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ACIM Q&A Day: “Why does the ego feel so hard to overcome?”
The answer to this question can be a tough one to swallow:
Because we want it.
We want the ego because it is our ticket to feeling special and separate, and the body is the chosen home of the ego (T-23.I.3). Although we might intellectually get the Course teaching that we are not our bodies and that our ego is nothing, if we REALLY knew that, we wouldn’t need to be in classroom earth.
Getting in touch with our desire to be separate from Love is a very important part of the process. We have to be able to look at our UNwillingness to let our minds be healed. Acknowledging our resistance is key.
A simple way of bringing our UNwillingness to heal to the surface is to ask yourself the question, “Would I rather have 10 million dollars right now, or be at One with Love?” Whichever you pick, you could instantly have. Which would you pick?
Be honest.
At the moment, I’d probably pick $10 million bucks. And I’m guessing you would too!
This is an IMPORTANT feeling to acknowledge, own, and then to look at with your Inner Teacher. Have the willingness to acknowledge your resistance, and then find the willingness to see it differently. As we give it to our Inner Teacher, our blocks to Love slowly fall away as we are ready to let them go.
So when you feel like your ego is kicking up big time, and it feels like it is stuck in place, take a step back and look at it as another form of UNwillingness to heal. Let that UNwillingness come to the surface, and give it to your Inner Guide. This is a nice way of sidestepping the ego’s conflict and working towards healing through the back door, rather than a head-on ego struggle.
Yes, it even occurs to me that the desire to be in a good mood instead of in a bad mood represents the same unwillingness. Basing choices on our sense of self as a body is what we do and are learning to undo.
I would like the money to go to school doing something I loved instead of just going through the motions in some situation and place I had no desire to be in learning something I didn’t want to. I would also like to take a bus load of homeless folks to a buffet so they could eat for a day. I encountered a woman last week that was on the verge of being evicted from her home because she had a severely autistic son that needed constant attention. She tried calling several government people and churches trying to get help only to get the “run-around” and getting no help at all.
There was a situation where I had to call people too only to get the same result she did so I know she was speaking the truth there. If I had the money I would given her at least $5,000 to help her because I would have more than enough. It would also be awesome to open a chain of food stores based on the Patch Adams model where people could just walk in, put in an app and go to work.
There’s a near-by library where people are on their computers looking for work. How joyful it would be to have a school bus outside waiting to take them for coffee and pastries and fill out an application the only requirement is that they pass a drug test and don’t show up impaired to work. Unwed mother in a situation where it’s hard to get someone to watch the child? No problem we got baby sitting facilities to watch them while you put in 8 hours