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SearchHow did the separation happen?
Question:
I understand the ego is a thought of error, but since love is perfect and is all there is, how could the error of an ego have happened to cause division amongst the one self?
Answer:
The experience to which the Holy Spirit Guides us is the experience that the error never happened in Truth. In dreams and hallucinations, strange things can seem to happen. In a seeming world of deception, fragmentation, distortion, and lies, error can indeed seem more real than Truth. This is why the world of illusion must be forgiven, for it seems to veil the experience of Divine Love. God, Being Spirit, knows not of condemnation or error. Error, being ego or satan, knows not of God. The Holy Spirit looks past the error to the undefiled Altar, the Light within, and thus leads to remembrance of the Christ. Christ is Awake in the Spirit of God. Jesus is an example, a demonstration, a wayshower, of Waking Up to the Glory of Spirit and remembering God. Religion seems to involve belief, theology, concepts, and rituals, yet religion is more accurately described as experience. The peace that passes the understanding of the world is the experience in which error has dissolved completely.
Christ is certain of Identity in God. All questions are of the ego, yet the Holy Spirit can use what the ego made to lead past illusion to Truth. The ego seemed to ask the first question: "Who am I?" The world and body seemed to be made-up as an answer to the question of identity, yet God creates Christ in Pure Spirit and Spirit is unlimited by time-space. Eternity cannot BE circumscribed by time, and thus Christ, as God creates Christ, is Eternal and Infinite - unbound by the time-space illusion. "The Father and I are One" is this experience of Reality. "Before Abraham was, I am" could be restated as "before time-space was, I am." Meditation is sinking deep, deep within the mind, below the clouds of illusion, to the Kingdom of Heaven. Clouds may seem to veil the Light, yet What is all-encompassing cannot BE veiled.
An experience comes which ends all doubting. Truth is true and only Truth is true. By desiring this experience the apparent “everything else" vanishes, for it never was. It is impossible to add to Perfection, because more than Perfection is impossible. In simple terms, without grievances one can see with the Vision of Christ - for the Sight of Christ is All there Is to See. In practical terms, let repressed belief (or error) surface in awareness so it can be released forever. The belief in nothingness has no source and what has no source has no existence.
Here are some passages from "A Course in Miracles" that may be helpful:
"The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask,”How did the impossible occur?",”To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you."-ACIM (Clarification of Terms)
"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego's world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator, and a wish to be what He created not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist. We name it but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality. But what could come of this except a dream which, like all dreams, can only end in death?
What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its deceptive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so.
There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true. Nor can there be a truth that lies conceal effectively. The ego's unreality is not denied by words nor is its meaning clear because its nature seems to have a form. Who can define the undefinable? And yet there is an answer even here.
We cannot really make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And this is shown to us with perfect clarity. It is from this that we deduce all that the ego is. Look at its opposite and you can see the only answer that is meaningful.
The ego's opposite in every way - in origin, effect and consequence - we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.
Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?
What is a miracle? A dream as well. But look at all the aspects of this dream and you will never question any more. Look at the kindly world you see extend before you as you walk in gentleness. Look at the helpers all along the way you travel, happy in the certainty of Heaven and the surety of peace. And look an instant, too, on what you left behind at last and finally passed by.
This was the ego: all the cruel hate, the need for vengeance and the cries of pain, the fear of dying and the urge to kill, the brotherless illusion and the self that seemed alone in all the universe. The miracle corrects this terrible mistake about yourself, as gently as a loving mother sings her child to rest. Is not a song like this what you would hear? Would it not answer all you thought to ask, and even make the question meaningless?
Your questions have no answer, being made to still God's Voice, which asks of everyone one question only: 'Are you ready yet to help Me save the world?' Ask this instead of what the ego is, and you will see a sudden brightness cover up the world the ego made. No miracle is now withheld from anyone. The world is saved from what you thought it was. And what it is, is wholly uncondemned and wholly pure.
The miracle forgives; the ego damns. Neither need be defined except by this. Yet could a definition be more sure, or more in line with what salvation is? Problem and answer lie together here, and having met at last the choice is clear. Who chooses hell when it is recognized? And who would not go on a little while when it is given him to understand the way is short and Heaven is his goal?"-ACIM (Clarification of Terms)
Love and Peace Forever,
David