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 6,
The Rewards of God.
To summarize my takeaways,
In Section 6 of Chapter 4,
We learn that it is only our allegiance to the ego that gives it power over us.
The ego is nothing more than a part of our own belief about ourselves.
Through experience,
We learn that one choice brings peace and joy,
While another brings chaos and disaster.
Learning through rewards is more effective than learning through pain,
Which is an ego illusion,
And can induce nothing more than a temporary effect.
The rewards of God,
However,
Are immediately recognized as eternal.
This recognition itself establishes for us that we are not the ego.
Jesus tells us that He is teaching us to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit.
He reminds us that we have taught ourselves the opposite and are free to choose,
But asks us why we would choose the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God.
Jesus reminds us that He is in charge of the atonement only because He completed His part in it as a man and can now complete it through us.
He lovingly reminds us that salvation is a collaborative venture by telling us that our gratitude for our brothers is the only gift He wants.
He brings this gift to God for us,
Knowing that to know our brothers is to know God.
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.
Spirit – the nature of our true reality,
Which being of God is changeless and eternal,
Contrasted with the body which changes and dies.
Atonement – the Holy Spirit's plan of correction,
Healing our minds from the earthly world of illusion to God's world of truth.
Salvation – forgiveness is salvation.
We are saved from our belief in sin and guilt through the change of mind that forgiveness and the miracle bring about.
And now,
On to the reading.
A Course in Miracles Chapter 4 – The Illusions of the Ego Section 6 – The Rewards of God The ego does not recognize the real source of threat,
And if you associate yourself with the ego,
You do not understand the situation as it is.
Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you.
I have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing acting on its own.
This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly and must realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed.
We cannot safely let it go at that,
However,
Or you will regard yourself as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here,
Or as long as you believe that you are here.
The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself.
Your other life has continued without interruption and has been,
And always will be,
Totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate it.
In learning to escape from illusions,
Your debt to your brother is something you must never forget.
It is the same debt that you owe to me.
Whenever you act egotistically toward another,
You are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce.
The term holy can be used here because as you learn how much you are indebted to the whole sonship,
Which includes me,
You come as close to knowledge as perception can.
The gap is then so small that knowledge can easily flow across it and obliterate it forever.
You have very little trust in me as yet,
But it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of to your ego for guidance.
The results will convince you increasingly that this choice is the only sane one you can make.
No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing.
Learning through rewards is more effective than learning through pain,
Because pain is an ego illusion and can never induce more than a temporary effect.
The rewards of God,
However,
Are immediately recognized as eternal.
Since this recognition is made by you and not the ego,
The recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot be identical.
You may believe that you have already accepted this difference,
But you are by no means convinced as yet.
The fact that you believe you must escape from the ego shows this,
But you cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing it.
The ego and the spirit do not know each other.
The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating.
Having done this,
It denies all truly natural impulses,
Not because the ego is a separate thing but because you want to believe that you are.
The ego is a device for maintaining this belief,
But it is still only your decision to use the device that enables it to endure.
How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away?
He must have thrown it away because he did not value it.
You can only show him how miserable he is without it and slowly bring it nearer so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it.
This teaches him to associate his misery with its absence and the opposite of misery with its presence.
It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth.
I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit.
You have taught yourself the opposite.
You are still free to choose,
But can you really want the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God?
My trust in you is greater than yours and me at the moment,
But it will not always be that way.
Your mission is very simple.
You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego,
And I do not choose God's channels wrongly.
The Holy One shares my trust and accepts my atonement decisions because my will is never out of accord with His.
I have said before that I am in charge of the atonement.
This is only because I completed my part in it as a man and can now complete it through others.
My chosen channels cannot fail because I will lend them my strength as long as theirs is wanting.
I will go with you to the Holy One,
And through my perception,
He can bridge the little gap.
Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I want.
I will bring it to God for you,
Knowing that to know your brother is to know God.
If you are grateful to your brother,
You are grateful to God for what He created.
Through your gratitude,
You come to know your brother,
And one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your father.
Love does not conquer all things,
But it does set all things right.
Because you are the kingdom of God,
I can lead you back to your own creations.
You do not recognize Him now,
But what has been dissociated is still there.
As you come closer to a brother,
You approach Me,
And as you withdraw from Him,
I become distant to you.
Salvation is a collaborative venture.
It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the sonship because they are disengaging themselves from Me.
God will come to you only as you will give Him to your brothers.
Learn first of them,
And you will be ready to hear God.
That is because the function of love is one.
