The ego makes a problem seem real, gets intense about it, magnifies it, and then tries to do something about it.
The ego can put on a mask of being a 'problem solver' or 'fixer' or 'doer' or 'seeker', claiming that...
When you defend your ego self, you become righteous. And as you do this, you will become angry.
The Course says "anger is never justified", but when we are defending an idea of "why I am right", I AM attempting to...
One trap I often fall into is this... it's particularly sneaky...
Someone else is 'actually wrong' about something, I am 'actually right' about something.
i.e. based on the situation, on the ego level, somebody actually has made some mistake that's obvious, I...
The ego can be pretty sneaky. Usually it is merely suspicious. And usually it will tell you just seemingly 'small lies', just enough to get you a bit upset. This way the ego gets to hide while you're kept under...
They say the ego is the first to speak, and usually people interpret this to mean that it speaks in an actual voice or thought, before Holy Spirit gets a word in. But clearly this isn't true because it's entirely...
The ego is your attempt not to accept being with God. It is an attempt to deny God's presence. But the ego can't make God go away, or get rid of Him.
So its only real tool is to pretend. Denial...
The ego's prayer: Please help God because this situation is totally what I do not want. I am not grateful for it at all, it totally sucks, save me, for me. Pleeeeeease.
Holy prayer: Thank you God for your love and...
In the Authority problem, there is a great reversal of roles, and a confusing of levels.
Jesus refers to this as being the source of sickness ("all sickness comes from confusing the levels").
He also says that miracles realign the 'levels of...
The ego is a devious, cunning, manipulative, deceptive monster, acting in deep unconsciousness, unaware of truth, unaware of the present, threatened by everything, threatening to everything, vicious and vile, mean and hateful, deeply suspicious, riddled with terror, certain of the...
Sometimes the ego breaking down can seem like a messy shitty mess. With extra shit in it.
When the ego's thought system is confronted with reality, i.e. the Holy Spirit's thought system, it has absolutely no way to understand it.
This also...
One of the ways the ego deceives you is to make it seem like you are not yourself. It wants to suggest that something has changed about you, since God created you whole, and that you are now missing something.
The...
You have your real self, which is your `higher self`, which God created. Then you have your ego self, your 'false self', which you made.
Interestingly, the ego which you made, seems to turn against you and tries to take away...
There are two sets of tools. The ego has a set of tools, and the Holy Spirit has a set of tools.
When we are paying attention to the ego, in any given situation where we think something is a problem,...
Your ego is a device, a kind of machine, similar to how your car is a machine.
You designed it to perform in a certain way and to carry out your instructions.
Just as a car can only do what it is...
Usually we want to get rid of everything we do not like, everything that feels harmful, every fear, every upset, every ounce of grief or loss. We want to get rid of all our enemies and things that hurt.
But this...
You'll defend something to the death if you think it's true. Your effort to be "right" about it is a combination of something that you believe is true combined with a sense of certainty. The power of conviction is not...
Fear, which is really uncertainty, is the ego's version of certainty.
If you're afraid, you are grossly uncertain. As uncertainty increases, fear increases.
And yet at the same time, as you become more uncertain, you become more certain that things are uncertain....
When you are not aware and are in an unconscious ego state, projecting blame and finding other people wrong, you start trying to make "sense" out of what you're seeing.
You start trying to figure out how or why a person...
The ego is telling you that you are eating healthy ripe fruit when in fact you are eating putrid decaying rotten flesh.
The ego is telling you that the suffering you're enduring is what it is like to be happy and...
We come to the Course with our ego's and we are then exposed to all this very high spiritual truth. And we have ego reactions to this without even realizing that we're having reactions.
The main ego reaction is that we...