Split Mind

The Course in Miracles says we have a split mind divided between spirit and ego. We can choose whether to identify with ego and see ourselves as living in a state of near constant anxiety, fear and vulnerability or with spirit in a state of peace, harmony and balance. It is not true that we are at the mercy of things beyond us which we cannot control. I am a spiritual being having an earthly experience. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see, yet spirit keeps my inheritance safe for me.

What spirit has willed for me, my inheritance of peace, joy, balance, and creativity, is mine. My perceptions reflect my self-image as either a child of God or a child of the ego. To access my inheritance and experience God’s will for me I first have to let go of my identification with ego, my attack thoughts, my belief that I am separate from spirit and the sin, guilt and fear that arise from that belief. “If I would remember who I am, it is essential that I let this image, the ego image, of myself go. As it is replaced by truth, vision,” is given me and, “I will look upon the world and on myself with charity and love.

Our perceptions reflect our self image, and vision corrects the vicious and fearful misperceptions of the ego, replacing them with perceptions of our true identity as spirit. Vision thus undoes the ego thought system. The ego always speaks first, in judgment, fear and anxiety. Spirit will, if we let It, reverse the ego’s judgment, much as an appeals court reverses the judgment of a lower court. The ego’s decisions are always wrong because they are based on the error that it is us, that we are not first spiritual beings.
The ego’s voice and the ego’s gifts of attack, disease, fear, suffering, death, murder and judgment are covering something else. To access our real thoughts, we first have to let go of our unreal ones. We have to go through the work of acknowledging we were wrong to rely on the ego, realizing there is an alternative and then choosing it. This is difficult and it is a process. It will not happen all at once. But now at least we are aware of what it is we choose between. There is another thought system in our minds and we choose between appearance and reality.

Thus do we see a world reflecting back to us the radiant reality of God’s love. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. In my own mind, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack, is the knowledge that all is one forever. I have not lost the knowledge of who I am because I have forgotten it. It has been kept for me in the mind of spirit. To lose something does not mean it has gone. It merely means I do not remember where it is. Now we know where it is - in our split minds. “The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, because it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect.”