The Separation: “A Tiny Mad Idea”

Once upon a time, there was an instant, and in that instant there was a thought that drifted outside the Love of God and wondered what it would be like to be separate from Creation. In that very instant the ego was made, the idea that believed it could separate from its Creator. Because this idea of separation is not an expression of unity, it cannot exist in Reality. A Course in Miracles describes the ego as the tiny mad idea that truly never happened. The “tiny mad idea” that we could separate from, the One Love God, Oneness. And here we are now, stuck in a loop, thinking we are separated. We think we are here separated from each other and from our Creator. Everything is divided here. And we believe what we see is true.

“Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time.”
(ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:2-5)

What happened?
We made the ego.

What is the ego?
A thought of separation.
We made the ego to escape the fear of the idea of separating from Creator. A consciousness of separation.

“What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God’s Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so. There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true.”
(ACIM, C-2.2:1–3:1)

As you see in the quote above, to try to explain what the ego is and why and how this happened is to try to make it real and thus never find a way out. Nothing really happened. Love is love is love is love and love is perfect. Nothing like this could ever happen if God is Perfect. The world you are seeing with your physical eyes is not the real world. This idea is not new. In the ancient religious traditions of the east, Maya or the illusion are spoken of in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In the west though this idea is less common or accepted.

This made so much sense to me when I read about how our sight works. What our physical eyes see are patterns of light which our brain inverts and turns into an image. How could we trust what we see when our brain is inverting it? If you are not already familiar with this idea, I invite you to look it up and see what you find.

Be the scientist of your own life.

Albert Einstein is known to have said, time and space are an illusion of our minds. Nowadays, “science” is the “truth”. Truth is true before “science” can prove it. Albert Einstein is a personality most minds can accept, so I present his thoughts, and ideas on the nature of the world.

How can Love being perfect, experience imperfection?
How can there be shame in us or in others, if nothing ever happened?

As creations of our Creator, we in Its likeness imagine we create.
But without the Source of Love, its manifestation is just an illusion.

We are making this all up. We are believing in an illusion.
All the while we are still safe at home with God.

The ego is quite literally, a thought of separation. The ego is the thought who believed it could create without Creator (Love). Being creative in the likeness of Creator it “created” a physical realm in which it can play out the idea of being separated. And in order to try to experience some innocence, the ego projects and blames outward to the separated ones in order to find the guilt and shame of separation in others and outside of itself.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

-Albert Einstein

The ego does not create because it does not exist. We believe it does because we made it having thought we separated from God. Because we “created” it, we believe in it. But being an idea of separation, it is not real and can never be.

The ego’s holy trinity: sin, guilt and fear

The thought system of this world is dominated by the ego. We believe we are “born sinners”, guilty for separating and afraid of God’s punishment. Everything in this life, expresses this idea at its core.

Others are the problem.
What they do is wrong.
They make us feel guilty by not understanding us.
We make them feel guilty every time they do not meet our expectations.
We fear we are alone.
We fear others can hurt us.
We hurt others and justify our actions.

And the story goes on until we wake from the dream!

The ego’s thought system: illusion, projection, judgment

The ego projects its thoughts of separateness, guilt, and fear out onto others. It creates “special relationships” so it won’t feel alone.  It either seeks to be right or seeks to be saved by another. The ego projects these thoughts out into the visible world and judges everything it sees out there. The ego makes everything out there, different, whether better or worse, but never unity and oneness.

“You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world. That is a reasonable question. You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. Who is the “you” who are living in this world? ⁹Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state.”
(ACIM, T-4.II.11:5-9)

The ego’s goal: separation

There must be another way. In fact that is the statement that inspired the scribe of A Course in Miracles. You can read about how the book came to be in the preface of the text but briefly Helen Schuchman was a professor of psychotherapy at Columbia University in New York City in the 1960’s. All she saw was division and separation. Her colleagues were always mad at each other. Everything everywhere seemed to be at odds with each other. In conversation one day her and her colleague William Thetford agreed, “there must be another way” and once the idea was prompted in their consciousness, The Way began to reveal itself.

Once the “tiny mad idea” occurred (although it could never really occur because separation does not exist in God), the ego became afraid. It was the first time it experienced something new, something different, something scary, something lonely.  In this state, the ego fell into a deep sleep and began to dream a dream of separation.  It created a body in which to experience itself as separate from others and a world in which to experience and play out this separation.  The Bible also says, Adam and Eve, fell into a deep sleep.  And here we are dreaming.

For example, lets say your child is in the same room as you, and they are sleeping, and you can tell they are having a nightmare, will this child truly be hurt?  Is there anything really happening to this child?  Are you as parent concerned they won’t make it out of their dream alive?  No.  The child is dreaming.  In this way, we have free will to dream an illusion, and just like dreams and nightmares we experience when we sleep, they are not real.

Invitation

For the sake of being the scientists of our own lives, I ask you to have faith in a world that your eyes do not see but that is more real than the world you are seeing with your eyes. Just experiment with asking a Higher Self to help you interpret the world, as if you were blind and needed help.

Become aware of the conversation in your own head. Are you thinking with the ego, the thought of separation? Is the ego dominating your thought system? Thoughts of fear, depression, anxiety, meaninglessness. A Course in Miracles teaches us another way. A Way back home to the loving Thoughts of God.

“The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end.”
(ACIM, C-4.1:1-5)

These posts are best experienced in order, the next post is titled ACIM is a Mystical Path

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