Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. They induce fears of retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will be like the past. This is the ego’s continuity. It gives the ego a false sense of security by believing that you cannot escape from it. But you can and must. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace. My role is only to unchain your will and set it free. Your ego cannot accept this freedom and will oppose it at every possible moment and in every possible way. And as its maker, you recognize what it can do because you gave it the power to do it. (T-5.VI.2:1-10)

The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it has the power to do this it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy is nothing else. The ego is totally confused about reality, but it does not lose sight of its goal. It is much more vigilant than you are, because it is perfectly certain of its purpose. You are confused because you do not recognize yours. (T-11.V.7:1-5)

We turned the reins over to this thing we made up called the ego. In a way, the ego has the birth story we believe in. We were created by God and then we turned on Him. That is the story the separated selves tell themselves. The ego, which we made, has also turned on its maker, us as mind, in its quest for autonomy. What is specialness but the quest for autonomy? Isn’t that what we were after in the beginning? Why is the ego seemingly so powerful and its thought system so gripping? Because we made it and gave it the power. Jesus says in every possible moment in every possible way the ego will fight us.

As we travel up the ladder of awareness, it does not help to repeat a thought, however true, that does not address the level at which the correction needs to be made. If I overlook what happened with the ego and its “control” over the mind or forgive it and do not make a correction of the mistaken belief at the correct level, it is an empty gesture. I can repeat all day that this is an illusion, but it does not address my belief at the unconscious level say for example, that the ego can project guilt onto the body. How do I know I believe this? Because that is the mechanism that makes the body seem to be sick, grow old and die. If I, the mind, did not believe that were possible, if I didn’t believe in guilt then the body could not show up as sick.

Not only do we believe in sickness at the unconscious level, but we also believe that having the body show up as sick is a good idea. The martyr thinks it is a good idea because it might mitigate God’s punishment, His retaliation. The atheist thinks it is a good idea because sickness proves that the body is autonomous and therefore it is autonomous and fathered itself. If it fathered itself, it no longer has to fear abandonment. You, the character self you think you are on the level of form, did not ask for sickness. The wrong-minded you is the one that thinks it is a good idea. At the prompting of the ego the wrong-minded you plays the game of sickness and death as a defense against the truth of what you really are.

The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. (T-2.I.3:7) Why? Because even with the Course as a tool, the ego thought system we made up and choose to believe has such a grip on our minds. It is like an addiction except thousands of times worse. How can we learn that something we labeled as salvation is really poison? How can we escape the ego? One miracle, one correction and one forgiveness lesson at a time. It will take all of us, but we CAN AND MUST do it guaranteed by God.

P.S. – I know it’s tempting, but don’t say it already happened. We must each go through the experiential process of reclaiming our mind. We each are, in the illusion, in possession of a fragment of the one mind. All the fragments, in perception land, must be returned. The Great Awakening is happening in the dream. The fact that we are awake in the arms of God, in reality, might be a philosophical back drop to our process and give us hope, but it does not help if we are in the process of removing the lower order blocks. It will not support an addict to tell him that he will eventually get that none of this is real. He must embark on and complete the journey without distance in the dream.

In the process of return the ego will fight you every step of the way. If you are facing challenging circumstances or feelings know that the ego is tempting, you to make the separation real. Commune with your brothers, take refuge and strength in the Course and take instructions from the Holy Spirit. The ego is tenacious. Its very existence depends on your continuing to believe its deceptions.

As investment has been withdrawn from the world’s material gifts, the ego has been seriously threatened. It may still be strong enough to rally under this new temptation to win back strength by guile. (M-25.5:2-3)

A huge problem is that we have become so identified with the ego and its thought system that we believe its death is ours. We do not want the ego dead. We just want to transcend it by getting that it is not real. How do we do this? The Holy Spirit knows exactly what part you have been assigned in the plan and will guide you every step of the way. He knows the way home. Listen and follow.