The key to dealing with your ego

This quote is in hats-off tribute to Kenneth Wapnick, a brilliant teacher of A Course in Miracles. His work is absolutely wonderful and a must read for any serious student of the Course. I highly recommend you check out his work if you haven’t already heard of him. His books are best read when you’re more familiar with the Course than not, but in saying that, by all means check him out at any time- everyone’s path in learning is different, so heed whatever feels right for you.

I started reading his work very early into having started studying the Course, and I credit his books for helping me avoid falling into as many common ego-pitfalls as I could have- especially in the early stages of reading and applying the material when it’s so easy to make so many mistakes in our understanding of it. Mind you, I still made plenty of mistakes- we all will of course, as we learn and deepen our understanding of just how radical a teaching Jesus has given us in His Course.

Ken’s grasp of the Course’s teaching, as well as his ability to explain it, is second to none (unless you count Jesus, which doesn’t seem quite fair lol). Although he passed away in 2013, he gifted us students of ACIM his wisdom in the many books he authored, as well as the extensive free learning resources that are still available through his foundation’s website: facim.org.

The quote above is from one of his mini books called; “Taking the Ego Lightly: Protecting our Projections”. Again, I just can’t rave enough about how wonderful his teachings on the Course are, and this book is a perfect example of how clear, on point, and uncompromising he was. He doesn’t let your ego get away with distorting the message, which is something that we all have to be very conscious not to do.

This particular line stood out because it encapsulates Ken’s incredibly endearing teaching style- his emphasis on being kind and gentle with ourselves for believing in, and choosing the ego over God, but also his wonderfully irreverent sense of humour that was based on the firm understanding that there really is nothing to fear because there is no ego, there is no fear in truth, and no separation. There is only God, and we are still as God created us. Nothing has ever disturbed or interfered with the perfect, eternal, undifferentiated, and changeless love of God. We simply made up the rest. So we can now correct the only problem we really have, which is simply our belief that anything other than, or outside of God, has ever happened.

How we best deal with the ego then is quite simple: we withdraw our belief in it, and stop taking it so seriously. In a more practical sense, this means paying attention to, and being honest about how often we do take it seriously and fail to recognise how ridiculous its teachings are. The only way to make this work is by grounding ourselves in the overarching metaphysics of the Course, so we can easily refer back to what the Holy Spirit would have to say about whatever ego interpretation we’re being seduced by. Its this contrast between the ego’s counsel versus the Holy Spirit’s, and the diametrically opposed outcomes that would logically follow each (in terms of how each would leave us feeling), that helps us to consciously connect back to what we’d prefer to choose on the level of the mind: the ego’s self-damnation and darkness, or the Holy Spirit’s liberation and light.