The Ebb and Flow of an Impossible Idea

Recently, I watched a TV show in which a woman through some not-reincarnation-but-previous-life (it was not well done, still don’t quite know what occurred) came to be told by a shaman that she had suffered enough and now could be at peace. She found herself in what she called an “empty peace” that she did not value. She wanted to experience joy, so she knew she also had to accept despair, and she made that choice.

Yes, these are the two experiences of existence available, peace and a gamut of feelings ranging from joy to despair. The peace available is not empty, however, except to ego, which values the gamut of feelings because that is its reality.

There is one thing here, your conscious awareness (your immediate experience), that can hold these two experiences, but not in the same “place”. Peace is what consciousness, or truth, is, but this is blocked by ego, which sort of “carves out” conscious awareness from consciousness, seeming to individuate it. When ego is not in conscious awareness, peace is the experience and there is no divide between conscious awareness and consciousness. Ego is the “stranger”, bringing a slew of experiences that are not-peace as ego is the idea of not-truth.

Once truth, or pure consciousness, comes to conscious awareness, ego thinks it must “close the gap” between it and truth. It thinks this comes about by emulating what it knows of truth. Truth does not judge what appears in the world, so ego thinks it should not judge. Truth is detached from the world, so ego seeks to be detached. Truth is quiet, so ego struggles to quiet itself. Truth is love without object, so ego seeks to love “unconditionally”. And so forth. Of course it fails. As A Course in Miracles puts it, ego’s motto is “seek but do not find”. Ego cannot join truth, as ego is the idea that opposes truth. Truth is already here, whole and complete, and does not need ego to “join” it. Ego eventually falls away as the impossible idea it is.

Ego fosters another illusion, that there is choice in this matter of which experience one has, peace or not-peace. If what occurred in the TV show had actually occurred, she may’ve felt it was a choice, but it would not have been. What she really would have experienced was ego showing up again in that space of peace. In fact, ego was already there in her feeling peace was empty. Sometimes clients will say to me, “I was at such peace, but I began to fear ego would come back, and it did, full force. Did I invite it?” No, there was no invitation to ego; there is nothing to invite it. Only ego is active. Fear means ego is already here, so what they felt was not that ego would return; it was already returning in the fear it would return!

What is happening in conscious awareness is the playing out of an impossible idea, ego. It ebbs and truth is experienced. It flows and fear is back in its many disguises. But ego tells a personal story of a personal journey and tries to make sense of this ebb and flow to validate itself. Why did peace come and then go away? What did I do to make it come? What did I do to make it go away? What does this mean about me? What does this mean about my journey? How do I get peace back? How do I get it to stay? Am I advancing on the journey? But the personal is false, a mirage, and truth does not arise for it or go away because of it. It is always here, behind the movements of ego.

 

>>>> 

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.

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