Have you ever noticed that just when you are about to take a step in a new and more positive direction in your life, something comes up to block it? Some people say,’ ‘This is too good to be true—I’m sure something will go wrong.” And then, sure enough, it does.
Why would things go wrong? Things are not supposed to go wrong. Life is supposed to work, and work wonderfully. When it does not, we must look past the darkness to see the light.
When we experience a challenge to success, we have a marvelous opportunity to shine a healing ray of understanding upon the ego’s thought system. In such a situation, we can penetrate into the very bedrock of the wall of painful beliefs that have stood between you and your happiness for so much of your life. Are you willing to be free? Together let us be unafraid to look at the cause of our hardships and our hurts, that we may be released forever.
We must be willing to look fearlessly at what seems to be the source of our misery. In the Star Wars movie a small band of those living for the Force had to penetrate to the very core of the Death Star (how appropriately named!) to reach and destroy the reactor that was powering it. So, too, must we look deeply into our self to dismantle the sense of threat that seems always about to explode in our life. There is no such bomb. But we must have the courage to face what we think it is before we can truly be free of it.
Let us begin by sharing a powerful excerpt from John Price’s The Planetary Commission:
As you move through the inner space of consciousness toward the union with Self, there is a bridge you must pass over.. .It is on this bridge that you shed the remaining particles of error thoughts and negative beliefs and go through the final cleansing. As the bridge comes into view, your world may seem to turn upside down, and the reason is that you are beginning the process of letting go of everything that seemed secure to you…
Your ego may choose to do battle as you step on to the bridge, and it will do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to save itself. If that means creating an insufficiency of funds, it will do it, because this effect could very well cause you to step back… Another ego tantrum may give the appearance of a business failure, or the interruption of a successful career, or perhaps a physical ailment. The ego simply wants to show who is boss.
How do you navigate the last mile as the ego begins to fight for its life? You totally surrender to God…You turn everything in your life over to the indwelling Christ and give up all concern, knowing that your God-Self is the solution to every problem and the answer to every need, and that Spirit cannot let you down because it is against God’s nature to do so!1
This masterful advice is showing us that the ego perceives love, unity, and the peace of God as a threat, and defends itself—(quite insanely!) against healing. The blessing is that the ego’s rallying itself for defense against love is a sure sign that healing is near.
Here is a personal example of how the ego wages war on love, and how it can be overcome: A friend of mine began to feel afraid when she went into deep meditation. She asked Hilda about this, who told her,’ ‘That’s wonderful, darling! That means you are really getting somewhere! When you are moving into a new and freer state of life the ego feels threatened, and it fights back by creating the feeling of fear. You can be sure that whenever you feel afraid the ego is trying to hold you back from enjoying your greater good.
“The ego believes that all change is threatening, and therefore defends against it, even — and especially — when the change is toward your happiness. That is why we can give thanks whenever the ego rails up—it is a sign that we are taking a step toward a better, brighter life. Do not be intimidated by the ego’s cowardly roaring—once you have begun to initiate a step toward the light, it is only a matter of time until all ego resistance falls away.”
Through the Door
It may be said that we live in an invisible membrane of fear, encapsulating us like an imaginary bubble of boundaries. This illusory but tyrannical fence sets our limitations, decides who and what we like and do not like, and keeps us caged in a world of small thinking. We may feel safe, but this false sense of protection is quite meager in comparison to the security we feel when we know that there is no real threat in the entire universe. Wherever we go God goes with us, for God dwells within us as us.
The ego, like a vicious watchdog guarding the door of our cell, rests as long as we do not try to cross the imaginary threshold we believe is there. (I am told that if you draw a chalk circle around a chicken and spin the bird around a few times, it will not step over the line, believing that the chalk line represents a real and fearful boundary.) Many times, we may step up to that doorway, and many times we may turn back, intimidated by the fierce growling monster that we ourselves have created by our agreement in a lie.
What we do not realize is that the watchdog has no power to hurt us. At best, it merits a moment of laughter and a light brush aside. Yet we have imbued that beast with the strength that belongs to us, and we remain at the effect of its empty barking until we are willing to reclaim the power that we invested in it. We do not realize that our dragons are our own puppets because we have never looked long enough to see our own hand pulling their strings. We hold ourselves in bondage by our own mind alone.
The few who have taken the step past the threshold of seeming limitation have come back to tell us that there is indeed nothing at all to fear. Jesus returned after three days to tell us that death is not real, and that all of our trepidations about it are unfounded. In the garden outside the tomb an angel appeared so real to Mary Magdalene that she thought he was the gardener! And what did he tell her but, “Mary, why do you look for the living among the dead?”
The War That Never Was
The ego is totally insane in its frantic attempts to find peace through war. The ego’s motto is “Attack before attack comes,” but it has never paused long enough to rise to the high vantage point where it would see that there is no attack waiting. Its sense of attack comes entirely from itself. There is nothing outside the ego that has any concept of attack whatsoever. If fear would stop chasing its own tail, it would quickly see that nothing has been biting it but its own jaws.
The thirst for vengeance of Darth Vader, the Emperor of the Da Empire, and the entire Klingon Armada is nothing compared to the ferocious mania of the ego in its effort to keep you small. In the Star Wars movies the Empire was overt in its quest to snuff out the light. In contrast, our ego operates in craftiness, subtlety, and the deepest viper pits of the subconscious. The snake scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Indiana Jones has to descend into a pit writhing with thousands of deadly snakes, does not even touch the chambers of horrors that the ego has conjured up in the prison of the part of your mind that fears. The ego is like a mad scientist maniacally concocting strange illusions in a laboratory in the basement of your thoughts. The only hope of this maker of distortion is to stay in the dark and keep you in the dark with it. It knows that, like the creepy little critters that hide under logs in the woods and scatter the moment they are exposed to light, the ego’s fears are doomed to extinction the moment they are brought into the sunshine of loving truth.
It is important to understand that the ego will use any means it can to trick you into staying behind and keep you from your destiny of peace. It is completely unscrupulous and diabolically ingenious in its thirst to hold you hostage, and it will use the tactics to which you believe you are personally most vulnerable to stop you from accomplishing success. It will create disease, loss, and divisiveness to bar you from your good, and it will disguise itself as the opposite of what it is. The ego will tell you that you are not moving ahead because you are afraid to fail, when in truth it is the fear of succeeding that you have allowed to stop you. Every time I have made a step forward in my personal and spiritual evolution in the areas of health, success, or relationships, for example, I have had the feeling that I was about to be punished, die, or lose something. When I found the courage to go ahead despite the ego’s gloomy counsel, I discovered deep peace, greater alive-ness, and immeasurable gain. Now when pessimistic feelings arise I find cause for rejoicing, for I know that I am about to step not back, but forward. Remember that the ego is utterly insane in its quest for victory in the war that never was.
Moving Ahead
You must move ahead in the face of fear. The great metaphysician Emmet Fox said, “If you must tremble when taking your next step, then do it trembling — but do it.” He also said, “Do the thing and you shall have the power.”
Several years ago I learned an important lesson in how to disarm the ego by calling its bluff. As I was driving to the largest workshop, I had ever organized—a hundred people were coming—I had some doubts about how well I could serve that many participants.
Driving up a mountain road in the Poconos, I began to sniffle and sneeze. I thought, “I must be coming down with some kind of flu. Maybe I’m getting the bug that Sally had.” As I reached over to see if I had any tissues in my glove compartment, the train of thought followed, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to conduct this retreat. Maybe I should turn around and go home.”
Then came another voice, like a cavalry rushing in with reinforcements: “No!” it told me, “Carry on. Don’t go into agreement with that voice of fear and illness. Thoughts of limitation are not worthy of your attention. Acknowledge the reality of the Light within you, and remember that all is perfect.”
Immediately I felt energized and uplifted. A force of enthusiasm surged through me. I saw myself in a brilliant white light. When doubts or thoughts of inability to conduct the workshop came up again, I affirmed, “I don’t care how I feel. These people are coming to this workshop to be healed, and I’m going to trust Spirit to touch them through me — and I know God wants me to be healthy to do it.”
Quickly the sneezing, sniffling, and runny nose stopped, and I felt better. I went on to deliver one of the best programs I have ever done, with many wonderful miracles of healing. It was not the flu that was attempting to hold me back, but fear. The sniffles were nothing more than an instrument of the ego, and as soon as my mind was corrected about its nature and its purpose, so the body corrected itself.
The body is the glove of the mind; as we move the fingers of our mind, so does our body follow the mental pattern. That is why our body is our best friend: it is always telling us what our mind is thinking. We can use it to discover where we are stuck and then practice remembering that we are not stuck at all. We are unlimited free spirits. We are Children of a Perfect God.
There is Only Love
You have nothing to lose. You cannot lose because all that you have is all that you are, and you are everything there is. Being everything, you cannot lose because you could never lose yourself. You can fall asleep and dream that you are losing, but dreams do not have the power to change the reality of your perfect invulnerability while your mind is turned away from it. Upon awakening, you will find that you are still quite whole, and indeed always have been.
The only worthy response to the ego when it strikes back is love. To return vengeance for the ego’s barking would ask you to enter into the thought system that believes that attack is effective. In that world you will never win. The ego’s response to the Holy Spirit is to strike back, while the Holy Spirit’s only response to the ego is to give more love. That should be your response, too, because you are not born of the ego, but of God.
There is a way to undo the mess the ego has appeared to have made: Hold it up to the light! Sharing is the way of Heaven, and hiding the way of hell. A problem is exacerbated when we feel that we cannot tell anyone about it. I tell you, there is nothing that the Children of Light cannot look upon and heal with love.
Because the ego is totally insecure, it will generate its biggest bluff when confronted with the simple fact that your protection lies not in it. The ego, in spite of all of its wild bravado and ability to produce some very scary movies, is actually nothing. You, who are something, never need to be afraid of the ego, which is nothing. The wilder the ego flails, the greater the potential for healing, for here is your sign that you are pushing up against the membrane of your illusory sense of boundaries. You are very close to discovering the truth.
The people, events, and situations that challenge you are angels. They have come to you with the key to your next step in your personal evolution.
Call them devil and you will find yourself in hell. See the angel in them, discover the blessing they bring, and you will live in Heaven — on earth. Everyone in this world is an angel. You do not have to fly up to the clouds to see their beauty. Just listen for the song of the harp concealed beneath the cloak of their seeming misdeeds.
Because the ego is based entirely on thoughts of hatred, you can be released from its nasty grip simply by giving it — and everything else — love. Here is how to love the ego into the light: Appreciate all of its attacks, panic, and flailing for what they are: gifts to you from God to learn that fear is never necessary, for there is only love. The Holy Spirit always takes a positive interpretation of an ego attack; no threat could fluster the light in the least. Your true Self knows that you are of God, and Spirit is invulnerable to all attack. It perceives only love everywhere in the universe. This is the truth that sets you free.
The Transfer Value of Courage
Everyone in this world feels that he or she is a sinner. As you are willing to accept your innocence you will heal everyone who comes into your mind by knowing that they are innocent too. Very few people in this world are willing to face their ego, their fears, and their sense of limitation. The few who have are hailed as saints, holy men and women, and gifted ones. Their gift, however, lies not in potential but in expression. It is crucial that you remember that you are capable of the same level and quality of expression. We are all gifted with the ability to be ourselves, and this is the one gift that we can share with everyone we meet. A Course in Miracles tells us, “When l am healed I am not healed alone,”2 and in the case of conquering our ego, this is surely so. All fear exists by agreement and by agreement only. When one of us breaks the agreement, watch how quickly the truth replaces misery in the hearts of all who would embrace
During recent years many persons have participated in fire walking workshops^ Thousands of people from many ways of life have learned how to walk unharmed over a bed of thousand-degree burning coals. I participated in such a workshop several years ago, and I gained much.
The leader began by giving us a powerfully inspiring lecture on the nature of fear and how to overcome it. He explained that the mind is the source of all of our physical experience, and that if one wants to change his physical experience he must change his belief system about what he can and cannot do. This idea registered within my soul as a truth. I was inspired to walk.
We walked outside to find an orange-red mound of glowing coals, the remnant of a huge pile of wood that had been set ablaze earlier that afternoon. Hearing about the bed of coals was one thing, but seeing it was another. Yet I knew I could walk. A voice inside my mind prompted me, “Go ahead — you can do it!” I felt that I could walk, but I still entertained some doubts. I wanted to walk, but I did not want to be the first one.
The turning point for me came when I saw one of my friends step onto the coals and walk across them without being burned. I was amazed, for I knew that he was no different than me, and he had no more training than I had. “If Neil can do it,” I felt, “so can I.
I stood before the coals. The instructor, Tolly, had told us to take an affirmation or positive visualization before we walked. All I could hear in my mind was,’ ‘I believe in God.” Those four words actually summed up a very profound and life-transforming thought process I was undergoing. I felt that I was standing not in front of a bed of burning coals, but at a crossroads: one path represented all of the “truths” I had ever learned from the ego—that I am a body which can be hurt, and I had better protect it, or I would be harmed. The other path shined with the knowledge that I am not a body, but a living spiritual being. It was founded on the awareness that the real me is not born of flesh and blood, but of Spirit. And that Spirit is not subject to fire or
* My experience is offered as an encouragement to others to follow their inner guidance. It is not an endorsement for fire walking. Anyone considering fire walking must make his or her choice based upon introspection and contemplation, any other element in the material world.
I realized that I was not facing a physical threat, but every fear / had ever run away from. To turn back now would be to renounce my divinity and give fear power over my life by shrinking away from it. As I thought more about walking, I was confronted by sardonic images of all the woeful possibilities of what might happen to me if I walked. Pain, sorrow, and death were shrieking in my ears. Yet beneath their gruesome howls I could hear the whisper of that still, small voice, the gently loving guidance of the peaceful strength within me. “You can do it, Alan,” the voice assured me.
I realized that I was not making a decision for one moment, but for all of my life. ‘ ‘Do you want to continue to live in fear, or do you want to be free ?”
I reached the point where I would rather have been burnt up and die than live in fear. I decided to walk, and take my chances. If the voice that was telling me to step forward was a liar, there was not much left anyway.
So I walked. I affirmed to myself, “I believe in God,” and I stepped onto the coals.
As I walked, I experienced heat, but no pain. I continued for four or five paces over the coals, and still no pain. What a feeling of exhilaration I enjoyed as I completed my walk and stepped onto the grass! The exhortations of my ego were not true. I felt that I would not need to ever be afraid of anything again. I was the master of my destiny. My mind was more powerful than my body. I was not dead, but more alive than ever! I was free!
As I recall my moment of decision now, I see that all it took for me to conquer fear was for me to see one other person do what I thought I couldn’t do. One person like myself broke through his membrane of limitation, and I followed along with many others. “When I am healed I am not healed alone.”
We have the power to heal one another. The fire walk is a metaphor for all of the things in life that we have been told that we cannot do, but really can. When one of us gets out there in the jungle of fear with a machete and cuts down the weeds for himself, he clears a new road for the rest of us who want to walk with him. All of us still possess the machetes of courage with which we were born — but only some of us are willing to acknowledge that we do, lift them up, and whack away at the brush. Each of us has a piece of the jungle in front of us, a section that only we can clear. Glory be to us when we do clear it, for then all of us can walk hand in hand upon a new road with greater freedom to live as who we are and be who we were born to be.