35. Don’t Tell Me What To Do

 Why do we not like being told what to do?

Our aversion, our resistance to being told what to do can be seen all through our childhood and adolescence. We were told what to do by our parents, who were children themselves, playing the pseudo adult game.  We naturally railed against this “injustice”.  Our parents, who were as gripped as we were by the insane thought system of the ego, were completely out of integrity assuming the role of the clearer saner minds.  They could not make lucid decisions for themselves, let alone us.  But we assented to taking direction from insanity, a reflection of our relationship with the ego.

Interestingly, we can trace the dynamic of not liking being told what to do to childhood but its origins ultimately go back to the first “authority” figure that “told us what to do.” Before the Big Bang, the ego told us what to do.  The ego told us to run from God and hide because He was going to kill us because we had attacked Him, sinned and were guilty.  We were unworthy of love and deserving of punishment.  That was the first time we were “told what to do.”  How did that work out?  So you can see why there might be resistance, small to violent, to being told what to do.  In the unconscious lies the remembrance that being told what to do can result in death, the death of the Self and the seeming death of God.

This might not be a problem if listening and taking instruction from the Holy Spirit weren’t a vital part of  learning to think with the Holy Spirit and get home to God.  Fortunately we can reason our way out of this and create a firm foundation from which to learn to listen to and take direction from the Holy Spirit.

POINTS OF REASON:

1. We made the ego and then accepted it as our parent, our authority figure, as a replacement for God.
2. Having accepted a parent, we thought of ourselves as children in need of teaching and direction.
3. The ego then obligingly taught us the thought system of separation and fear and we have been thinking with it ever since.
4. We made up this whole story, including the ego, so we could have the experience of being individual and special.
5. IT NEVER HAPPENED.
6. We dreamed it happened but we are still at home, safe in the arms of God.
7. We made a mistake and listened to the ego. We can correct that mistake and remember that we are the Son of God.
8. In order to accomplish this we need to stop doing what the ego tells us to do, which got us in this seeming mess in the first place, and do what the Holy Spirit tells us to do. We will be the ego’s slave or the Holy Spirit’s servant.  The question is not whether we will be told what to do or not.  We will do what we are told to do because we think we are children.  Our choice right now is who will we be told what to do by, the ego or the Holy Spirit?
9. The ego has us duped. It sold us a bill of goods.  It has us believing that we are making all decisions by ourselves as independent thinkers.  But there is really only one decision, masquerading as millions, and this one decision determines all of our results.  Are we going to think with the ego or are we going to think with the Holy Spirit?  Are we going to be told what to do by the ego, a tyrannous brutal overlord concerned only with its own preservation, or the Holy Spirit, the representative of God and our own true Self?  Our thinking dictates our doing.  So who we choose to think with will be what directs our doing.
10. So exactly what is the Holy Spirit telling us to do?  The Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, and our real Self that we have denied and continue to deny, is telling us to stop going out and go in.  The Holy Spirit is telling us that we did not sin and that we are not guilty.  The Holy Spirit is telling us that we never attacked God and that He is not going to abandon or punish us.  The Holy Spirit is telling us that not only are we not unworthy of love and deserving of punishment but that God loves us.  He has never stopped loving us and wants us to wake up and come home.  He is telling us to closely examine the ego’s thought system and compare it with His.  He is telling us to do our forgiveness and correction work, to study the Course and to engage in true prayer.  He is telling us to decide everything with Him.  He is telling us not to be driven by the ego but to be gently directed by Him.  In short, He is the sane parent we never had.  If we let Him, He will teach us to think and do and be like Him and in doing so we will be able to reclaim our Identity as the Son of God and go home where our Father is waiting for us with open arms.  Holy Spirit PLEASE tell me what to do!