Hostage to the Ego or Host to God?
A question drifted across my mind a few days ago “Does the ego hold us hostage.”
I decided to look up all the references to the word hostage in the A Course In Miracles Concordance and found seven. Here they are with the Text page numbers and paragraph numbers:
Text Pg. 198. p. 7. Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom you invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. He cannot help you without your invitation. And the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.
Text Pg. 307 p. 5 I asked you earlier, “Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?” Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit every time you make a decision. For every decision you make does answer this, and invites sorrow or joy accordingly. When God gave Himself to you in your creation, He established you as host to Him forever. He has not left you, and you have not left Him. All your attempts to deny His magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, cannot make little whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make is for Heaven or for hell, and brings you the awareness of what you decided for.
Text Pg. 311 p.9. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep to yourself. Let the Holy Spirit’s purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to God, and hostage to no one and to nothing.
Text Pg. 325 p. 5 It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. The idea is simply this: you believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.
Text Pg. 326 p.9 – You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. Nor can you be partial host to it. You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these.
Workbook. pg. 307. Lesson 163. There is no death. The Son of God is free.
- 3 . It (the ego) will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself. 4 Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust.
The answer to my question it seems is that I as a decision making mind have a choice! The choice is mine to make: The ego or the Mind I Am!
If we choose the ego we will feel depressed, unworthy, be doubtful of ourselves, feel separate and alone.
If we choose the Holy Spirit to access the Truth of Who We Are….we drop the hand of the ego and we live with more and more JOY.
If I listen to the ego then YES, it is holding me hostage EXCEPT who listens to the ego? When I choose it then it is indeed ” I ” who then allows myself to be taken hostage.
I am the one who decides which voice in my head I will follow.
If I do not listen to the ego then I am Host to God.
This is FREEDOM!!!
The Course In Miracles is available on several websites – Circle of Atonement is one.
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