A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition (CE) Study Guide Week 11 CourseCompanions.com Chapter 4. The Ego s Struggle to Preserve Itself Day 71: V. The Calm Being of God s Kingdom Day 72: VI. This Need Not Be Day 73: VII. The Real Question (paragraphs 1-9) Day 74: VII. The Real Question (paragraphs 10-19) Day 75: VIII. The Rewards of God (paragraphs 1-11) Day 76: VIII. The Rewards of God (paragraphs 12-23) Day 77: Cameo 18: Meditation and Guidance Section overviews and Cameo commentaries are from Robert Perry, editor of the Complete & Annotated Edition (CE) of A Course in Miracles 1
Day 71: V. The Calm Being of God s Kingdom Overview: V. The Calm Being of God s Kingdom. My ego says that if I let the pull of God have its way with me, it will wreck my life, just as unbridled expression of sexuality would. But I need to let that pull in, through asking to know God s love for me and through asking Jesus to help me dismantle my wall of meanness that keeps God out. Paragraph 13 states that you retain thousands of little scraps of meanness which prevent the Holy One from entering (13:2). Think about the phrase little scraps of meanness for a moment. Do you see yourself holding on to these scraps in a way that prevents you from seeing others as God would have you see them? Exercise: This section features a beautiful prayer that can be used to dissolve your belief in the ego rather than continually struggle against it. The prayer reads: The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it (8:1). As part of your Course practice today, please write this sentence on a card or note and place it somewhere visible to you throughout the day. Set a timer on your watch or phone and return to this prayer at least once every two hours, reading it slowly and with a focus on taking in the message of each word. Write about your experience in the space below. 2
Excerpts: The reason you need my help is because you have repressed your own guide and therefore need guidance. My role is to separate the true from the false in your own unconscious, so truth can break through the barriers the ego has set up and shine into your mind (6:1-2). The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on a continuing belief in the separation (7:2). You cannot conceive of the true relationship that exists between God and His Sons because of the hatred you have for the self you have made (9:5). Love will enter immediately into any mind which truly wants it, but it must want it truly (10:2). 3
Day 72: VI. This Need Not Be Overview: VI. This Need Not Be. Whenever I experience any negative emotion, I can know that this need not be. Rather than trying to solve these emotions through disengaging and checking out, I need an active approach, in which I watch my mind for them, honestly face their causes, and then change my mind to think with God. This will allow me to engage with God and my brothers. This section states that your mood will tell you when you have willed wrongly and allowed the ego s dark glass (13:1) to cloud your perception. It s typical to find yourself so deeply in your moods that you neglect to really analyze what caused them; however, here you are being asked to do exactly that. You are being asked to watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that induce negative emotion and simply step away from them. If you can judge how well you have done this by your own feelings (12:1), how well would you say you are doing this today? Excerpts: If you cannot hear the Voice of God, it is because you do not choose to listen. The fact that you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings, and your behavior (1:1-2). Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly. And then change your mind to think with God s (3:3-5). You mind is one with God s (4:2). 4
When you are sad, know that this need not be. Depression is of the ego, and you are hiding little spots of hatred that are hurting you. Depression always arises ultimately from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. Know you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise (5:1-4). Be honest in trying to see whom your ego has hurt, and also in trying to change your mind about them (8:1). Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away, and releasing the strength and beauty of God into everything you think and will and do. Do not settle for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal (11:3-4). You are a mirror of truth in which God Himself shines in perfect clarity (13:1). 5
Day 73: VII. The Real Question (paragraphs 1-9) Overview: VII. The Real Question. The ego exercises tight control over what it permits into consciousness. It tries to make sure that real questions never get in. However, only by letting them in can we answer them and, in light of the answer, formulate real goals. The ego impairs our goal-pursuit, making sure we pursue goals that falsely promise lasting value, and then making sure that in this pursuit we never ask ourselves What for? We hold opposing beliefs that we are both protected by our bodies while at the same time exposed by their vulnerability. Attempting to carry these conflicting views at once makes the mind dazed (5:2); however, rather than stopping to ask ourselves where our real protection lies, our ego obliterates the question from the mind s awareness (6:4). As you look at your own life experience, do you find yourself retreating into the body while also being afraid of its fragility? Please write what comes to you in the space provided. Excerpts: Sane judgment would inevitably judge against it, and must be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation (2:3). A crucial source of the ego s off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between impulses from God and from the body. (3:1) 6
Day 74: VII. The Real Question (paragraphs 10-19) This section states that your own ego has been blocking the more important questions which your mind should ask (19:1). Specifically, it s the false beliefs of the ego including the idea that the body has any protection to offer that distract us from real progress in learning (15:1). To counter these false beliefs, paragraph 16 encourages us to stop and ask ourselves What is the purpose? in connection with everything our mind wills to undertake (16:2). This enables us to get underneath our surface busyness and realign with miracle-mindedness, which results in expressing love. How can you build this question what is the purpose? into your thought process and use it to grow your practice of the Course? Please write what comes to you in the space below. Excerpts: The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues that touch on the real question in any way. By compromising in connection with all tangential questions, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind. Its characteristic busyness with nonessentials is precisely for that purpose. (12:3-5). [The ego] has permitted many good minds to devote themselves to perpetual motion, but not to perpetual (or eternal) thoughts (14:2). 7
Day 75: VIII. The Rewards of God (paragraphs 1-11) Overview: VIII. The Rewards of God. While in this world, how can I realize that perception is unnecessary, i.e. that I can just know? Answer: I am not really in this world. I ve merely dissociated from my other life, which has continued without interruption, and it s within my power to undo that. To be grateful to one brother leads me to know him, and that returns me to all knowledge. This section states that your other life has continued without interruption and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate (7:2). This is where the Course claims the real you is resting eternally in Heaven while you are under the illusion of being here in the world. How well do you relate to these metaphysical aspects of the Course? Do you think of yourself as a distinct consciousness, capable of direct communication (8:2) with your Creator or do you identify more as a body? Please share your thoughts below. Excerpts: Knowledge never involves comparisons. This is its essential difference from everything else the mind can grasp (4:4-5). Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you. (6:2) When I told you to concentrate on the phrase Here I am, Lord, I did not mean in this world by here (8:1) 8
Day 76: VIII. The Rewards of God (paragraphs 12-23) This section states that your mission is to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego (14:2). What does that look like to you in practice? What would you need to do more of? What would you need to do less of? Please share your thoughts below. Excerpts: Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God (15:5-6). Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right (16:4). As you come closer to a brother you do approach me, and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you (20:5). 9
Day 77: Cameo 18: Meditation and Guidance I ve grown to love the material this cameo is about. I remember reading it in Absence from Felicity in the early 90s, where a number of the things that Jesus says stuck in my mind for years. Once we got a hold of Helen s Notes, we put a lot of work into transcribing this discourse in particular, as this set of notes is very hard to read. One effect of that is that the opening line ( To Helen s questions about her reactions to meditation: and also Bill s question ) is especially difficult to decipher, and without that, you don t know that the first two paragraphs are about meditation. One thing I love about this material is that you see that Jesus really means it when it comes to both meditation and guidance. He addresses here specific details about doing both things correctly. I don t experience Helen s problem with meditation, but I can easily imagine someone having that problem. In her attempts to still her mind, rather than suspending her judgments, Helen has simply weakened her control over them, and now she is understandably afraid of her out-of-control judgments. It makes perfect sense, doesn t it? I think Jesus solution also makes sense: She needs to wait until he tells her she s ready again, and then she needs to consciously meditate with him. As I say in the cameo, If you are afraid of what your wayward impulses might do, the best thing to do is sit down and hold hands with someone you trust. The fact that he is both diagnosing a problem in meditation and prescribing a cure for that problem makes a clear statement: He is concerned with the health of her meditations. He doesn t tell her to stop them. He doesn t tell her it's all irrelevant. Rather, he is playing the role of meditation doctor, helping her meditations go from unwell to whole. You can also see just how serious he is here about asking for guidance, even about such minor matters as how to get home from work. This material has made a major contribution to my understanding of guidance. What it has shown me is that it s our need to maintain control that messes up the guidance process. Our need for control is what makes us afraid to ask for guidance in the first place, since we may not hear what we want. This fear is perhaps the major reason we don t ask. Jesus specifically says your failure to ask for guidance was a sign of fear. Also, our need for control is what often makes us refuse to follow what we heard, since it may not agree with what we had seen as the only reasonable option. In hindsight, this tension between guidance and our desire for control is perfectly obvious, but it only became obvious to me once this material had pointed it out. Bill s resistance to following because the guidance seemed impossible reminds me of a recent experience of mine. Last Friday evening, I was waiting for Nicola to get home. On Fridays, her parents pick up the kids from school, and then Nicola stops by their place after work and has some time with them before returning home with the kids at 10
about 8:30. However, I had this fun idea that we could have a bit more of an evening together. So I called her at her parents and suggested that I fix her a nice dinner of her choice and that she get home at 8:00 instead of 8:30. However, I could tell that she really didn t want to slight her parents by cutting short their time together. It was clear that there was no way she would get home by 8:00. I felt very disappointed as I saw my plan for a nice evening crumble. She would get home later, and by the time she had answered emails and was ready to eat, it would be 9. And then, after a very long work day, she would probably pass out on the couch not much later than that. Not much of an evening together! So I asked within how to deal with the feelings I was having. To my surprise, however, I immediately heard that she would be home by 8. I was struck because that s definitely not what I asked. I asked for a way to view her getting home later that would relieve my bad feelings. It was a complete surprise, then, to be told that she would get home by 8, an idea which struck me as intriguing but very unlikely. It also brought up a control issue. Now that I expected her to get home at 8:30, I didn t want to stop and fix dinner right then. I could get another half hour of work in! But I forced myself to stop right then and fix her dinner. And sure enough, at one minute before 8, she and the kids walked in the door. Right now when I told her I was going to relate this story in my daily post, she said Tell them the only reason I got home by 8 was that the kids were overtired and were playing up, and it was just easier to get them home. So I was right: When we talked, she had no intention of getting home early. This makes me all the more impressed with my guidance. It also highlights the importance of setting aside our need for control and following what we hear. Two final points that always get me about the material in this cameo: First, we should stop worrying about what people will do and instead focus on letting what they do be utilized for good (by following Jesus guidance). Second, it doesn t matter if people have thought hurtfully of us. What matters is that we have thought hurtfully. By giving miracles to them we can not only serve their needs but also undo the damage we have done to ourselves. Now that I think about it, both points say the same thing: It doesn t matter what they think or do. What matters is our response. If we respond by following guidance and giving miracles, we can turn anything they do into good. - Robert Perry 11