Lesson 168: “Your grace is given me. I claim it now.”
God is not at all bossy.
The Course teaches us how to understand that God never wants to be in the position of controlling us.
Our need for control is always, always always an ego device. Control is when we let the ego nit pick through our days and judge out of control. When the ego functions, control is always in the attitude. Control is when we have that rigid and solid grip on our attachment.
Humans naturally have some amount of attachment.
But the Course teaches us how to not get attached to this attachment. That is the ego’s agenda.
When we find ourselves with a hint of attachment, we take a deep breath and laugh and let it go.
We don’t get stressed or upset about it. We let it go when we recognize what we are doing. This is the way to ultimately have peace. We don’t get attached to our attachment. Then we trust that God has a better plan, but in the mean time we stay focused on allowing our attachment to remain unraveled. The ego likes to bind this up and make it completely frozen. The ego likes to cling to this attachment instead of wishing it well and sending it on its way. Our job is to simply watch it and pay attention when we are meant to get more vigilant about noticing our attachment.
We bless it and then release it because the Course says we can be light about it when we know it is a passing folly.
The ego likes to make this real and usher it into reality in a substantial way, but this is an error in thinking. The Course says that we are wrong when we let the ego run away with what appears to be an inner agenda that is other than God’s. All of what the ego brings is false and unnecessary.
We must appreciate this is not for our highest good.
But we must do our part in choosing what is the better and only alternative, which is God.
The Course says that we are the ones who have the gift of choosing between living in grace with God or living in the raging terrors of the ego-land. It is a choice that we must make. We may think this is simple because it seems obvious which we want to pick when we listen to the Course’s message describing the ego-world. But we still get mislead into choosing it because the ego is incredibly convincing.
The Course says that we must forgive this so we don’t get attached to our resentment about the egos’ misleading us.
Forgive the ego so we don’t get bound internally in the relationship we have with the ego.
The ego likes to cling to us and possess us and control us. Anyway of engaging with the ego that is anything other than love simply fuels the egos’ insanity. That means it will give the ego more strength when we are communicating with it. This is why we absolutely must bring forgiveness to the ego’s insanity. It is an error. The Course says that the way to not perpetuate the attack- as the ego likes to go round in our minds and make itself bigger in that process- is to give the ego love. We forgive it and we also remain vigilant in not letting the ego be in power in our minds. We give the ego right back to God.
We love it because the ego is always expressing a call for love when it tries to control us or be rigid.
This means we must be very gentle with our ego selves.
But completely firm that we laugh about its error; and in the same breath we also give the ego right back to God for Him to shower the ego with Love that heals.
We are learning to make the move to aright our relationship with ourselves and the ego and God. When we clean up our energetic and emotional connections with all others then we can then take care of ourselves in the most profound way. Our choosing God is the appropriate response for us as individuals toward all others, and this allows us to be powerful and feel powerful. When we claim God’s certainty then all relationships are healed because this certainty is the expression that we are perfectly healed as we are now.