Notes on the Text of A Course in - Stephen Wingate

Main Themes: In this chapter we address the
"authority problem" and the belief that we are in
conflict with God. On the Heaven-Knowledge Chart,
conflict and the authority problem are represented by
the terms battleground, victimization, one or the
other, and kill or be killed. The fundamental
questions of all philosophy and psychology are "Who
am I?" and "From where do I come?" In this chapter
we address the question, "Who is the author of my
reality: God or myself?"
We also look at the original separation from God in
which we believe we usurped His place on the throne
of creation establishing ourselves as the creator of
ourselves. As separate egos we are not God-created,
but self-created. As the ego develops its thought
system, its purpose is to have us be so terrified of
being in the mind that we choose to leave the mind,
make up a body with which we identify, leaving us
mindless and ensuring we will not change our mind
and choose to follow the Holy Spirit instead of the
ego. The belief we have really sinned by separating
from God, and He is seeking revenge, generates the
fear and provides the motivation for leaving the mind
and making a body and world onto which we can
project our sin and guilt, and in which we can hide.
The belief in separation from God, the ultimate
authority, is reflected in the world as the authority
problem: our problem with authority figures in which
we feel victimized; and our problem as authority
figures in which we are the victimizers. The conflict
which was born with the mistaken belief in our
original separation from God is played out on the
battleground we call our lives.
•
God and the ego are mutually exclusive. God is the
Truth, and the Truth is absolute. The ego is illusory,
and there is no illusion in Truth. God is our Father,
our Source. God is one and we are one with Him. We
are not a body living in a world; we are spirit. The
ego made the body and the world. If we were a body
living in the world, the ego would be our father. In
truth, we are the Son of God, father of the ego. God
is our Father; not the ego. The Son of God did not
create himself because he is not a body living in a
world.
•
God did not leave us; we believe we left God. We
decide to come back to God; God does not come
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GOD OR THE EGO
39
back to us because he never left. When we believe
God abandoned us, we project it onto others: our
parents, family, friends and intimate others, making
ourselves lonely victims of abandonment. In reality
the separation and abandonment never happened —
this is the Atonement principle, the resolution to the
authority problem.
•
When we believed we separated from God we
established the situation in which our will was
opposite from God's. God's Will is that we are one
with Him. Our will is that we be on our own and
remain on our own. God's will is that we come back
to Him — that is the conflict, the authority problem.
•
The belief in our original separation from God is the
root of all conflict in the world we made. All conflict
among family, friends and lovers; or among nations,
and political and religious groups is rooted in the
belief in our separation from God — the original
conflict, the original authority problem. The
realization that the separation never happened is the
resolution of all conflict and problems with authority
in our world, because the Atonement resolves the
original conflict with God.
•
The darkness in which we hide has two shields: the
first shield is the darkness of sin, guilt and fear in our
mind; and the second shield is the body and world
onto which we project our sin and guilt hoping to
avoid punishment by maintaining our face of
innocence in the eyes of God.
•
Our entire world is the projection of a neurotic,
psychotic and paranoid schizophrenic thought system
called the ego. The purpose of the world is to provide
a dumping ground for the ego's delusions of sin, guilt
and fear. To ensure its survival, the ego needs us to
stay focused on the world and out of our mind,
because if we go back to our mind we will become
aware of the ego's insanity and choose the Holy
Spirit instead. By observing the "dynamics" of the
ego we learn of its sickness; and with the help of the
Holy Spirit we can learn to choose again. God and
the ego are mutually exclusive. We choose to
identify with the ego and its delusions of conflict, sin
and guilt; or we identify with the Holy Spirit and
God's wholeness, innocence and love.