Is That All There Is? The Ego and the Dichotomy

The ego, the part of our decision maker that chose the dichotomy instead of the continuum, and thinks we are only physical bodies, understands that if we choose to identify with our oneness, with all that is, with spirit and the love of god, life as we know it, our individual existence, will be over, for individuality and oneness cannot coexist.

But what wonder and glory might we – everyone of us – have instead? Our dualistic, dichotomous minds, can’t even conceive of what the freedom and joy of oneness might be!

So we are wrapped up in our egos and the ego experiences guilt because it set itself up by not only denying the glory and wonder of oneness, denying spirit, but by believing it actually destroyed oneness Itself. When we identify with the ego, we identify with its guilt, and that guilt and the fear that God is not really dead, but will rise again and destroy us, is so terrifying that our only hope of survival is to escape it by denying its existence in our minds and projecting it out into a world, seeing it all around us, in both our physical and psychological experience, but never in our minds where the decision maker is. It is only there, in our minds, where the decision maker is that we can make another choice.

The mind/decision maker’s fear, having chosen to believe it is an ego, dictates to the body what it should feel. All that we do for protection of the body: money, house, medicine, are fleeting and we will die. What we do for the body will never bring the peace of God. However holy it may seem, nothing we do in this world will bring the peace and happiness of experiencing our oneness with spirit, our reality as spirit. Only a change of mind, a switch from the ego/dichotomy to the spirit/continuum can offer that. The hit song that Peggy Lee made famous 30 years or so ago, Is That All There Is? captures this idea.

To say this another way, everyone walks around with terror, but tries to conceal it. The Course is designed to help us first and foremost, realize that we are in fact terrorized, see the source of that terror, the dichotomy, and choose again, the continuum. For if we do not know the source of our fear and terror is our decision maker’s mistaken choice, we can do nothing about it. If we think fear is justified, coming from hostile elements or people, we will strive only for external protections. Shifting to the inner decision maker and observing the ‘externals’ with spirit’s help is the meaning of true forgiveness. It is looking with spirit at the ego/dichotomy conframe as it manifests in the world and recognizing it as a projection of the mind’s guilt that has never left its source.