Note: I've switched to a new newsletter service. There shouldn't be any problems, but if there are, please let me know: sean@coherencematters.com. Thank you, as always, for reading.
Ego is a story masquerading as a storyteller whose name is "self." The structure of its story is always I, me, mine vs. you and yours. Ego tells itself to itself over and over, always watching, always judging the performance, adding this, subtracting that.
Ego is the whole narrative - our losses and victories, our secrets and shames, our culture and history, our family. What didn't happen and what should have happened and what may yet happen. The journey, the joy, the tragedy, the fall. All of it.
And A Course in Miracles comes along and extends a simple invitation: stop telling the story. Not edit the story, or switch to a new story. Not change the tone of the story, or only tell this or that part of the story.
Just stop telling the story - all of the story. Just stop. Right now. Forever.
Naturally, ego folds this invitation into itself. We can always say "don't tell the story," so long as saying so is part of the story.
That's how A Course in Miracles becomes a spiritual path, and thus a distraction from the very healing it was made to offer. We stop being students and become followers. We identify with this teacher but not that one. This is our favorite passage, that's the hardest lesson. This is what we say publicly about the course (Love it! Just love it!) and this is what we whisper to ourselves in darkest night about it (It's not working - It's my fault - I'm scared - I hate it).
None of which matters. Because the course - because it is a Gift of God extended through the tiny spark of Mind which remains sane and safe in the Lord - can only do what it always does: extend the offer, over and over.
Stop telling the story. Stop telling the story. When you find yourself telling the story, just say, "oh right - this is the story." And then stop telling the story.
How do you know what's story and what's not?
Right now - for us - everything is story. Every goal, dream, thought, strategy, resentment, grudge, hope, prayer, song, effort . . .
Story. All story.
It's not evil or dangerous.
It's just not real.
It's just not you.
And you - the you that remembers the Love of God from which nothing is or ever could be separate - can stop telling it now. Or rather, can stop listening now. Without an audience, ego is gone.
"The secret to salvation is but this: you are doing this to yourself" (T-27.VIII.10:1), says Jesus in the course. Okay then! Take it literally. Save yourself. Save yourself by doing nothing.
To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides (T-18.VII.7:6-8).
Stop giving ego attention and like that, ego is gone.
Gone.
What remains when ego is no longer?
What is there when ego is not?
What remains when every last bit of our story is seen for the mirage that it is and allowed to dissolve accordingly?
Who are you? You aren't "Bill" or "Cathy" or "Jan." You aren't a body. You aren't "in" the world.
If you stop telling the story that is ego, then what you are - and who you are and where you are - will naturally show itself because it's already present. It's already given. It will be instantly familiar, closer than your own self and yet - paradoxically - utterly impersonal.
It doesn't have favorites because everything is equal to it - everything is the same. Where there are no differences or distinctions, then there are no grounds to be personal.
This is true love. This is our "identity" and our "home," for so long as those terms have meaning.
In the face of love, ego, the story - once so persuasive and compelling, so real that its death was your death - becomes shallow and hollow, a wisp of smoke in a wind storm.
Ego is just the idea of a separate self constantly spinning a complex involved fiction that appears to support it. Within the ego framework, it appears that all we can do is following along. It seems like we're a captive audience.
Yet outside the framework, ego is seen for what it is - a bad idea with the gift of gab - and can be released accordingly. Not even released. It wasn't real in the first place. It just disappears or rather, the willingness to entertain what's unreal disappears. Ego, as such, was never there.
What's not real has no effects. Whatever it appears to cause - loneliness, shame, fear, regret, anxiety, confusion, sacrifice, greed - isn't real. Thus, ego doesn't have to be dealt with, bargained with, improved on or managed or anything.
What's unreal disappears when brought to what is real. What is real is the Face of Christ, the Love of God, the Peace that surpasses understanding . . .
Ego has nothing on all that. It never did. The impossible never happened.
All this A Course in Miracles offers. We stop indulging ego's story and our deepest, wildest fantasy - to be one with God, home in the Lord, unified in Christ, safe in Heaven - is what remains. We give up what hurts and hinders and harms us and in exchange discover yet again the Gift beyond measure that we were given in Creation.
How else can I say it? You are love. You are Creation forever shining on Itself. You are the Peace beyond understanding.
Thank you, as always, for helping me remember this.
Sean
This is maybe the 10th time I have read this particular commentary. It packs a wallop! It really cuts to the core of whatever confusion or difficulty I am experiencing. It’s such a concise statement of one of the fundamental principles in the Course. I am sure I will be back to read it again next time I lose my way.
Thank you for taking the time to express this not only for yourself but for all of us. It was a blessing to me.