I'm getting, I suspect, a little less afraid to look at the insanity of my ego.
And recently I'm getting in touch, I think for the first time,
of my fear and hatred of God, which it's like -- whoa!
Shame on you.
Well, I mean, you know it feels like as I'm getting closer to
-- more willing to let God in.
Like there was this false idea of myself and God.
that it feels like something I had -- I needed to look at, because it was there.
And I know it's not -- I know it's not real or -- but can you just help me?
I used to think you were a nice person.
When you really understand what we're being taught in the Course
about the ego thought system, we understand that it's a package deal.
I mentioned earlier today that it's logically and internally consistent,
that to believe one part, to accept one part of the ego's thought system as true
means you must accept all of it, because each part interlocks with each other logically.
It is impossible to believe that we separated from God
and attacked Him without feeling guilty,
without then projecting that out and believing He's going to attack us back
and therefore, hate Him for it.
Not to mention the idea that I quoted earlier too,
when we asked God for special favor and when He did not give it to us,
we made of Him an unloving Father and basically made up this world.
And so, in effect, we hate God also because he didn't give us what we wanted
and because He didn't, that forced us to do what we did,
erect a thought system of hate and guilt and fear
and then a world that comes from that in which we're all miserable.
And it's impossible, from the ego's point of view,
not to hate God for it, because it's His fault.
Because we're always blaming God or anyone else,
because if only He had done what I asked Him to do -- just notice me
I didn't say you have to love me -- just notice me.
Just a little wave would have been all right.
I couldn't even get that from Him.
And because I could not get that from Him, I was forced
to make a thought system of specialness and then a world of specialness
and a body which has brought me such pain and suffering.
So it is impossible to believe in the ego thought system
without that also meaning hating Him.
When Jesus tells us twice, I need you to forgive me,
that's the same thing. Well, what does he mean?
What do I have to forgive him for? I hate him because
he is asking me to be what I do not want to be.
He's asking me -- in fact, he's telling me, I am like him.
I don't want to be like Jesus. I don't want to be perfect love.
I want to be special love.
Well, if we have to forgive Jesus and we hate him,
guess who stands right behind him.
If Jesus is our Western world's greatest symbol of God's Love,
and we hate Jesus, then we have to hate Whom he represents, too.
That's where he talked about how you have to look at your hate,
because the love is underneath it.
And you won't get to the love without looking at the hate.
Well, it's the same thing with God. It's all one piece.
You can't hate one part of the Sonship without hating all of it,
not to mention the Creator of the Sonship.
This is an all-or-nothing Course. All or nothing.
You know, one place, Jesus says, you either believe all of this Course
or you believe none of it, because it's all one piece.
One of the points Jesus makes in his Course is that the ego
is a perfectly logical, internally consistent thought system.
It begins with an insane premise, but from that premise logically follows
its entire thought system: separation, sin, guilt, fear,
projection, attack, death, physical universe, a body
and everything the body does, all the special relationships that we have here.
All of these logically follow from the beginning premise
that we have separated from our source.
So once we believe that we have separated from our source
and have an existence independent of our source,
there is no longer any hope.
The ego interprets that separation as sin;
the guilt over the sin demands we be punished.
So we believe that God will now respond in kind
that God now, which is not kindly, He's going to respond the same way we did,
and God now will destroy us.
That's the biblical god, who is clearly a projection,
clearly a projection of the ego.
God in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, responds like any healthy ego would.
He has his good days when he loves us, forgives us and is merciful;
his bad days when he destroys us and rants and raves.
But behind all the special love and the special hate
is his belief that sin is real, that requires atonement.
And since the sin is murder, atonement must be murder.
And what is the core of our sin that we're so guilty about?
Selfishness. You do not have to get in touch
with the belief that you murdered God.
That's not a requirement of this Course, that we destroyed love,
that we crucified God's Son,
that we usurped God's role on the throne of creation.
We don't have to get in touch with that, because that thought,
that source is expressed all the way through our everyday lives.
But the core of that thought is that selfish idea that says,
I do not care about love. I only care about me.
I do not care about God. I do not care about His Son, Christ.
I do not care about anyone or anything except my own wish to exist.
And if that wish means someone or something has to be destroyed,
has to be sacrificed so I could live
and have the specialness that I crave, so be it.
Well, you do not have to do a lot of mind searching,
as we're asked to do in the workbook, you don't have to do a lot of soul searching
to come up with all the many ways we express this selfishness.
All we really care about is us.
So the whole core of nationalism,
which is one of the great scourges of our civilization,
is that we only care about our country.
We don't care about other countries.
We only care if our people get killed. We don't care if other people get killed.
And this goes for every group -- racial groups, political groups,
religious groups, social groups, sports groups.
We don't care if the other team loses. We just care that our team wins.
We don't care if one group gets ostracized or abused or victimized,
just as long as our group is okay.
I don't really care about your family. I just want my family to be happy.
I don't care if there's no bread on your family's table
as long as my family has everything it needs.
No one in this world escapes that selfishness.
That's why bodies were made.
Because bodies are always screaming, "Pay attention to me.
Feed me, breathe me, drink me, give me. I need."
And aside from these gross physical things that we all need,
oxygen, water, nutrition, we all need love.
We all need attention. We demand it.
And if my getting attention from you means someone else gets less of it, too bad.
If my getting ahead at work means someone else
gets pushed down as I rise up, so be it.
If God has to be excluded from my world
in order for me to have my world, that's how it has to be.
That's terrifying. And of course, what we do with that fear is that we project it.
So I'm terrified because of God.
We are very comfortable with the God who wants to punish us.
Once again, that's why the Bible has been the number one book
in the Western world for 2,500 years,
because it gives us a God, it gives us a savior,
it gives us a theology that reinforces our ego thought system.
Who wouldn't love a God like that?
So we're very comfortable with a God who wants to crucify us,
because that means He's angry at me, because it means I did something to Him,
which means I actually did it, which means I'm here. I exist.
And as long as we think we are bodies,
physical, psychological organisms that are separate from
all these other physical, psychological organisms,
we must see God in the same way,
because projection makes perception.
What I believe I am will determine what I perceive, including God.
So God now will be a body, perhaps not a physical body like me,
but He'll be an entity.
He has a personality; He's an individual; He's a person.
Even though in the Course God is talked about as a person,
He's called Father, He's referred to as a "He,"
He is not a person. It's the language of personhood.
It's the language of the Bible. It's the language of the Judeo-Christian tradition,
but it is not God. God is not a body.
So it is very helpful to get in touch with that.
Now that doesn't mean you have to go inside your mind with a derrick
and kind of get it out. I mean don't do that.
It'll surface when it surfaces. But don't be surprised when it does.