A Course In Miracles: CHAPTER 11: GOD OR THE EGO
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A Course In Miracles
CHAPTER 11: GOD OR THE EGO
I. Introduction
“Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true.” (1:1-2)
“Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible.” (1:4)
“If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict, because the ego was made out of the wish of God’s Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father.” (2:2-4)
“It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty.” (2:6)
“Remember the Rays that are unseen.” (3:3)
“The closer you come to the foundation of the ego’s thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. Yet even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and bravely hold it up to the foundation of the ego’s thought system.” (3:5-7)
“My brother, you are part of God and part of me.” (4:1)
“I give you the lamp and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone.” (4:5-6)
In summary, the “Introduction” is saying:
The ego cannot be our father, for we invented it, and what we made, cannot turn around and claim to have made us. We come from One Source; God the Father of all Creation Who’s Great Rays of Light shine within us. If this is true, and what God has created cannot change itself into something other than what He created it to be, then we cannot be an ego. One or the other must be true. Are we part of God or the ego? The answer appears quite obvious when looked upon with the light of true understanding.
I. The Gifts of Fatherhood
“You dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone.” (1:6)
“To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can this be if infinity has no end?” (2:1)
“If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable?” (3:1-2)
“The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from you.” (5:1-3)
“God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever.” (6:1)
“Could any part of God be without His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself.” (7:1-2)
“You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He speaks for you. He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He shares His Will with you; He does not thrust it upon you.” (11:1-3)
“Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Father is to know your own.” (11:6)
“That is why healing is the beginning of the recognition that your will is His.” (11:9)
In summary, section 1: “The Gifts of Fatherhood” is saying:
The greatest gift from God, is that we exist, and will continue to exist as part of Him for all eternity. God specifically created each and every one of us and He makes no mistakes. We were brought into being on purpose, and therefore, we each must be very important, wanted, and desired by God. God’s Will is that we come to realize this is true; that we come to truly believe we are treasured by God as His holy child. Our healing begins with the recognition of our true relationship with Him as our Creator-Father.
II. The Invitation to Healing
“If sickness is separation, the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step toward recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer.” (1:1-2)
“Every healing thought that you accept, either from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God’s Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God’s Fatherhood and of your Sonship.” (2:5-6)
“Healing is a sign that you want to make whole. And this willingness opens your ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, Whose healing message is wholeness.” (4:1-2)
“The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, because He will not be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company.” (5:1-2)
“Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome.” (5:4-5)
“Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom you invite.” (7:1-2)
“The Holy Spirit is there, although He cannot help you without your invitation. And the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.” (7:5-8)
In summary, section 2: “The Invitation to Healing” is saying:
The invitation to healing is simply any thought that is loving, peaceful and without judgment. It is a thought of unity with one another. Such thoughts are invitations, because healing does not come from us alone, but through us from God. God’s Will is that we know our wholeness, but if our minds are preoccupied with thoughts of separation, which are thoughts opposite to love, peace and non-judgment, then our mind is closed to the Voice of the Holy Spirit. Move your mind ever so slightly in the direction of peace and you will be released from the bondage of the ego’s thinking. Though always present, the Holy Spirit will not barge into our minds uninvited. He must first be welcomed through our willingness and desire to be like Him. We express this desire through recognizing the spark of God within each other.
III. From Darkness to Light
“God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind it does not see whom it attacks. Yet it always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is you.” (1:6-8)
“God’s Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not what he does, believing his will is not his own. The Kingdom is his, and yet he wanders homeless.” (2:1-2)
“O my child, if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete!” (3:1)
“The way is not hard, but it is very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing.” (4:1-2)
“Walk in light and do not see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created of light and in light. The Great Light always surrounds you and shines out from you.” (4:6-7)
“God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself.” (5:1)
“When you wander, you but undertake a journey that is not real. The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn toward the light, for the little spark in you is part of a light so great that it can sweep you out of all darkness forever.” (5:4-6)
“Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never let them enter the mind of God’s Son, for they have no place in His temple.” (6:2)
“Only God’s Comforter can comfort you. In the quiet of His temple, He waits to give you the peace that is yours. Give His peace, that you may enter the temple and find it waiting for you.” (7:1-3)
“In your mind you can accept the whole Sonship and bless it with the light your Father gave it. Then you will be worthy to dwell in the temple with Him, because it is your will not to be alone.” (8:1-2)
In summary, section 3: “From Darkness to Light” is saying:
Thoughts of conflict are “dark thoughts” and therefore blind us from God’s Light within one another. Conflict is called the “root of all evil” because when we see each other as bodies, we are not seeing Who We Are as part of God’s One Light. The body is a deception of the ego to keep our minds in the dark about our true Identity as part of God’s Sonship. We are encouraged to not see these “dark companions” but know instead that God walks with us within each body we see. The Light of God is always surrounding us and within us. We can know this Light when we still our thoughts about the world and simply allow ourselves to rest in quiet, for God Himself is quiet; there is no conflict in His mind. Here is the temple in which we desire to reside. Here we will know we are never alone, for in God’s quiet we will witness to the truth of our Oneness with all creation.
IV. The Inheritance of God’s Son
“Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Self.” (1:1)
“You are not saved from anything, but you are saved for glory.” (1:4)
“Yet if you hate part of your Self all your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God created as yourself without love.” (1:7)
“Can the Son deny the Father without believing that the Father has denied him?” (2:2)
“Therefore, look only to the power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace.” (2:5)
“Your peace lies in its limitlessness. Limit the peace you share, and your Self must be unknown to you.” (3:1-2)
“Only you can deprive yourself of anything. Do not oppose this realization for it is truly the beginning of the dawn of light.” (4:1-2)
“This is a crucial step in the reawakening. The beginning phases of this reversal are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn from without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within.” (4:4-6)
“If your brothers are part of you and you blame them for your deprivation, you are blaming yourself.” (5:1)
“That is why blame must be undone, not seen elsewhere. Lay it to yourself and you cannot know yourself, for only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much an ego defense as blaming others. You cannot enter God’s Presence if you attack His Son.” (5:3-6)
“Peace be unto you who rest in God, and in whom the whole Sonship rests.” (8:4)
In summary, section 4: “The Inheritance of God’s Son” is saying:
Your inheritance from God is everything He created along with you. This includes all of the other souls in existence – they are part of you, and you are a part of them. To realize this, and accept it as something you want, is to have accepted your inheritance. Our ego wants to maintain our separation and thinks it preposterous that there be no one to blame for its unhappiness. It endlessly seeks ways to blame others or ourself for what it perceives as unfair treatment. We are One Self, and to blame another is to blame an aspect of ourself. There is no difference. Self-blame is the same as blaming another. How do we get out of this circle of blame? Blame no one and nothing. Only the ego places blame for its unhappiness, for it would never find anyone guiltless. Rather, allow your mind to rest in the peace of the present moment. There you will find the whole Sonship waiting for you with love. Claim them as your inheritance rather than rejecting them through blame and you will find your true treasure.
V. The “Dynamics” of the Ego
“The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.” (1:5-6)
“Let us begin this lesson in “ego dynamics” by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything.” (3:1)
““Dynamics” implies the power to do something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. Yet the truth is very simple:
All power is of God.
What is not of Him has no power to do anything.” (3:3-7)
“You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real.” (4:2)
“You must recognize that the last thing the ego wishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it.” (8:1)
“Without this belief you would not listen to it at all.” (8:4)
“Minimizing fear, but not its undoing, is the ego’s constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?” (9:2-3)
“Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat.” (10:1)
“Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true.” (11:2)
“Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness.” (12:5)
“For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack.” (12:9)
“The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to break down or to separate out.” (13:1-2)
“Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him.” (18:1)
“Every brother has the power to release you, if you choose to be free.” (18:4)
“If he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him. You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, you will hear Him.” (18:6-7)
In summary, section 5: “The “Dynamics” of the Ego” is saying:
The ego’s goal is always separation. It lives only because we think we are separate. The ego knows that once we understand this, we will cease to fear it and its whole existence will be undone. Our fear of Unity and love holds the ego in place. One fear-tactic the ego uses to preserve itself, is to set our minds to analyzing the “whys” and the “what for” in every relationship we have. This seems to diminish our ego-fear, for we think we will find a logical explanation for our problems. This is not so. And once we give up such analyzations, we also give up interest in the ego’s fear-based agenda. Every relationship we have, no matter how brief the contact, can become an open door through which we walk away from the ego. But this all depends on how we see them. If they seem hostile, or we have a long history of conflict with them, we have not given them our peace. Speak only of peace to them, and we will hear Christ speak to us in return. And the “dynamics” of the ego are undone.
VI. Waking to Redemption
“It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is equally impossible to see what you do not believe.” (1:1)
“It is not until beliefs are fixed that perceptions stabilize.” (1:3)
“This course is perfectly clear. If you do not see it clearly, it is because you are interpreting against it, and therefore do not believe it. And since belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it.” (3:1-3)
“I am leading you to a new kind of experience that you will become less and less willing to deny.” (3:6)
“You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in you, as you live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a brother and not perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it in yourself and not perceive it in God?” (4:2-5)
“For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God’s Son as his Father created him.” (4:9)
“Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly, because it is the symbol of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents what you want to be. The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it can be offered you through the grace of God.” (6:1-3)
“You have nailed yourself to a cross, and placed a crown of thorns upon your own head. Yet you cannot crucify God’s Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son has been redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the Son of God as crucified, you are asleep. And as long as you believe that you can crucify him, you are only having nightmares.” (8:1-6)
“God’s Son is saved. Bring only this awareness to the Sonship and you will have a part in the redemption as valuable as mine.” (10:1-2)
“There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God’s Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their oneness.” (10:5)
“To God all things are possible.” (10:8)
In summary, section 6: “Waking to Redemption” is saying:
The ego says, “Seeing is believing.” The Holy Spirit says, “Believing is seeing.” Our beliefs are the seeds of our experience in this world. They spawn what we will see. Therefore, believing is seeing, not the other way around. However, what we see does not make a fundamental change until our beliefs become fixed. We will only see what we can accept as true, according to our beliefs. In truth, we live in God, and He in us. Are we ready to see this oneness? Are our beliefs such, that, seeing this oneness would not cause us fear? And yet, God promises that one day we will indeed truly believe the words in this course. We are currently dreaming a dream we are trapped within these bodies, doomed to suffer and die. Yet, this is not so, for what God has created immortal, eternal and everlasting in His joy remains as it ever was. We are not crucified and have not crucified. We areawake and redeemed from our nightmares, but have only to believe it, to see it.
VII. The Condition of Reality
“God created only the eternal, and everything you see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world that you do not see.” (1:2-3)
“The real world can actually be perceived. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing else. For if you perceive both good and evil, you are accepting both the false and the true and making no distinction between them.” (2:6-8)
“The ego may see some good, but never only good.” (3:1)
“It does not reject goodness entirely, for that you could not accept.” (3:3)
“The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite of goodness enables you to recognize a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this is the condition of knowledge.” (4:1-2)
“To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself.” (4:7)
“The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is only what is true.” (4:9)
In summary, section 7: “The Condition of Reality” is saying:
Only what is eternal is real. Yet, everything we see around us is degrading and disintegrating even as our eyes rest upon it. We are looking at an “un-real” world then and would indeed like to see the real one – the eternal one – God created for, and with us. Since beliefs create our experience, we must give up belief in this reality in order to see the true reality that lies beyond this one. This does not mean we walk around pretending we do not see what we are currently seeing; it is to see it, and simply know it is not the truth. It is to “Know Thyself;” to know beyond a doubt, you are not a body, but a being of Love and Light, unified with All That Is. Then you will have met the condition for seeing God’s Reality.
VIII. The Problem and the Answer
“This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it.” (1:1-4)
“Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you.” (2:3)
“You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all.” (3:1-4)
“Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher.” (3:7-8)
“You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:
Do I want the problem or do I want the answer? (4:4-6)
“You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application. Nothing could be more specific than to be told that if you ask you will receive.” (5:1-4)
“The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours, and will take nothing in return. For what is yours is everything, and you share it with God.” (6:1-2)
“Beautiful child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you.” (8:1)
“Do not, then, be deceived in your brother, and see only his loving thoughts as his reality, for by denying that his mind is split you will heal yours.” (9:2)
“In the real world there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division. Only loving thoughts are recognized, and because no one is without your help, the Help of God goes with you everywhere.” (10:1-2)
“Do not accept your brother’s variable perception of himself for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept your healing without his.” (11:1)
“Brother, we heal together as we live together and love together.” (11:4)
“If you perceive offense in a brother pluck the offense from your mind, for you are offended by Christ and are deceived in Him.” (12:1)
“Would you not exchange your fears for truth, if the exchange is yours for the asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only in yourself.” (15:1-2)
“When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself.” (15:4-5)
In summary, section 8: “The Problem and the Answer” is saying:
Our only problem is the ego’s perception of separation from one another. The Answer to this problem, is the Holy Spirit, Who sees only our Unity. We need to make the conscious choice to see only through the eyes of the Holy Spirit and we allow our only problem to be corrected for us. When we feel our peace disturbed, we have only to remind ourselves we are seeing incorrectly and then allow our vision to be corrected through asking the simple question: “Do I want the problem, or do I want the answer?” Choosing the Answer is what will heal our minds and allow us to perceive one another without the veil of the ego covering our eyes. The bodies we see, and all our problems associated with them will become meaningless, as we choose God over the ego as our reality. He then will take the final step for us, by taking our outstretched hand and lifting us up unto Himself.
This concludes CHAPTER 11: GOD OR THE EGO
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