Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Choice for the Ego: A Metaphor_Themes from "A Course in Miracles"

The topic for this morning will be horse races, a helpful metaphor, I think, for looking at

the entirety of the ego thought system and then the correction that Jesus offers us in

A Course in Miracles for it is to keep in mind that right at the beginning when we as

one Son looked at the tiny, mad idea and we turned to the ego for guidance in terms of

the best way of interpreting or responding to the tiny, mad idea. And we chose the ego's

interpretation over the Holy Spirit's interpretation, what we did, in effect, was bet on a horse

that represents the thought system that believes in the reality of sin, guilt and fear...fear

of a punishment so devastating for the enormity of our sin that we all believed we not only

deserved to be punished by death but in fact will end up in death. And this is the ego

thought system. It is a thought system of death. It is a horse that has literally dropped

dead the moment that we chose it. But within the delusional system of our thinking, we

believe the horse is alive and well. And we keep beating the horse, encouraging it to

go faster and faster, when all we're doing is sitting on a horse that's already dead.

This is the insanity of the ego thought system. This is why Jesus continues to tell us in

the Course that the only response that makes sense to the tiny, mad idea and the thought

system that appeared to arise from it is to greet it with gentle laughter. Because what

could be more funny, what could be more of a joke, than to see us all on this horse feverishly

beating it, our friends and family rooting the horse on, betting their life savings on

this horse, pleading that it get up and run when it's going nowhere. And then to make

things even more ludicrous what we all do is that we drag poor Jesus from the right

mind which is where he is, gently and fervently encouraging us to choose him...we bring him

down to the track, get him on the horse and we say, get this horse going, heal him. You

did that with Lazarus...why can't you...we say inoculate the horse, give the horse an

injection, give him hormones, give him anything, give him a stimulant but get this horse going.

And again, within our delusional thinking, we actually believe that's what Jesus is doing;

that he's helping us get this horse going. That we believe he's helping our body, we

believe he's helping our body be healed, we believe he's helping our body become wealthy,

we believe he's helping our body heal our special relationships. We believe he's helping

all these other bodies heal the world and all along he's nowhere to be found, he's not

on a track that doesn't exist. And we're still on this dead horse. And where he is in the

right mind, not making fun of us, not deriding us, certainly not judging us, but that gentle

laughter that says don't you see what you're doing. Don't bring me down to the track to

try to get what doesn't exist, what is already non existing, up and running. Rather, come

up with me so you can join with me in this gentle laughter. At the beginning of Chapter

27, Jesus tells us...he asks us to join the Holy Spirit in this gentle laughter, which

is the phrase that Jesus uses, in looking at the silliness of all the effects of our

mistaken thought...a thought that's simply a mistake and not a sin. The Course emphases

repeatedly that sin calls for punishment but errors call for correction. And so in that

passage, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit looks to the cause and doesn't look to the

effects, doesn't judge the effects. So Jesus, again, is above the battleground with us asking

us to join him there to look back down on and simply laugh at the silliness of not only

what we have done but the world has done since the beginning of time trying to encourage

this dead horse to get up and run, trying to get God and the Holy Spirit and Jesus and

all the saints...whatever you believe is the divine emissary to you...to try to get

this horse to function better, when all we need to do is leave the track, leave the world,

leave the body, go back up to the decision-making mind and join Jesus above the battleground,

look back down and just have that gentle laughter that says, how silly, I could see peace instead

of this. I could bet on the right horse, which doesn't run on a track, but the right horse

of the Atonement that would lead me Home.