“We cannot really make a definition for what the ego is,” The Course says, “but we can say what it
is not. And this is shown with perfect clarity. Look at its opposite [the
miracle] and see the only answer that is meaningful.” As the ego is the heart
of the decision maker’s mistaken choice to believe that it is a self separated
from spirit, so the miracle is the heart of the choice to be mySelf and identify
with spirit. As the ego’s thought system of separation, division, and exclusion
takes me from the mind—the place where the original choice was made and the
only place it can be unmade, the miracle returns me to the mind where my
correct choice allows everything to be different, and lets the truth set me
free!
The world we seem to live in is the effect, the ego thought
system the cause: ideas leave not their source. The belief in my identity as a
separated self, remains in my mind where it first arose. So the physical world
has never left its source—the decision maker’s choice for separation, though it
seems to have. Cause and effect are one, as are source and idea. The content of
hate and separation is one with the form of hate and separation. The
miracle—the experience of returning to the mind, choosing again and
experiencing the happy dream, helps me understand this causal connection.
“Where there was darkness,” The Course says, “now we see the light. What is the ego? What the
darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and
where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere.” Ken Wapnick says, “These words
make perfect sense when read with the heart and not the brain, where they
infuriate because they seem not to say anything. Yet they are not supposed to,
because there is nothing meaningful to say about the ego itself. Once you have
an experience of truth, you will understand the ego’s nothingness.”
It is the contrast between my experience of the ego and the
miracle that reveals the ego’s true nature, not studying, analyzing or
explaining it. Understanding and change come only when I let the ego go and
step beyond it. So the miracle leads me back to the decision maker in my mind
who can observe the results of its mistaken choice and gently without blame,
guilt or shame, not take that original choice so seriously, not make a sin out
of it but simply choose again and gently smile the darkness away.
Dreams remain - both the ego’s nightmare and spirit’s happy
dream, because I alternate between a sense of myself and mySelf. The more I
choose mySelf, the more I will experience that and the less I will experience
myself. With practice and help from spirit my decision maker can be aware of
the contrast, and choose spirit more often than ego.
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