Your Choice: Heaven or ??

In A Course In Miracles Lesson 151, All things are echoes of the Voice for God, paragraph 5. Jesus explains what the ego is doing in our mind.

In paragraph 4.2.”You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you.  You cannot judge.  You merely can believe the ego’s judgments all of which are false.  It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.” 

THIS IS THE EGO’S OPINION AND IT IS NOT TRUE. DON’T BELIEVE IT!

It’s this thinking of weakness, fear, guilt and sin the ego has forced fed us and continues its task daily and moment by moment if we listen to it.  And the proof of this is that we have judged others and ourselves our entire life and believed those judgments to be true.  We were born with a gavel in our fat little hand, leveling judgments as if we were sitting on the “Judge’s Bench” and knew everything there was to know about something or someone.  That gavel was placed in our “hands” by the ego part of our split mind when we separated from God, (or thought we did) and not knowing any better, we listened and believed its the ego thoughts were ours and true to boot.  We never thought to question that maybe the stream emanating from within our mind, were not really our thoughts!  We didn’t know any better. We listened to a voice that has no scruples, claims authority over us and has its own self-interest as its goal.  But the fact is that we did CHOOSE the ego at the “seeming” separation. It was a mistake that never really happened, however, still we must change our mind now that we are in ego land.     

Then in paragraph 5. Jesus tells us “This thing it speaks of, and would yet defend, it tells you is yourself. And you believe that this is so, with stubborn certainty.  Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe.”   It is itself alone that it condemns.  It is within itself it sees the guilt.  It is its own despair it sees in you.”   I take this to mean that the ego projects its inadequacies and condemnations onto our mind, me/you.  It does not know anything really because it is unsure of itself!  Kind of like a blustering Cowardly Lion, the King of the Forest in the Wizard of Oz, so unsure of himself but never let anyone know it! That’s the ego being unsure of what it is!

But we have believed it’s litany of judgements as Jesus said in paragraph 4.  We have listened to thoughts of separation; sin, guilt and fear and have done the ego’s work of projecting the ego’s condemnation and despair out onto the world and onto others.  Saving ourselves and getting rid of it like the ego just did with us.  What the ego projected onto us; we gladly did the favor of passing it on….out onto others and the world.  We are then a puppet of the ego UNTIL we decide “Enough of this Ugliness”  “STOP with the Baby Business, like Ken Wapnick tells us!!” It is tragic because we separated ourselves from LOVE. Now we are trying to get back to the LOVE that has always been there.

I find this to be amazing…….all my life listening to the wrong voice and believing it, until I came across the Course In Miracles and I know I still listen to the ego because I catch myself judging….a lot!!  I am responsible for what I think or what I believe from the ego point of view.  I must over-ride those thoughts.  Like Byron Katie asks: Is that True???  If any thought is coming from the ego it is NOT True! 

So….now what!  Lesson 152. 1. “No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision.  No one can grieve nor fear, nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants.  No one dies without his own consent.”  And in paragraph 9. “Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it (our reality as God’s Son) arrogant.  Only the ego can be arrogant.  But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all encompassing.  We lay aside the arrogance (of the ego) which says that we are sinners, guilty, and afraid, ashamed of what we are; and lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love.”  We CHOOSE to drop the hand of the ego and accept the Truth that Jesus is leading us to.

Here is beautiful paragraph 10 in first person. “The power of decision is my own.  I accept of Him that which I am, and humbly recognize (myself as) the Son of God.  To recognize (myself as) God’s Son implies as well that all my self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false.  Their arrogance has been perceived.  And in humility the radiance of God’s Son, my gentleness, my perfect sinlessness, my Father’s Love, is my right to Heaven and release from hell, is joyously accepted as my own.

Jesus is leading us away from the ego’s grip by telling us we have a CHOICE to make as a Decision Making Mind, and to stop believing the stream of lies that were fed to us.  And above all STOP believing them! He asks us to acknowledge that the ego’ thoughts are false and only truth is true.  And we encourage our frightened minds with this:

“The power of decision is my own.  This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.”

“Then will we wait in silence, giving up the ego’s self-deception as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us.  And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God as it was meant to be.  In patience wait for Him (Holy Spirit your true thoughts) throughout the day, and invite him hourly.  He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic ego thoughts ( of worry , fear, doubt, guilt) the Truth of God for self-deceptions, and God’s Son for your illusions of yourself.”

To quote a little Monk on a New York Street to my good friend Brad who was deciding how much of a donation to give him…….” You da Boss!!”

Here is are the two lessons – play them and sit back and enjoy!

WHEN DOUBT SHOWS UP JUST SAY: I AM LOVED!!