Nicola Mannering

Specialness

We had begun to talk about specialness and separation as being necessary for the ego’s very survival! Why would this be so? We can see that the ego needs us to think that we are somehow different and unique, one-of-a-kind. Otherwise, who are we? Joe Blog? (Ooops, sorry!)

In A Course in Miracles, the ego is talked about as a thought system, even though it is made totally clear that it is one that has no substance in reality. But because we are still functioning within this thought system, we use the language of the ego to describe what we create with the ego construct, and how we can undo this construct.

Although we begin to see through the ways the mind creates the ego well before, it is not until the fifth initiation is taken that all traces of this system are dismantled and we become free of the limitation. The fifth initiation is, or will be, our step into mastery. This is when we become a so-called perfected human. Whatever I write about is still from the consciousness limitations of the ego system, so please forgive the distortions that these limitations inevitably bring to my attempts to unravel the ego system! And after all, FORGIVENESS is the very key to this unravelling! More about that later…

In the meantime, we are all of us, always simply talking to ourselves, though it appears we are talking with others! So this is my attempt to clarify for myself how my mind creates and then believes in the ego, and how I can undo the mind’s machinations!

Let’s look at specialness. We all feel special from time to time, and we have been taught to think and believe that we are. We see that we are all different, with our diverse skills and interests, and our own ‘unique’ way of viewing and experiencing the world. And we all have our own set of unique foibles and weaknesses. But this way of seeing things is the mind’s learned behaviour, and if we are to dismantle the system of the ego, we will need to see beyond this.

These ideas of specialness are what keep us separated in this world of illusion. In reality, we are all the silent heart, we are cells in one ‘body’, so to speak, and our true selves are one at this level. All else is illusion and causes suffering in the ego mind. In order to connect beyond the ego construct, we need to understand that each one of us is simply an expression of the same divinity, caught up in the thought of being human, of being a body.

Tonight I wrote the following email to a friend…

“I came home and went to sleep, after reading a little of a book called The Disappearance of the Universe, by Gary Renard - a WONDERFUL! book about A Course in Miracles. As I woke, and I was barely awake! I got the following tiny gift…”

“At its silent heart,

Its silent speech is nothing –

Not even a whisper.”

(Author)

Clearly, this is a reference to the ego – or the personality, as defined by the Ageless Wisdom Teachings.

At our true heart, at the core of our being, the ego does not exist. Just perfect silence. And in that silence, there resides the love-wisdom of the soul.

The ego exists only in an illusory sense – this is who we think we are. The ego is simply a construct of the mind.

That’s why this blog is not really about “Nicola Mannering”, “author” and “artist”, mother of three. This person, this character, is just a vehicle for what is beginning to be “remembered” about who we, in reality, truly are. Not the body, not the emotions, not the mind. Beyond all this exists our true being, our true nature – that of soul and spirit.

So the human being is constructed of three parts – the lower self, the illusory self – the physical/etheric body, the emotional or astral body, and the mental body. The second is the higher self – the soul or the causal body, and the highest self is pure spirit, or what is referred to in the Ageless Wisdom Teachings as the monad.

The lower self, after much struggling against the power and wisdom of the soul, chooses to become a vehicle for that soul, and becomes “soul-infused.” Instead of being a tear-away rebel, at the mercy of the lower, the animal instincts, and the emotional and mental roller coaster of life, the soul shines through as a wise advisor, directing the personality in a life motivated by the desire to become more and more expressive of the divine.

It doesn’t matter that we struggle, just that we know what it is we’re struggling for, and that we choose, as often as is humanly possible, the highest good.