Notes on the Text of A Course in - Stephen Wingate

Main Theme: Guilt and the ego's strategy to defend
against our choosing the love of God.
Introduction: Guilt is the ego's principal weapon
against our choosing God. We begin our review of
this chapter by revisiting the principle of the
Atonement. The Atonement, accepting our Identity
with the love of God, is what the ego's use of guilt is
defending against.
•
The world of separation we made is an illusion. We
remain as God created us, and where God created us
as part of Him in Heaven.
•
The Holy Spirit's response to the "tiny mad idea" of
separation is that it never happened, and had no
effect on the reality of the Son.
•
The raucous shrieking of the ego has no effect on
God and His Will. His Will is that we are eternally
one with Him.
•
The Communication Link between the Father and the
Son is the Holy Spirit; the three are eternally one.
We can choose to listen to the ego rather than the
Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit remains with us
eternally linking us to God.
•
The love and peace of the Holy Spirit and the
Atonement are always with us, but to experience
God's love and peace we must accept them. When
we choose to identify with the ego we experience the
ego's fear and conflict.
•
And now we turn to the main theme of the chapter:
the ego's strategy of guilt, and the truth of the Son's
guiltlessness.
•
Peace and guilt are part of mutually exclusive
thought systems. Peace is of the Holy Spirit; guilt is
of the ego. When we are afraid of the peace and love
of God, we choose guilt instead. The ego dissolves in
the presence of peace and love; the ego can only
exist in conflict, fear and guilt. When we believe we
are the ego, we are terrified of God's peace and love
because it means we are dissolved. The ego's strategy
is to ensure we believe sin, guilt and fear are real.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE GUILTLESS WORLD
46
•
Forgetfulness, sleep and death refer to repression and
denial. We make sin and guilt real, and then we
repress and deny them. The ego believes it is in a
war against God, battling for its own separate
existence. So the ego makes a body and world into
which it can escape the wrath of God, and onto
which it projects its sin and guilt, allowing it to
maintain the face of innocence. By rising above the
battleground as the observer, we are able to see the
war is an illusion; the separation from God never
happened; sin and guilt are unreal; and our Identity
and unity with God are unchanged.
•
The original source of guilt is in our belief that we
are separate from God. To be free of guilt we must
go to the original source and question the reality of
our separation from God. The Atonement is the
realization that the separation never happened. Jesus
and the Holy Spirit are our guides Who help
facilitate the Atonement. The ego is our guide that
helps us repress and deny our guilt by projecting it
onto the world and blaming others.
•
To the ego, guiltlessness is sinful, and must be
destroyed. The purpose of the crucifixion is the
destruction of innocence, because innocence means
the death of the ego. The ego cannot survive without
sin, guilt and fear. To maintain its own existence, the
ego is willing to murder its innocent brother. A
brother who realizes his innocence through his
Identity with God is a blasphemer to the ego,
because innocence is a sin against the ego's god of
sin and guilt.
•
Christianity, as we know it, is dependent on the
belief that sin and guilt are real. As the citizen of a
nation, if you do not believe in war you are branded
a traitor and are subject to prosecution. As a member
of the ego's brotherhood if you do not believe in sin
and guilt you are branded a blasphemer and are
subject to crucifixion. Separation, sin, guilt, conflict
and fear form the foundation of the ego's thought
system, without them the ego cannot stand.
•
This Course reveals that you are guiltless — that is
why you resist and fear learning the Course. Without
guilt, your independent existence dissolves.