Introduction
- Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them. Nothing alive is fatherless for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, who is my father? And you will be faithful to the father you choose.
- Yet what would you say to someone who believe this question really involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict because the ego was made out of the wish of God’s Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.
- You make by projection, but God creates by extension. The cornerstone of God’s creation is you, for His thought system is light. Remember the Rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to the foundation of the ego’s thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. Yet even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and bravely hold it up to the foundation of the ego’s thought system. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark cornerstone of terror on which it rests and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rested on meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.
- My brother, you are part of God and part of me. When you have at last looked at the ego’s foundation without shrinking you will also have looked upon ours. I come to you from our Father to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it in order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for its protection will not save you. I give you the lamp and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, who has need of you, as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?[1]
We cannot be of God and the ego for one cancels out the other. There is no yin and yang in the eternal. There is no equal parts suffering and joy, darkness and light, or death and life. This may be the way we condition ourselves to tolerate the darkness of the world, but it cannot be everlasting for the ego requires as total allegiance to its thought system as that of God!
In Louise Penny’s beloved Chief Inspector Gamache series, she writes about Dr. Vincent Gilbert, a character whom the other characters refer to as the asshole saint. This fellow abandoned his responsibilities toward his wife and children, extended family and friends, and his patients and practice as a surgeon, to run off to find himself in a community of Down’s Syndrome patients. He wrote widely about his experience in the community and became known worldwide for his sacrifice, his work, his spiritual insights, and the gifts that he brought to the community. However, in his great effort to find himself through good works, he failed to lay his ego down. Dr. Vincent Gilbert took it with him, and it remained with him, making him of him a ridiculous character, devoted to one part of the Sonship on the one hand, and disliking and being an “asshole” to the rest. The ego’s function is not to create, but to usurp, cancel out, and oppose the things of God. There is nothing creative in destruction. It needs a created being in order to exist at all for it is a leech, a parasite, a virus, we could say. It needs a host.
The ego seeks to be our Father, but it cannot be our Father for it is a thief, it does not have anybody’s best interest at heart, and left to its own devices, eventually devours itself, and begins its hypnotic, go-nowhere cycles all over again, symbolized best in mythology as the ouroboros, the reptilian creature which would devour its own tail.[2]
Lies cannot stand alone, they must be an offshoot of truth, lies must be embraced and upheld, cherished and petted, cooed over and worshipped. Creation which was made in joy, to be love, joy, and peace forever would deny the Fatherhood of God and prefer to genuflect before fictional gods of fear, hatred, sorrow, and war in order to author itself. It would be like me, stealing your work, putting my name on it, denying you any credit, and taking all the glory. In order to conceal the truth about my illicit deed, I must decry your name, project my thievery upon you, and obscure the truth about you and your work in every way possible to keep my sin hidden while still taking the credit for your creation.
Understanding the invulnerability of truth, you could simply withdraw from the battle over who created your work. Instead of taking me to court, spending thousands of dollars on legal fees, and besmirching your own name by becoming vicious, defensive, and devoting your life not to creating other works, but trying to get the one I took from you back, you could just wait it out.
For I will not be the author of your work and will not know it the way you know it. I will not love it the way you love it. I will not be able to devote myself to it the way you devoted yourself to it, nor will I be able to produce another product that matches your work. Because I chose to steal the creation of another, I will not live in peace, I will not enjoy the sense of accomplishment and contribution of a true author, nor will I be able to tolerate the accomplishments and contributions of other creators, I will not enjoy the fellowship of other creators. I will always be waiting for the day the truth of the matter is exposed.
Meanwhile, if you chose peace, you go on to create other works equal to or even better than the one I stole from you. Your light continues to shine. You do not let my thievery and my spin on things dim your light but only make it brighter. Instead of perceiving yourself as a victim, you choose to “give” your work to me and let the gift spur you to even greater works. This way there is no wasted time, money, or effort spent in conflict, because you chose peace. While this is my earthy attempt to illustrate the peace of God, the patience of God, the wisdom of the freedom He bestows upon us that would deny His Fatherhood and be separated from His truth, my hope is that you will see that there is no conflict. He gives us what we would have stolen from Him. He gives us the freedom to explore our fiction and opposition and live it out in a realm that is governed by the false gods of ego. He is sure of our return to Him over time for none of us would deny Him, would blaspheme Him, would separate ourselves from Him, if we remembered the Reality of His love and devotion.
This is the only conflict which truly presents itself to us in the world. Did we make ourselves and thus create our own gods? Did we make “our own father,” which is the underpinning of the entire delusional belief system of the ego. This takes many forms, but all are the denial of God and Sonship. It is a denial of love, peace, and joy and the eternal goodwill of God toward His own creation. We would rather make overgrown, crybaby-turtle gods than to accept God as Father. A Father who patiently awaits our awakening, tenderly calls for our return to Him, and never withholds His love and devotion. We have come to embrace the death, sorrow, and torments of the kingdom in which we made for ourselves, we have come to accept our bondage to our own fiction, to our flesh, to our predatory egos. That which is unnatural, insane, and cruel has been packaged into a neat little plastic-wrapped tasty morsel which belies the sorrow, the pain, the bloodshed that is its foundation stone.
We are the cornerstone of God’s creation. His thought system has no darkness, no ill will, no bloodthirsty desire for His own. He loves His creation and calls for them to come to His light. Jesus says that the Rays of His light are in us even though we cannot see them with our flesh eyes or fathom them with our human perception. The closer we move toward the core of God’s thought system, the brighter the light in us becomes. We find peace, we find love, we find joy in that light. We find our true and holy Selves.
The closer we get to the foundation of the ego’s thought system, on the other hand, the darker and nastier and more obscure is the way. We can be drawn to the light and we can be drawn to the shadows, but to go in both directions is to cancel out any advance in either direction and to remain in the cycles of ego. Preying upon one another for a mere temporal existence with meaningless birth and death cycles that do not extend God’s Kingdom but rather keep us locked in a closed and crowded vicious cycle of disease, decay, and death.
We are to be fearless with our little sparks of God within us. We are to put them together and expose the ego’s delusions for what they are. We are not to let our lights be smothered by fear of the dark hordes of iniquity, the inquisitions, the terror and the torments designed for those who bravely judge the ego’s thought system with perfect honesty. When we expose the dark dreadful cornerstone where the ego’s belief system rests, we will see the meaninglessness, the emptiness, the bogeyman will shrivel before us, and be as nothing.
For we are not flesh and blood, we are not male and female, we are not black and white, Greek and Jew. We are so beyond what the ego has made us out to be. When we can face the ego’s foundation without fear, without shrinking, without quaking in our shoes when it seems to lash out against us, we will know ourselves as God knows us, as Christ knows us. We will know ourselves as holy and as spirit, and not of flesh.
Christ comes again. He returns to the ego realm, not in the clouds to take the few, but in our minds and hearts to deliver us all. Do not refuse Him. Keep no dark cornerstones hidden in your mind and heart for its lies will not protect you nor will it save you. Ask Holy Spirit to expose all that would make of your mind a trough, a manger, a place in which the beastly ego would feed and sustain itself. Look on it without fear and without trembling and say No More.
Jesus gives us the light and He goes with us as we return our minds and hearts to God. We do not take this journey alone – no matter how many people disagree with us, threaten us, forecast doom and gloom, no matter how our egos scream and put up a fuss and tell us how nuts we are for throwing our lives away on Jesus, when we could have the world by the tail! Christ leads the way to our true Father and our true Identity in Him. We are necessary to the salvation of the world for without you and without me, the world cannot be saved. No one is left behind for God does not abandon, go to battle, or shirk His responsibility toward His Creation – nor are we expected to fly away with Jesus and let our loved ones behind. Accept this call of love with happiness and glee and great appreciation and do not be afraid, do not be timid, do not be falsely modest and deny your worthiness to God, dear brothers. We take our little lights and join them with the light of Christ and do our small part for God, in mutuality, in Sonship, in peace for these are the conditions of the Kingdom where we belong.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 11 God or the ego. Introduction. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (p. 193-194).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
[2] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171204-the-ancient-symbol-that-spanned-millennia
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the friar patch 