurring or what it means. You may trust that you will understand it later, if you have such a mindset. But that understanding does not come from the event, but from your mind. Ego consciousness is storytelling to grant cohesion to what appears in consciousness. This is its made-up reality. It isn’t perfect, w...
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Unhealed Healers

            Last week’s article was about ego’s spiritual advancement. It says, “ If truth continues to grow in one’s conscious awareness, the effect can be mitigation of the worst of ego, self-centeredness, selfishness, pride, arrogance, guilt, and fear. This shows up as ego accepting it is part of something larger, considering others, compassion for others, ceasing taking itself so seriously, laughing at itself, taking responsibility for itself, admitting its faults, willingly making amends when possible, and forgiving”. These are things deemed in the world to be maturity and what many see as self-actualization or realization. The words to be emphasized here are “the effects can be”. Students often tell me about someone, perhaps a popular teacher of A Course in Miracles or another teaching, or a friend who is also on the path, or someone in a study group they attend, who they find to be a terrible person in many ways but who claims to be spiritually ...
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Spiritual Advancement

            Invariably, after articles like the past two where the illusion of identity was discussed, a client or a reader will say something to me along the lines of, “I know there really is no identity but…” Or, “I know I’m not supposed to have an identity…” What is shared in articles like those are how things change, what is seen after nonduality experiences, not a judgment against or prescription for repressing your current experience. It seems many feel foolish for continuing to have an experience that they hear or read is no longer there for others and they opt to deny it or repress it in their experience. But keep in mind, only ego struggles against ego. Ego is not a wrong thing or a bad thing, nor is it foolish for it to be appearing in conscious awareness. That is just what is happening, a false idea running its course. To pure consciousness that is all it is, a mirage—nothing. Any meaning, purpose, or value, good or bad, seen in ego and/or its...
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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 se...
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"I" Means Whatever Occupies Conscious Awareness

            As the shift in consciousness approached here, a thought that kept coming up was that the better question is not, “What am I?” but rather “What is real?” And since, what I’ve discovered is when we talk about the “I” or self what we mean is “what is experienced as real”. “I” is a designation that moves from identity to fact, depending on whether ego or truth (pure consciousness) occupies conscious awareness. I’m not talking about the “I” in our casual discourse—the “I” starting this sentence being an example of that. In English, anyway, it would be ridiculously awkward to have a conversation avoiding “I” and “me” and “my”. But when we express our spiritual or nonduality experiences, “I” becomes the designation of what is felt in conscious awareness to be real. For example, as the shift approached here, there were frequent experiences of “I am nonlocal.” This mind (conscious awareness) was everywhere rather than in a specific place. Clearly, the...
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