Notes on the Text of A Course in - Stephen Wingate

Main Theme: Reason and madness are contrasted.
Reason is the term used for the right minded thinking
of the Holy Spirit. Madness or perception are the
terms used for the wrong minded thinking of the ego.
The power of the mind to put its faith in the ego or
the Holy Spirit is addressed again in this chapter.
Introduction: This chapter addresses the purpose of
the body and world from the ego's perspective
contrasted with the Holy Spirit's purpose.
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The ego's fear is that we (the Son of God) will
exercise the power of our mind to look within and
choose against the ego and for the Holy Spirit. The
ego's strategy is to keep us mindless. It first
convinces us that the separation from God is real and
if we remain in the mind God will destroy us. The
ego then makes a body and a world onto which it
projects its sin and guilt, and convinces the Son that
the body is a safe place to maintain his separate
existence and hide from God's wrath.
Our real fear is not of crucifixion but of redemption.
The real fear is that if we choose to accept the
Atonement for ourselves and the love of God
through the Holy Spirit, the special separate ego-self
will dissolve.
•
The ego's "enemies" are the Holy Spirit, God and the
power of the Son to choose to identify with the Holy
Spirit and reject the ego. Our core problem is our
hidden belief in separation from God, the hidden
guilt we feel for our selfish desire to have our own
special separate existence, and our fear of looking at
our guilt and selfishness for fear of being punished.
It is helpful to think of sin, guilt and fear as the
feeling of selfishness. Selfishness is reflected in our
desire to be special, to get what we want, to have our
own way, to be right, to be better than others, to have
more than others, to take credit for good things, and
blame others for the bad. Sin and guilt are terms the
Course uses to symbolize our selfish desire for
specialness, and we experience fear of retribution as
a result of our selfish desire for specialness.
•
The ego can only survive if sin (separation from
God) is real. The ego's deepest fear is that the Son
will look within and realize the separation from God
never happened which means the end of the ego.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
REASON AND PERCEPTION
73
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Faith, perception and belief refer to the power of our
mind to choose, and to perceive what we put our
faith and belief in as real.
•
We are responsible for how we interpret what we
see. The "objective" world has no meaning, no value,
and no purpose apart from those we assign to it. We
see the world through the thought system of the ego
— separation, sin, guilt, fear and conflict; or with the
vision of the Holy Spirit — wholeness, forgiveness,
innocence, love and peace.
•
A major purpose of the Course is to remind us of the
power of our mind to choose, and to help us get back
to our mind so we can choose to identify with the
Holy Spirit rather than the ego and the body.
•
Our mind's power to choose what we will believe is
the only power in the world. Indeed the mind makes
the world. The ego's strategy is to have us believe
that someone else (God or other bodies) have done to
us what we secretly believe we have done to them.
The world's dream is that other's are victimizing me;
the secret dream is that I am the original victimizer.
•
Projection makes perception. The ego's purpose of
the world is to make the insanity of separation appear
real.
•
The belief that we could be a separate creator and
substitute for God is our first mistake. And making a
world of separate bodies as a substitute for Heaven is
our second mistake.
•
To perceive a sinless world we must answer these
four questions for ourselves:
1. Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that
rules me?
2. Do I desire a world where I am powerful
instead of helpless?
3. Do I desire a world in which I have no
enemies and cannot sin?
4. Do I want to see what I denied because it is
the truth?
In the world the ego made, we feel helpless;
everyone is separate from me and is my potential