This morning will complete our series on "The Ego's Formula" which then implies its undoing.
So this is Part 3 which will discuss how we get out of this mess, how while the ego thought
system once we're trapped in it, is full-proof and is not God-proof. Because despite what
the ego tells us in another of its lies, there is a right mind in all of us and there is
a right-minded teacher who has the way to lead us out of this morass. To review very,
very quickly, the ego's formula begins with the fear of love because our fear is that
in the presence of that love, the personal self, the "I" that we identify with would
disappear. In order to protect that, we push love away. We make our own world of special
love, and then the ego tells us what this has done constitutes sin, and we feel guilty
over this horrifying sin of telling God His Love was not enough for us. We then become
terrified of God's retribution and then the only way to escape from God's inevitable punishment
of us which would mean our death, He's taking back the life that we took from Him, is to
project all this out and see the problem outside and not inside. So, yes, I am still afraid
but the reason I'm afraid is because everyone out there is the sinner and everyone else
deserves to feel guilty over what they've done to hurt me or the people I identify with.
Then when this happens, we conveniently forget that we have projected it out. That's an important
part of the ego plan. Lesson 136 in the workbook, "Sickness is a defense against the truth,"
makes all this very, very clear, especially in the first part, the first page of that
lesson. I forget what I have done. I forget that I projected this out. All I know is that
what the world has done to me and I support this by this whole system of lies and stories,
and stories and lies, that I continually make up that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that
the world has done this to me, and I get more and more witnesses. And once we get caught
in that and we get everybody in the world to agree with us, then there is no hope because
the facts are there and we all have these facts. That's why we have bodies with sensory
organs and brains that interpret all our sensory data to show us that, yes indeed, the world
has done this to us. And I summarize all this in terms of what the world is by saying that
the world believes that two and two is four. You ask anyone in the world how much two and
two is, of someone in grade school, and they'll say four because if they say any other number,
they will be marked wrong on a test. But the fact of the matter is two and two is four
only in the ego's world, only in the world of time and space, only in the world of bodies.
In the world of the mind, two and two is five because that makes no logical sense here,
no logical sense here, but Jesus' whole point in A Course in Miracles is to show us that
nothing here makes any sense. Indeed, everything here is a lie. He tells us "Nothing so blinding
as perception of form." Form says there is a world out here. There is a body here that
feels the world is imposing on it, and there are people out there, and there's everyone
in the world who agrees with me. And all that is certainly true to the body but that's the
most fundamental of all ego lies because the body says, the two plus two equals four world
says, there is a separated world here. There is a separated thing called me demarcated
by this body, by this physical presence, and all that means is that the separation from
God is a fact. And if it's a fact, sin is real, guilt is justified, and the fear of
God is something to flee from—if two and two is four. But if two and two is five, then
we are back in our minds where Jesus or the Holy Spirit are and we realize all of this
is made up and that's the way out. That's why the ego thought system is fool-proof but
it is not God-proof. The way out is to look at every explanation the world ever gives
for why things happen. And the most learned brains throughout history will tell us why
things happen and look at all that and say this may be true in your world but it is not
true in my world. My world is the world where Jesus is, where the Holy Spirit is, where
the Atonement is, where forgiveness is practiced. My world is the world of the decision-making
mind that at any moment could choose to believe the ego's lies of separation or the Holy Spirit's
truth of Atonement which says the separation never happened. Now on a practical level as
long as I identify with my body, I can't deny my experiences as a body, where Jesus tells
us early on in the text is "a particularly unworthy form of denial." I don't deny what
I experience to be as my physical or emotional problems. I don't deny the efficacy of what
the Course would call magic, anything that will help me alleviate the pain of my physical
or emotional problems, but I don't have to believe in them. And this is the challenge
as one works with A Course in Miracles and takes the journey with Jesus, making our way
up the ladder. That at the same time that we're learning that the world is not what
we think, that this is a world of duplicity and it is a world of lies, we're also not
asked to deny where we are. But we could begin to detach our self from our physical self,
psychological self, and begin to say this is not who I really am. So while I'm taking
medicine to help with a problem—and it doesn't matter whether you take traditional medicine,
alternative medicine, or no medicine, or you do anything to alleviate a distress or concern
that you have—understand that this is part of the ego trap. And so you want to still
pay homage and respect to the fact that you still are so afraid of love that you choose
to be a body, but you want to do what the Course calls early on, you want to utilize
this "compromise approach" of magic and miracle. Where at the same time you are taking care
of your body, you also realize this is not where the action is. The action is really
in the mind which is where the miracle brings us. So the way to undo the ego formula is
to begin to question and challenge every lie, every story, every explanation that you give
or the world has given to you about why you're here, why you're the way you are, why you
have pain and distress, why you have happiness and pleasure. And just look at all that and
say I don't have to buy this anymore. The ego lies to me and only the Holy Spirit or
Jesus tell me the truth. And it's in that truth that we learn to take the pathway of
the miracle that leads us from the world of lies, of two and two is four to the world
of reflected truth which is that two and two is five, that we are decision-making minds,
and all power to choose Heaven and earth rests with us. It rests with that decision-making
part of our minds that could choose to believe in the ego's lies or the Holy Spirit's truth.
And over and over again in the Course, Jesus is saying "choose again," and that, of course
is the final message, "choose again." That it's in that choice that you will find the
peace of God.