This topic has come up a few times lately and feels important to address.
If you want freedom, there is something very important you must learn at the beginning: the world you grew up in is insane.
It taught you that perfect sanity is insanity, and that total insanity is sanity.
If you want to be liberated from this totally insane world, where people live in fear and poverty, and don’t believe it’s possible for things to change …
you must be willing to question EVERY belief that you ever learned from your parents, from books, and from society.
Here is a helpful passage from A Course in Miracles:
What Is the Ego?
The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death. It is the “will” that sees the Will of God as enemy, and takes a form in which it is denied. The ego is the “proof” that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true.
The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself. And in its terrible autonomy it “sees” the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams; its enemies, who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them.
The Son of God is egoless. What can he know of madness and the death of God, when he abides in Him? What can he know of sorrow and of suffering, when he lives in eternal joy? What can he know of fear and punishment, of sin and guilt, of hatred and attack, when all there is surrounding him is everlasting peace, forever conflict-free and undisturbed, in deepest silence and tranquility?
To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails. In suffering, the price for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare to die.
Yet will one lily of forgiveness change the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself. And peace will be restored forever to the holy minds which God created as His Son, His dwelling place, His joy, His love, completely His, completely one with Him.
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Here are a few of the ego’s insane ideas. How many of them do you believe?
1. Your existence depends on your body, and therefore it is inevitable that you will die.
False. You are an idea. And as an idea, you cannot die.
2. It is possible to hurt someone else without hurting yourself.
False. You can only hurt yourself, because nobody else exists.
3. It is possible to “avoid” someone by cutting off communication.
False. You are One with the entire Universe. Anything that bothers you about someone who shows up in your life is something you created. All you do by cutting off the flow of communication is hurt yourself. And whatever it is you are avoiding will show up in some other form to teach you whatever lesson you failed to learn with the person you are avoiding.
4. You need medicines and other external things in order to heal or survive.
False. I’m not recommending that you stop using anything that you think helps you. But when you do use medication and other external aids, you might consider simultaneously reminding yourself that in reality it is your mind that is healing you. By doing this, your mind will begin to take more and more of its power back, and soon you’ll find that it will be healing you without need for external aid.
5. You lose something when you give it to someone else.
False. Abundance is unlimited. And once you realize that money is just an idea, you can indeed manifest it at will, almost out of thin air.
6. Avoiding conflict is the best way to solve some problems.
False. The conflict is within you. All you do by avoiding it is ensure that it will NOT get solved.
7. I am at the mercy of forces beyond my control.
False. Everything that happens in your world is a projection of your mind, and when you regain control over your unconscious mind, you will regain control over your world. You are a Child of God, and you were meant to be the ruler of all you survey.
You will never become ruler of all you survey if you avoid conflicts, because those conflicts will continue to generate projections from your Shadow Self.
8. Some people are good and others are bad. Some people are powerful and other people are powerless.
False. We are all One, and everyone is exactly the same. Everyone you encounter is a projection of your own mind, and a part of yourself.
9. Violence, destruction, war, aging, and death are inevitable.
False. We can heal all of these things and abolish them from the planet by healing our minds.
10. The world I see is real.
False. It is a projection of your mind. A virtual reality. A waking dream. A hologram. The Matrix. It can be characterized many different ways, but it is not real.
“Morpheus: Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”
Congratulate yourself on what a convincing job you did of inserting yourself into a virtual reality that feels sooooo real, and yet is totally changeable just by changing your mind. Damn sophisticated program, huh? ;)