The "Son of God" Falls Away With Ego

             In last week’s article I mentioned that after the shift in consciousness here I could no longer find anything in this mind to call the “Son of God” and struggled to fit my experiences into the ontology and theology of A Course in Miracles. Here I will explain.

This is what I thought and expected and taught over three decades as a student, teacher, and mentor of the Course: 

I (along with you) am a (the) Son of God. In my pure state I am what is called Christ. I had come to understand “God” or “Father” as Whole and “Christ” or “Son” as Part of that Whole due to the Course making it clear that God and Christ were truly One. The reason for the distinction was that part of the whole had “forgotten to laugh” at the ridiculous idea of being separated from itself and had “fallen asleep”. Thus, the Son, or Part, was looking to get back to its Father, or its Wholeness.

Since this was only a dream, this Part had not really left the Whole. I was “at home in God dreaming of exile.” The awareness of this was blocked by a “thought system” called ego. I understood that if ego was out of the way, I would be aware of myself as Part of the Whole, in a “happy dream” or the “real world” and then, at the death of the body, God would “take the last step”—meaning, there would no longer be a Part and Whole but only the Whole—God.

These were not just ideas from the Course for me. I had glimpses and experiences of the “real world”. Soon after becoming a student of the Course, I had seen a “Self” that was not Liz but which I recognized as “me”. After that, I felt I was to get back to that awareness full-time. I thought that I had obstacles to this awareness to overcome and practicing the Course was how to do this. So, I developed a relationship with my inner teacher, the “Holy Spirit” or “Bridge” between Christ and God, or the Part and the Whole, in my mind. It was my Guide and Teacher. It became my Constant Companion.

But something happened in 2011 to make all this go a little sideways. During meditation, the realization that The Enlightened Mind (Christ) was here, whole and complete, rose to conscious awareness. I had touched this before, but now it was right here and not leaving. Despite this, something else here continued in a process, on a journey. At first, I thought this had to “catch-up” with the Enlightened Mind and integrate with it, but it soon became clear that the Enlightened Mind was not missing anything. The thing continuing a journey was clearly ego and was separate from the Enlightened Mind. It would have to fall away, not “catch-up” and integrate, for the Enlightened Mind to be the only thing here.

This didn’t quite line up with what I understood from the Course. Yes, it says in the Course I could reach of a point of realizing “I need do nothing” because I was already in God. But the “I” on the journey did not discover this for itself. Something else entirely rose to conscious awareness and is the thing that “needs do nothing” because it is already whole. Now, I certainly had not thought that ego was the “Son of God”, but I did think that the “I” here was. I thought that the “I” was an individuated consciousness that misidentified with ego (“dreamt” it was “separated from God”). I expected that if ego fell away, the “I” would realize itself as the Son of God, Christ. But suddenly there was an “I” here and Christ—the Enlightened Mind—and they were not the same thing.

This split only became clearer as ego and its journey continued to dominate this consciousness despite part of this consciousness already being where ego thought it was headed at the end of its journey. Ego grew increasingly uncomfortable with this irreconcilable split. Then the shift in consciousness that began in 2011 culminated at The Break in 2018, when ego as a distinct experience of existence—as reality—fell away. (This can all be found in A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens).

That shift bumped what remained of ego (its ever-weakening thought system) out of the center of consciousness and revealed it to be something only appearing in pure consciousness—what I had called the Enlightened Mind (Christ) and is called God by most. This revealed there never was an individuated consciousness, or “Son of God”, that was split between ego and its own truth in God, that was lost to God, lost to its Self, or even dreaming of this. There never was anything here choosing between a misidentification with ego and the Voice (Holy Spirit) for its own truth. The only thing that had any sense of separation, choices, a process, or a journey, was ego. Because consciousness turns out to be simply a lovely space in which ego and its world appear and consciousness is not deceived by them. Consciousness never enters them. Consciousness is never lost in the “dream” of them. Ego was both the dreamer and the dream. It was the illusion and the one deluded by the illusion of itself. Sensing a larger truth around itself, ego also believed it was part of a greater whole, or God, to which it had to “return” because it could not accept that it does not exist at all.

The mystical experiences that occurred here were brief and distorted. I’ve discovered that when truth is initially felt in consciousness it comes in as “I”: “I see my Self!” “I am limitless!” “I am love!” But if sat with long enough, more information comes: “There is only this One.” “Limitlessness is here.” “Love is here.” The Enlightened Mind did not come as an “I”. It was simply here. Consciousness simply is what is. All sense of “I”, of identity, was false, was ego.

What I now know through a shift in consciousness does not make the Course wrong exactly. It is a matter of perspective as the Course is in and for ego-consciousness—in ego’s world. Ego conflates itself with consciousness to make it seem real to itself. So, if God is pure consciousness, then the presence of ego does make it seem—to ego—that part of consciousness has been individuated and is part of the whole—or Son to a Father. It dissociates the worst of its thought system, calls that ego, and says that needs to fall away so it—ostensibly an individuated consciousness—can “awaken”, but of course ego never acknowledges all that it is and that none of it exists. You can see how, in ego’s world, where ego is real, the Course makes sense.

But, or course, when ego falls away so does any idea of an individuated consciousness that could be called the “Son of God”. From the perspective of pure consciousness, there never was any separation, “part”, or “Son”, so no journey necessary. The whole experience of ego, spiritual journey and all, is recognized as a false idea (illusion) that appeared and disappeared and never had any effect on pure consciousness (truth). This is what is seen here now from this whole other perspective, this whole other world, pure consciousness, or consciousness without ego.

                

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