Lesson 339: “What is the ego?”  “I will receive whatever I request.”

This lesson says, “Let us ask for what we really want, and only this, that we may spend this day in fearlessness, without confusing pain with joy, or fear with love.” 

The ego is a master of disguises. 

The ego is so great at being convincing that it is other than it is.

Or the ego confuses us regularly in pretending to be something else and making things appear totally unrecognizable. 

The ego is always modifying the picture, and then, we totally go down the wrong path, because our inner world is shadowy. and we are not clear which way to go.  When the ego is leading, then, it all looks askew.

The ego is never honest.  But we don’t know how much it will be dishonest toward us in any given day, and so dealing with the ego is a guessing game at best. 

We are always trying to figure out what the ego is really saying and doing.

The ego is always falsely telling us that we are truly in a state of bliss and joy, and so we believe it simply because it appears to be the case. 

We have over time become less practiced at deciphering the difference between pleasure and pain because the ego is always giving us shades of pleasure and pain that are impossible to distinguish. 

We  get used to having know real idea what the difference is, because with all the gray area in the dilemma, we have no way to make sense of this. 

This truly the hardest thing about the ego.

The ego is always giving us totally intriguing- though false- stories when we go to try to deal with it. 

We get something totally new because this is how the ego attempts to fool us, by giving us something that looks like a shiny new toy.

The Course just asks us to give this old lust for pain back to God to be transformed. 

We have the gift of taking a moment before reacting, and taking a breath, and listening to God within us, whenever we can take a moment to tune into His Love and Presence and guidance. 

We can just identify the truth about what the ego is trying to sell us in the moment, with a simple third eye clarity that we can have the moment of true inquiry. 

Then, we are willing to use our clear sight from that peaceful place within, that when asked gently, is happy to clarify for us the true answer about which would be pleasure and which would be pain.