What is the Ego?

Our new special theme begins by saying, “The ego is idolatry…”

We can stop right there. Already we have something to contemplate.

What is idolatry?

Idolatry is extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone.

In order to turn this definition into helpful insight, let’s pause and look at the definition slowly and contemplatively:

Extreme admiration, love or reverence
for something or someone.

In our last special theme, we saw that Truth is the absence of consciousness. Now we see that ego is the extreme admiration, love or reverence for something or someone—that is, love for object rather than for absence.

Can you find that— extreme love for object rather than for absence—in you? Can you see that which is intently focused on “something or someone” instead of absence?

Close your eyes and look. What is interested in thought, sensations, sounds—anything but absence?

It may feel like ‘me.’ It may feel like a sense of what you are. It may feel like your very existence. But it is none of those things. What you have just discovered is the ego.

Ego is that which admires, loves and reveres some thing. Ego is that which keeps us engaged in outward focus.

Fear binds the world. Forgiveness sets it free.

Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

When it comes to the ego, fear is actually the belief that the absence of someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

Today’s lesson says,“ego makes illusions.” Another way of saying that is outward focus makes illusions. We could also say attachment to objects, including thoughts, makes illusions.

The lesson also says that “Truth undoes” these same illusions.

In our last special theme, we saw that truth is the opposite of illusions. That means it must also be the opposite of outward focus.

Of course, the opposite of outward focus is inward focus. It is through inward focus that we find Truth, of which our lessons says, “It merely is. And by its presence is the mind recalled from fantasies, awaking to the real. … Without forgiveness is the mind in chains, believing in its own futility.”

In our first special theme, we learned that forgiveness is abiding as the unaffected Self. That means that the ego is undone by turning inward and abiding there as the unaffected Self.

Please contemplate this tip. Notice the ego in you. See it in action. Also contemplate how ego is undone. And then with this clarity, enter into your meditation for today.

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Before we begin our new special theme, let’s take a day to review the special themes we’ve contemplated so far. I will begin “What is the Ego?” tomorrow.

What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness is recognizing yourself as the unaffected Self. Therefore, “what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.”

What is Salvation? Salvation is healing by “failing to support the world of dreams … it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust.”

What is the World? It is a “false perception” where “mechanisms of illusion … go to find what has been given them to seek.” Yet, “all perception can be given a new purpose.”

What is Sin? Sin is ignorance or outward focus. “Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined issuing from thoughts that are untrue.”

What is the Body? “The body is a fence” that seems to separate us from everything else. It makes duality seem real and makes it seem as if we experience duality directly. However, its purpose can be changed.

What is Christ? Christ is consciousness. It is the process of creation and the unaffected witness of creation. It is what we are. It is our higher Self. (Note: There is a more ultimate reality beyond Christ, compared to which Christ is an illusion.)

What is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is a Judeo-Christian term for spiritual intuition, which issues forth from our Self as consciousness. Its sole purpose is to help us awaken to consciousness. Once this goal is accomplished, its purpose is done. (God takes the last step to awaken us beyond consciousness.)

What is the Real World? The real world is the world as it is seen from the perspective of consciousness. It is a world blessed by forgiven eyes, seen through true perception. The real world is still a dream, but it is a dream that reflects Truth. It prepares us for the next and final awakening.

What is the Second Coming? It is awakening to our Self as consciousness. From this awakening we see with true perception and experience the real world.

What is the Last Judgment? This is the awakening beyond consciousness into Nirvana. With this step, consciousness itself is seen to be untrue.

What is Creation? “Creation” is a term A Course in Miracles uses for reality. It is what is known after manonasa, the death of our sense of self as mind-consciousness. It is our true Self beyond any sense of self. It is our actual existence, often referred to as bliss or Nirvana.

There is no conflict, for my will is Yours.

Today’s lesson helps emphasize any decision we may have made to commit even more to the path of awakening. It says:

How foolish, Father, to believe Your Son could cause himself to suffer! Could he make a plan for his damnation, and be left without a certain way for his release? … How could I think that Love has left Itself? There is no will except the Will of Love. … Conflict is sleep, and peace is awakening. Death is illusion; life, eternal truth.”

And so today we begin again. We forgive ourselves for any past “failings” that we may perceive, and we contemplate what we really want.

Here’s a song that always inspires me whenever I make the decision to increase my commitment. (The Meditation Options are below the song.)

 

 
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What is Creation?

Step Five of The Seven Steps to Awakening by Michael Langford has this objective:

Be inspired, encouraged and motivated to:

1. Make and maintain the decision to bring the imposter self and all suffering to its final end and thus remain in infinite-awareness-love-bliss.
2. Actually practice…

Here are 21 quotes from Step Five to help motivate our decision. Please read these quotes slowly and contemplatively.

Ramana Maharshi:

Though in this false world one may live on, the ending of both “I” and “mine” in the clarity of true awareness, void of every doubt, this only is the abidance in the bliss of being That.

Returning to the source from which we have emerged, we are restored to our own true Being. Enjoying there bright and clear our natural bliss, still, still, unmoving we abide.

O mind, you wander far in search of bliss not knowing your natural state of Freedom. Your home of infinite bliss you will regain if only you go back the way you came.

A woman with a necklace round her neck imagines it is lost, and after long search elsewhere touches her own neck and there finds it; even so, the Self is here within. Probe for it there and find it.

Sri Annamalai Swami:

Don’t be discouraged by the length of the journey, and don’t slacken in your efforts to get home.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:

Steady faith is stronger than destiny. Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and is therefore loosely woven. Confidence and good hope will overcome it easily.

You need maturity of heart and mind, which comes through earnest application in daily life of whatever little you have understood.

On your side there is so much trouble. On mine there is not trouble at all. Come to my side.

You are quite capable of crossing over. Only be sincere.

Faith is not blind. It is the willingness to try.

If only they go deeply into the fact of being and discover the vastness and the glory to which the ‘I am’ is the door, and cross the door and go beyond, their life will be full of happiness and light.

The Supreme Yoga

One should never yield to laziness, but strive to attain liberation, seeing that life is ebbing away every moment.

He who exerts seriously now is able to overcome predispositions and exalt himself from the states of darkness and stupidity and impurity.

The Self alone is to be sought, adored and meditated upon.

This Self is eternal existence.

The wayfarer does not despair at the sight of the long road ahead but takes one step at a time.

The man of Self-knowledge is awake to that which is non-existent to the ignorant. That which is real to the latter is non-existent to the enlightened.

One surely gains that for which one strives; if one neglects it he loses it. The mind flows along the course of wisdom or ignorance, in whichever direction you make it flow.

Sri Sankara

The Self is ever blissful and never experiences suffering.

By this discourse of teacher and pupil, the character of the Self is taught to those seeking Freedom, that they may be born to the joy of awakening.

Eternal, unfading, joy, unstained—this is the Eternal, THAT THOU ART.

I will not hurt myself again today.

Our workbook lesson begins, “Let us this day accept forgiveness as our only function.”

Our first special theme was, “What is forgiveness?” Through that special theme, we saw that forgiveness is abiding as the unaffected Self.

As today’s lesson says, “The Self which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer. Let us choose today that He be our Identity…”

Our fourth special theme was “What is Sin?” Through that special theme we saw that “sin” is ignorance or outward focus.

If you look carefully at the two sentences I have highlighted from today’s workbook lesson, you’ll see that the lesson is asking us to “go back the way you came.” That is, focus inward and return to our unaffected Self.

Here are two songs that you can listen to as you contemplate today’s lesson. The first song is directly applicable to the teaching today and over the last several days. The second song applies a bit more loosely, but it is a fun song that just might stick in your head. (The Meditation Options are posted below the songs.)

 

 
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What is Creation?

Our special theme says, “Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself…”

What does that mean, “forgive creation”?

What is God’s only true creation?

What is forgiveness?

Please contemplate these questions with inner spiritual wisdom until an answer that you know is true comes to you. It may be helpful to use writing to achieve that end. It is best to complete this contemplation on your own before reading the tip under today’s lesson.

Here is the music I am listening to as I contemplate this. Some of you might enjoy it too. Others will prefer silence.

Female voice

Male voices

I have already chosen what You will.

If there is any challenge forgiving yourself for having wandered from God’s genuine reality, today’s lesson may help with that challenge. It says, “Father, I thought I wandered from Your Will… Yet what I am in truth is but Your Will, extended and extending. This am I, and this will never change.”

Let’s not forget that our special theme over these last several days has been, “What is Creation?” And the answer is, “We are creation.”

In other words, in spite of this dream of consciousness, humanness and world, what we really are has continued unabated. That’s what awakening is all about. It’s awakening from what isn’t true to what is true.

Are you ready?

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full.
Thank you.

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What is Creation?

Our special theme says, “God’s memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God’s Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.”

That says it all. As we wind up the first year of Gentle Healing and prepare to begin the second year, we are asked to look at our commitment to truth, and to make our commitment whole.

We have looked at Choice A and Choice B in Chapter 5 of The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss a number of times now. Today, I’d like to share these same choices with you from the perspective of an awakened Carmelite Nun, Bernadette Roberts:

In contrast to the divine, the human condition is so terrible and devastating that even the worst of descriptions could never do it justice. I am not referring here to sin, evil or suffering, but rather to bare human existence itself—and the whole natural world included. What we usually think is so beautiful in this world is actually monstrous and unbearable to look at, but only in contrast to the divine. …

Those who believe man can have both heaven and this world at the same time are very much mistaken; such a notion is a total underestimation of God’s utter transcendence, … Compared to the divine estate there is no beauty or happiness in this world; thus man cannot afford to have a glimpse or taste of the final estate and still expect to find this world acceptable. The ultimate estate is not of this world; it is not even compatible with it… For this reason it is good that man does not see the reality of the divine beyond consciousness, for if he did he could not endure this world. What man does not know, he does not miss, and what he does not know is how utterly transcendent the divine really is.

That is her description of Choice B, living in the world as a self.

Here is her description of Choice A, which is Manonasa, awakening to the First Principle of God, Nirvana:

About all that can be said is that if we put together man’s loftiest experiences of ecstasy, bliss, love and all things ineffable, they fall as short of the divine condition as the size of an ant falls short of that of an elephant. Consciousness’ most lofty heavenly experiences of the divine are but the palest shadow of the ultimate divine condition or “heaven.”

It makes you wonder what we are choosing by not fully applying ourselves to awakening, doesn’t it?

I choose the second place to gain the first.

Our workbook lesson begins by saying, “What seems to be the second place is first, for all things we perceive are upside down until we listen to the Voice for God.”

I think Sister Bernadette made that perfectly clear with statements like, “What we usually think is so beautiful in this world is actually monstrous and unbearable to look at, but only in contrast to the divine.”

We put off seeking awakening with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind and all of our strength, because of the things we value in this world. They get our time instead.

Could our sense of priorities be very, very wrong?

Is it time for a change?

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full, and contemplate it along with Bernadette’s description of the human condition compared to realization of the divine.

Also, reconsider your spiritual aspiration. Is it sufficient to give you the motivation you need to give even more to this spiritual path, or is there another spiritual aspiration that is more motivating for you? It may help to ask this question and write until the answer is realized. I did.

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What is Creation?

Our special theme says, “We are creation; … We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. … God’s memory is in our holy minds…”

This is a very important clue. Truth is unimaginable, but it is reachable. And we reach it through a journey within our self.

This could be called returning in the way we came. We began at Home, in the First Principle of God as our Self. In this Self, however, there is no sense of self. There is awareness, but not awareness of. There is Truth without a subject to be aware of Truth.

From this state of Truth “in crept a tiny mad idea.” It could also be called a desire, a desire for something that did not exist. It was the desire to “Know thy Self,” which could be called a desire for a sense of self.

And so, a container that could have an experience of self arose. This container was a subject, something that could feel or know. It was awareness with the additional ability to be aware of. I call it consciousness in order to distinguish it from the awareness that it came from. This is the birth of the Second Principle of God.

Once consciousness arose, which is the ability to be aware of, there needed to be something to be aware of. Consciousness is like a living mirror that wanted something reflected in it, something to watch, know and feel. Of course, consciousness could have simply looked back in the direction it came from, and it would have experienced the reflection of Truth in itself. But consciousness was on an outward-bound journey, so it looked outward in its desire to know something as its self.

Out of this desire, divine law—the creative principle—arose, which is the Third Principle of God.

Through divine law, all of manifestation was born, which is the Fourth Principle of God.

As consciousness watched the images that appeared in it’s self, consciousness became engrossed with them. It began to identify with the images. Each of us, as consciousness, experiences an aspect of that identification. We feel identified with our thoughts, feelings, life experiences, etcetera, because we are the consciousness that has become identified with the images reflected in it.

So now, we begin the journey back in the way we came. It is an undoing. It is the return of a boomerang idea, going back inwardly by reversing the steps we took in the outward-bound direction.

First, there is the undoing of the distinct sense of self, typically called the ego. This is undoing of identification with the image as me. It is this sense of self that creates suffering. Therefore, this undoing is significant, but it is only part of the return journey.

When we awaken to our self as consciousness (the mirror), we experience a more correct sense of self. Whereas the idea that “I am the image” is a delusion for consciousness, the idea “I am consciousness” is more correct or truer. Yet, it is not ultimate truth, because the original true Self has no sense of self.

A sense of self is a type of existence. You could say, “I exist as the sense of what I am.” Since a sense of self is a type of existence, the end of the sense of self is a type of death. It is the death of what we have come to know as existence. The death of consciousness as self is manonasa. What lies beyond this death is Nirvana.

Note: Since consciousness is like a mirror, we can get a sense of Nirvana once we reawaken to consciousness. This sense comes from Truth’s reflection in the mirror of our self as consciousness. However, this sense is still only a sense received from a reflection. In order to know Truth directly, we must awaken fully to it and be it, which is to awaken beyond consciousness.

I need but call and You will answer me.

The reason for telling the story above is to help influence us to “constantly direct [mind-consciousness] toward liberation, through self-effort.” We made the outward journey through a kind of self-effort—idea, desire, curiosity, will, focus—and now we make the return journey through the same kind of self-effort.

But how? Where do we begin today?

Today’s workbook lesson says, “I am not asked to take salvation on the basis of an unsupported faith. For God has promised He will hear my call, and answer me Himself.”

The God that we call on for guidance is not some distant deity, knowledge or awareness. We are the one that took the outward journey from truth to our present attachment to manifestation, and every step of that journey is recorded in our divine unconscious. Therefore, the reverse of each step is known in our own divine unconscious. Our own unconscious knows the way! The communication that comes from this unconscious knowing is what I call spiritual intuition.

We literally have everything we need, except for maybe one thing. It’s possible that we haven’t actually made the decision to begin the return journey yet. It’s possible that we are still interested in lingering here a little longer.

Please read and contemplate today’s workbook lesson in full. As you do, also contemplate the power of your own decision or lack thereof. (In truth, there’s no such thing as a lack of decision. Not deciding for one option is deciding for the other.)

Here are a couple of short video clips to help you contemplate today’s teaching in a fun way. You’ll find the meditation links under the video clips.

 
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What is Creation?

Our special theme says, “Creation is the holy Son of God, for in creation is His Will complete in every aspect, … We are creation.”

The “Son of God” is a symbol based on the idea of separation. It was once believed that the closest one could come to the divine is its first creation, consciousness. Now it is seen that consciousness is not God’s first creation, nor is it reality. Consciousness is the first step into the dream.

There are many stories that attempt to explain how this first step into the dream occurred. All stories are just that, stories. At best, they help us accept that the dream has appeared, and reality exists outside of the dream.

In The Supreme Yoga Vasistha, it is written:

Whatever might have been the origin of the mind and whatever it might be, one should constantly direct it toward liberation, through self-effort.

In this quote, mind is synonymous with consciousness. The quote asks us not to be concerned with the stories about how consciousness came to be; it asks us not to be concerned about what consciousness is. Instead, constantly direct consciousness toward awakening.

If you look again at today’s selected excerpt from our special theme, you will see that it is calling us into an awakening that is beyond consciousness—beyond the experience of Christ-Self, which experiences a direct relationship with the divine source—into the divine itself. The divine is our true Self.

I am forever an Effect of God.

When we look carefully at consciousness in relationship to the source, we see that consciousness is something other than source. Consciousness is the subject that experiences the ego or it experiences the divine, but it is set apart from what it experiences. Consciousness itself—meaning the Second Principle of God—is the ultimate illusion. There is no “second” in God.

As NTI 1 Timothy says, “All that you are is beyond the observer, but the observer is a step in the right direction. For as observer, you begin to surrender the concept of personhood by accepting you can observe the person, so the person must not be all that you are.”

The symbols of “Father,” “Son” and “Effect” are used in today’s workbook lesson, but the lesson is pointing to the fact that we are as we have always been. We are not consciousness (the dreamer) or its dream.

Today’s lesson says, “…it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable.” That sentence points to the truth that we are being asked to accept. There is no Son in Reality, and therefore there is no Father. There is only Reality, and we are That.

Today’s lesson says, “Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God’s holy Will.” As stated in the previous paragraph, God’s Will is the end of the dream that appears to distinguish a Father from a Son.

The real world is still a dream, but it is a dream that reflects reality. In the real world, true perception sees that everything is consciousness. That is a dream-reflection of the absolute, which is non-dual reality.

Gently contemplate what I have written today. Marinate in it, without trying to figure it out.

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What is Creation?

Our special theme says, “Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for creation is the truth.”

Unfortunately, all that we are aware of is illusion. That means that we have no idea what truth is.

It is helpful if we take in this realization:

We have no idea what truth is.

This is why NTI Luke says:

There are expectations in your mind regarding truth, but these expectations are based on what you know within your slumber. They are not based on knowledge or Life. They are based on interpretation, or death.

What do you expect of Me? Where is it that you think I am leading you to?

Free yourself from these thoughts, and open your mind to Me unfettered by expectations. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of Me.

People have often asked me what that last sentence means:

“Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of Me.”

In her book, What is the Self?, Bernadette Roberts describes some of the last temptations that we experience prior to Manonasa. She writes:

We have to keep in mind that consciousness is the experience of energy, and that in the unitive state [the real world] there is still the experience of various energies and feelings. … Because these energies are new to us they seem to be quite extraordinary. … So one task of the unitive state is that we do not mistake these energies for the divine, but instead, see them as belonging solely to the unconscious self. This task may not be as easy as it sounds; to regard certain energies as supernatural can be a powerful temptation. …

The truth that must eventually be learned or disclosed is that the divine is not an energy or a power, and that none of our experiences of energy or power is divine. Instead, these are powers of the unconscious self, …

The claim to possess supernatural powers in the unitive state is well-known and documented. People have regarded themselves as prophets, healers, saviors, and God knows what else. As Carl Jung noted, the possible masks the unconscious self can take are almost unlimited. They represent the various cultural views man has of a superior being…

Throughout this stage or state there will be many temptations to put on one of these divine or supernatural masks and play out the role. If we fall for one of these masks, … we forfeit going any further with the journey. It is imperative to stay with the true divine center, which is a “still-point” and not an “energy-point,” and to dismiss these arising energies or powers…

Bernadette goes on to write that if supernatural powers are manifesting themselves, there is nothing we can do about it. However, “Our task is simply to see that they are self and nothing but the self. If we cannot eventually make this distinction, we march off to our own dead end, and the passage may well end in total delusion.”

This is what NTI means when it says, “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of Me”:

Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of
his/her own ideas about truth or enlightenment.

As has been pointed out through the tips in the last two days, truth is the absence of self—the absence of any self.

All things I think I see reflect ideas.

Today’s lesson supports what Bernadette Roberts wrote. The lessons says:

This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own.

The lesson talks about the “gentle world,” which is a “kindly home” where we can “rest a while” before we journey on to Manonasa. This “gentle world” is the real world, which is what Bernadette calls the unitive state. Even in this state, we need to be mindful to stay focused on truth instead of desiring an idea of truth.

As the prayer in today’s lesson says:

Our Father, Your ideas reflect the truth, and mine apart from Yours but make up dreams. Let me behold what only Yours reflect, for Yours and Yours alone establish truth.

It is helpful to realize today that we do not know what truth is—it is a mystery from our perspective. Therefore, it is good for us to let go of all ideas about truth before we create a new dream and mistake it for reality.

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What is Creation?

Our special theme says, “What God has willed to be forever One will still be One when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.”

Time is defined as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” ~ New Oxford American Dictionary

What captures my attention in this definition is “indefinite continued progress of existence and events.”

It seems like awakening is a process that occurs over time. It seems like awakening is an “indefinite continued progress.”

If you contemplated the target example from yesterday’s tip, then you might see why awakening seems like “continued progress.” However, since reality is the absence of that which experiences “continued progress,” awakening to reality has not occurred until Grace’s final cannon ball destroys consciousness (often called “the mind”). Reality is not known until only the hole remains. Of course at that point, it is no longer a hole. It is all that is.

That which seems like “continued progress” is still part of the illusion of consciousness. However, it is an illusory path that we walk anyway. As NTI Luke says, “We are all followers of the path that comes from within. We are all guided to learn the truth by following the path of unreality.”

I merely follow, for I would not lead.

As our workbook lesson says today:

So let us follow One Who knows the way. We need not tarry, … And it is He Who makes the ending sure, and guarantees a safe returning home.

Please contemplate your personal commitment to walk the spiritual path to its end.

Is there something you can let go of in your life in order to give more focus to the spiritual path and spiritual practice?

If something is not immediately evident, consider asking and receiving an answer from within through writing. After all, inner spiritual intuition is the “One Who knows the way.”

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