4-49. Blindly does the ego wrap its nothingness in layers of lies. Gloriously does the Light of Love shine forth from the Heart of God. So fortunate are we all that we need only choose, when the correct choice is so unalterably evident.
The ego sees nothing as it is, for it is wholly and inexorably unwilling to see itself and its illusionary nature. Because the ego will not confront itself - for to do so would indeed be its immediate and complete undoing - it will never be able to see anything else that transpires as it is, for it is obsessed with savoring its ability to judge all that arises as reflections of a predetermined set of principles that are intrinsic to the ego, but wholly unjustified by the Nature of Love. The ego is a fickle companion, always flitting about from one conflict to the next, desirous of sustainment through distraction and condemnation of others, for the ego cannot stand for you to regard it clearly, and so it looks endlessly for yet another reason to redirect your attention away from its hollow and ephemeral core. The ego is an error of perception - nothing more. Yet it is tenacious in its defense of this illusion of existence, for the ego is a creation of a belief in fear and it is terrified that you will one day Awaken and set it aside as so much fluff of the mind, a perceptual framework now transcended and utterly forgotten because you have no further use for its pronouncements of pain when the Joy of God is so much more easily applied to all that occurs. The ego is afraid because it does not know its own nature. You do not need to be as this - you can counteract the influences of the ego whenever you’d like, but even this is a misstatement to a certain degree, albeit with a value that is not so easily replicated. It is not so much that you counter the ego - for who can engage in a war with an illusion - as you simply choose again, recognizing the arising of any particular formulation of a thought as the derelict flotsam of yet another ego-based perception and then discarding it as unneeded, for in Truth, there is no thought involved in being wholly present. Thoughts are all conceptualizations and abstractions, based upon a great set of previous experiences and the relationship of current sensory information to an internal database of relational relativity, allowing you to nearly instantly evaluate any particular data point and then to elect whether it is relevant at all to whatever it is that you desire to see arise and become manifest within this world of form. The ego interferes with this process endlessly, seeking to interject itself into the flow of your thoughts, encouraging you to be resentful when situations don’t “go your way” or joyous when you receive some form of gain as it is understood within the world of form, which is generally related to the receipt of material goods or other items of value. Baubles and toys of the ego these agglomerations of materials are, for while they can have utility, they are not inherently important. No amount of materiality can help you to turn away from material accumulation, for greed is a paradox of the greatest measure. Having more than another Child of God will rarely place you in the rarefied space of ultimate wealth and luxury, for there will likely be yet another person who has more, and in your regarding of them - if you are not extremely disciplined - you will envy their possessions and you will grow ever more dissatisfied with your own. This cycle cannot be left behind by taking it to its logical extreme - i.e., owning everything in the entire universe - for the emptiness of the ego is without limit and so there cannot be a remedy that is based upon what it believes it desires. Instead, the ego must be transcended by looking clearly at its nature and then realizing that it is nothing at all. Through sufficient application of honesty with your own desires and an attitude of unflinching open mindedness regarding what may arise as you dig ever deeper into your own tendencies and inclinations, you will begin to see that the vast majority of them center on acquisition and control - as if the resources that you lack define you, or the influence that you exert over others increases your value in some manner that is not justified by the heart; it is venerated by the mind and then implanted in your surface level of consciousness by your rote and unquestioning acceptance of its presumptions. That is not the Joy of God. That is not the Love of Unity. That is not the Peace of Truth. That is struggle - endless strife, eternal conflict and meaningless comparison to some fractured and fractional ideal that is not generally possessible by all but the most tiny portion of the populace, leaving the rest to ignobility and functional poverty while some acquire wealth far out of proportion to anything they could possibly claim to require. That is the ego, now manifest to its extreme, endlessly requesting more, never satiated and always on a blind quest to find that which is it missing, for the ego is empty and so it wishes to be refilled with some form of acquisition that is meaningless when regarded from an Awakened perspective that recognizes that the Gifts of God are ever-present and incapable of being lost in any way at all. Introspection is the route through all that is apparently intractable about the ego, for the degree to which it is examined is equally the amount to which it is disempowered, losing all of its lustre and become recognized for exactly what it is - an illusion apparently made whole simply by your willingness to listen to it without considering the source of its dictates. This need not be the way of your life for even one more instant, for there is another path that is instantly more clear and effortlessly more elegant, one that allows the ego to be and to speak, but equally one that simply chooses to no longer listen to what is offered, a babbling and rambling tirade against all that is seemingly oppositional about this world, when no such conflict is genuinely justifiable. All that is evidence of the Love of God is already present in your heart. Perhaps it seems dim, or distant, or distorted by all of the layers of your mind that it must traverse before it is able to be recognized on a conscious level. That does not imply that the Light itself is distorted or damaged in any way at all - it simply stands as effective evidence of the divorce that you have attempted to designate as deterministic and definitive of your own state of mind and condition of existence. That is an error, but it is not a mistake that alters anything at all about the Light. It is simply a misperception, and what could error call for other than its own undoing and correction through the application of steadfast attention and present moment awareness? Surely nothing more than this is required, for all that is to be undone is a process of attempting to hold out a belief in the existence of an error anywhere at all - in all of Creation - and then to correlate that presumption to evidence gathered that cannot possibly be causative, for to imply that God is imperfect is equally to denigrate your own heart. Yet as you travel farther within, you will understand with increasing certainty that no such argument can stand against a genuine desire to be at peace with yourself, allowing all that is conflicted within the ego to be set aside as a burden no longer needed and a weight of misperception that need not cloud your corrected sight. Choice is the locus upon which all that is revolutionary and freeing turns. Choice is the fulcrum and the balance is your everyday perceptual framework, one that can be lifted from the mire of a belief in separation into an inwardly-gazing reflectivity that will alter all that is external from a besetting and bewildering morass of conflict into a beautiful and beneficent wonderland, not distinct from Heaven but equally not wholly representative of that state of alignment’s Freedom from all error. Correction is always easily at hand when you are willing to apply the Forgiveness of God to all people, all situations and most importantly - to yourself with unlimited applicability. That you misperceived the Light of Love radiating from the center of your heart as being inaccessible or inapplicable to you is of no consequence at all, for simply regarding All That Is from a lens of limitedness does not alter the subject of your consideration. It merely alters your perception in ways that are not at all favorable to you. So - stop. Just stop attempting to justify a perspective that looks for division when Unity is the operating principle of Creation. Stop trying to explain to yourself why it is that you are undeserving of the Love of God, when no such possibility exists. Stop desiring to manifest opposition when expansion is endlessly available. All that is of form is temporary. All that is of Love is Eternal. That is a statement that brushes up against the Infinity of God. Seek it out whenever you find yourself falling down again into thoughts of littleness or unworthiness, for those are not the contemplations of God - they are the machinations of your ego, and you need feed them no longer. Choice is what you are given, but when the Truth of Love is recognized, you will realize that no choice at all need be made, for Love is All and everything else either works in Service to Love, or performs no actual action at all.