This morning we're going to talk about what I'm labeling "The Ego's Formula." There are
times when I teach I talk about how the Course has a formula built into the forgiveness process
and that is that we see the face of Christ in our brothers and we remember God. In other
words, that when we forgive and we see only the innocence in someone else, which means
the innocence in our self, the ego is dissolved and then the memory of God dawns on our awakening
minds. We could also talk about a formula that is not articulated that way in the Course
but certainly it follows from our understanding of the dynamics of the ego thought system.
And this becomes like a template that we could always use whenever during the day we find
ourselves getting upset, whether we are upset about something or someone that we would deem
trivial or we're upset about someone or something that we think is very significant and consequential.
This template always works because this is how the ego functions and so it's helpful
to understand in general, and then we could apply that to all the specific instances in
our daily lives. There is another way of speaking about how in the Course Jesus is really asking
us to generalize, that we forgive one brother and then another one, and another one and
before we know it, we have forgiven thousands and behind each of those another thousand,
et cetera. And at the beginning of the workbook in the introduction, Jesus actually talks
about generalization, how we practice with specific instances, and then we learn that
every instance is the same, every relationship is the same. Forgiveness is the same because
guilt is the same and in the end, everything boils down to the mind's decision for the
ego or for the Holy Spirit. So this formula is whenever we get upset, here's what has
happened. We have become afraid of the love that is in our mind. We have become afraid
of the truth that our journey with Jesus is leading us towards and when we become afraid
of love, we pull away from it. And when we withdraw from love, that constitutes an attack.
At least that's what the ego tells us and this is tantamount to the original ontological
moment when we felt that God's Love was not enough. We turned away from it and made our
own version of love. And basically this constitutes the attack on God, the crucifixion of His
Son, Christ, and is the beginning of the ego thought system, and so this is what we do.
We become afraid of feeling peaceful. We become afraid of where forgiveness is leading us.
We become afraid of the love that is already burgeoning in our minds, and we turn away
from it because we know on some level in the presence of that love, our separated, individual,
special self will dissolve. In fact, it has to because that self is upheld by the belief
that we have indeed separated from God, our Creator and Source. And when we undo that
belief by joining with that love which we do through forgiveness, then the ego is afraid
and the ego, as the Course tells us, becomes vicious and it will attack us. So when we
feel some glimmerings of this love, that's when we pull away and the ego has a name for
that, this attack on God is called sin, and we become overwhelmed with guilt. And when
that guilt rises in our minds, the only thing we could do because that guilt is intolerable
because standing behind that guilt, so the ego tells us, is this wrathful, maniacal presence,
this wrathful God Who only seeks to avenge Himself on our sin against Him. And so in
order to escape this guilt, we must project it. So first we are afraid of love, then we
feel guilt, then we project this guilt out and we then pick a fight with anyone, anything,
any circumstance in the world around us. And it doesn't matter whether it's something small
or something large. As the workbook tells us and then it's echoed in the manual, a slight
twinge of annoyance is the same as intense fury. But this fury, this anger, this slight
annoyance is a defense against the guilt that we feel because we have pushed love away.
But it gets worse because once we project that guilt out, we have to support it and
we support it by doing two basic things. First, we forget that we have projected it out so
all we remember are the slights or the sins that others have done to us and we forget
the "original sin" in quotes, the original sin that we are the ones who pushed love away.
So having forgotten that, all we are aware of is what the world has done to us. And then
it behooves us to support this, and that's when we make up our lies and stories, and
lies and stories, and lies and stories. And then we get more and more witnesses to support,
yes indeed, you should be upset. You are justified in being angry. Yes, you have been very unfairly
treated. You have been abused, victimized, abandoned, rejected, betrayed, and you deserve
to be punished for it. So that then is the basic ego formula. We become afraid of love.
We feel guilty over that, over what we accuse ourselves of having done. We project it out.
We start blaming other people for our dis-ease and then we use lies and stories of the ego
to support what we've done. This concludes Part 1 of our discussion of the ego formula.