Hi,
I'm Teresa Hubbard.
Welcome back to our continued reading of the text to A Course in Miracles.
We continue today in Chapter 4,
The Illusions of the Ego.
Section 5,
The Ego-Body Illusion To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 5 of Chapter 4,
We continue our unveiling and exploration of the ego.
We learn that the ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness.
Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego,
And therefore must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its own self-preservation.
A major source of the ego's off-balance state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the thoughts of God.
Thoughts of God are completely unacceptable to the ego,
Because they clearly point to the non-existence of the ego.
Even though the ego can distort or refuse to accept the thoughts of God,
It cannot make them cease to be.
The ego hopes to hide the thoughts of God from our minds by focusing on non-essential issues,
Busying itself with perceived problems and capable of solution.
These are the ego's devices for impeding our learning progress.
The one question,
Then,
We must learn to ask,
In connection with everything,
Is,
What is the purpose?
Whatever that purpose is,
Will direct our efforts automatically.
I invite you to keep a few things in mind as you listen to the reading.
The Course uses male pronouns,
Yet this is simply a way of pointing to the spiritual being,
Having no gender.
The Course is written in first person,
And although not introduced directly to the reader,
It becomes clear that the words are from Jesus,
Often quoting from the Bible.
The Course uses traditional Christian terms in a non-traditional manner.
These words are simply pointers to truth,
Nothing more.
A few definitions of terms you will hear within this reading.
Ego.
Our belief in the separated or false self that we made as a substitute for the self that God created.
Knowledge.
Also referred to as heaven or the real world.
It is the pre-separation world of God and His unified creation in which there are no differences in form and therefore exclusive of the world of perception.
Perception.
What we see inwardly determines what we see outside ourselves.
It is the post-separation world of form and differences.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles Chapter 4 The Illusions of the Ego Question 5 The Ego-Body Illusion All things work together for good.
There are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment.
The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness,
And this is not the way a balanced mind holds together.
The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from your awareness and raises control rather than sanity to predominance.
The ego has every reason to do this according to the thought system which gave rise to it and which it serves.
Sane judgment would inevitably judge against the ego and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation.
A major source of the ego's off-balance state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the thoughts of God.
Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego because they clearly point to the non-existence of the ego itself.
The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them.
It cannot,
However,
Make them cease to be.
It therefore tries to conceal not only unacceptable body impulses but also the thoughts of God because both are threatening to it.
Being concerned primarily with its own preservation in the face of threat,
The ego perceives them as the same.
By perceiving them as the same,
The ego attempts to save itself from being swept away as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge.
Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane.
Yet this confusion is essential to the ego,
Which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself.
In one sense,
The ego's fear of God is at least logical since the idea of Him does dispel the ego.
But fear of the body,
With which the ego identifies so closely,
Makes no sense at all.
The body is the ego's home by its own election.
It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe since the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God.
This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly.
That the ego hates the body because it cannot accept it as good enough to be its home.
Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed.
Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body,
And that the body is its protector,
The mind is also told that the body cannot protect it.
Therefore,
The mind asks,
Where can I go for protection?
To which the ego replies,
Turn to me.
The mind,
And not without cause,
Reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it is identified with the body,
So there is no point in turning to it for protection.
The ego has no real answer to this,
Because there is none.
But it does have a typical solution.
It obliterates the question from the mind's awareness.
Once out of awareness,
The question can and does produce uneasiness.
That it cannot be answered,
Because it cannot be asked.
This is the question that must be asked.
Where can I go for protection?
Seek and ye shall find,
Does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize.
Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken,
Consciously organized,
And consciously directed.
The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind.
Learning and wanting to learn are inseparable.
You learn best when you believe what you are trying to learn is of value to you.
However,
Not everything you may want to learn has lasting value.
Indeed,
Many of the things you want to learn may be chosen because their value will not last.
The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything that is eternal,
Because the eternal must come from God.
Eternalness is the one function the ego has tried to develop,
But has systematically failed to achieve.
The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal,
Just as it does with all issues touching on the real question in any way.
By becoming involved with tangential issues,
It hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of the mind.
The ego's characteristic busyness with non-essentials is for precisely that purpose.
Preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution are favorite ego devices for impeding learning progress.
In all these diversionary tactics,
However,
The one question that is never asked by those who pursue them is,
What for?
This is the question that you must learn to ask in connection with everything.
What is the purpose?
Whatever it is,
It will direct your efforts automatically.
When you make a decision of purpose,
Then you have made a decision about your future effort,
A decision that will remain in effect unless you change your mind.
