Notes on the Text of A Course in - Stephen Wingate

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE FINAL VISION
Main Theme: This final chapter brings together all the body and world to maintain the ego's separate
the major themes of the Course. The predominant special existence.
theme is of our choosing to seek the guidance of the
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Holy Spirit and identify with Him.
When we are identified with the body we see the
world as the source of peace, love and salvation; and
Introduction: At the end of the Text are the words, we live our lives struggling to control and
"The journey closes, ending at the place where it manipulate other people and our external life
began." The journey began in the one insane moment situation. But we made the world to keep us
when we believed we separated from God and joined burdened with conflict, fear and bondage; it cannot
with the ego. In Chapter Thirty we saw that the New give us peace, love or happiness.
Beginning is when we realize our mistake in
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identifying with the ego and we choose again for the In the world we made, all roads to happiness lead to
Holy Spirit instead. The journey begins and ends in suffering and death.
the mind of the Son of God as the decision maker. It
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begins when we choose to identify with the ego, and The ego convinces us we have separated from God,
culminates in the making of the body and world. which was a sin demanding punishment. It makes a
Through the miracle we return to the decision world and projects its sin and guilt onto the world to
making part of our mind and choose irrevocably for maintain its separate existence and its face of
the Holy Spirit.
innocence; and that is the purpose of the world you
made.
We start again by looking at the Atonement principle
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which states that we are never separate from the love In our eyes the special separate self we made is a
of God; we are eternally His one Son in Spirit — glorious, innocent victim of a sinful, guilty world.
Christ.
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The first face is the face of innocence. I am an
The ego's strategy is to keep us identified with the innocent victim of a sinful world. Behind the face of
body and distracted by the world so we will not get innocence is its true face which is its true purpose; to
back to the decision making part of our mind where make somebody else the guilty sinner deserving
we will choose for the Holy Spirit which means the punishment, not me.
end of the ego. That is the ego's terror. The first part
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of the ego's strategy is the secret dream of separation We love playing the victim because it proves we are
from God in the mind. The secret dream of innocent and the world is sinful and guilty. As a
separation is the original sin which evokes guilt and victim we maintain our special selfish murderous
fear of God's revenge. The second part of the ego's self, and blame everybody else for it.
strategy is the world's dream in which it makes the
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body and world, and then projects its sin and guilt Our original sin was the murder of God so we could
onto others in the world in order to maintain its own have our own special separate existence apart from
face of innocence in the eyes of God, the world and Him. We denied and buried the sin and guilt by
itself.
making a world and projecting it onto everybody else
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so we could maintain our claim to innocence, and
To retain our face of innocence we project our sin walk the world with the face of an innocent victim.
and guilt onto other people in the world we made,
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and blame them for what we secretly believe we Our two faces are concepts of ourselves in the mind:
have done to God. In fact, we made other people and one of innocence, the other of hidden sin and guilt.
the world as a dumping ground for our secret sin and
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guilt.
Defending your ego-self is never ending, exhausting
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and fruitless; no wonder we get anxious and
Wholeness and salvation are in the mind only. The
ego wants to keep us out of the mind, identified with
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depressed; until we choose again.