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Chapter 4: Discerning the Ego’s Terrain

4. The Abundance and Validity of Right-Mindedness

A statement of old from me, “To them who have shall be given,” is one that may seem ironic, even paradoxical. Shouldn’t what is given be given to them who don’t have? This Course provides the context in which this statement may be correctly interpreted in the sense of miracles, but it might be helpful to clarify it directly to remove any confusion about it, and about the Abundance to which the statement refers.

With regard to “things,” only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. This is quite obvious when you consider the concepts involved. To be able to genuinely give a thing implies that you can do without it, because if you couldn’t, then you would simply go about getting the thing again, i.e., replacing it. Even if giving is associated with sacrifice, or giving up without the intention to replace, the act of giving a thing by someone not yet truly charitable will still be only because the giver believes that they will somehow eventually get something of equal value or better in return, so that they can do without the thing given, at least temporarily.

“Giving in order to get” is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in a kind of zero-sum game in relation to what it believes are others’ egos, in which anything one receives or gains must be something that another gives up or loses. The ego is therefore continually preoccupied with the scarcity principle that gave rise to it. This is the meaning of Freud’s “pleasure principle,” or the motivation of gratification behind all “id” or ego urges. Freud was the most accurate “ego psychologist” we’ve had, although he would not have preferred this description himself. His concept of the ego was as a very weak and deprived entity, which could function only as a thing in need. Freud’s “reality principle” of the ego, whereby it delays gratification of the id’s urges based on the social appropriateness of a situation, is not “real” at all. Through this principle the ego is forced to perceive the “reality,” or what it believes are the current states, of other egos, because it cannot establish the reality of itself, having none. In fact, its entire perception of other egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that it is real.

“Self-esteem” in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its version of reality and is therefore temporarily less predatory. This kind of self-esteem is always vulnerable to stress, a term that really means that a condition has arisen in which the delusion of reality of the ego is threatened. This produces either ego-deflation or ego-inflation, resulting in either withdrawal or attack. The ego literally lives by comparisons. This means that Equality is beyond its grasp, and true Charity becomes impossible.

The ego never gives out of abundance because it was made as a substitute for Abundance. This is why the concept of getting arose in the ego’s thought system. All appetites and urges are “getting” mechanisms representing the ego’s need to confirm itself. This is as true of bodily appetites and urges as it is of the so-called “higher” ego needs. Bodily appetites and urges are not physical in origin merely because the ego regards the body as its home, and does try to satisfy itself through the body. But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the ego, which is completely confused about what is really possible. This accounts for its essential erratic nature.

The real meaning of the statement, “To them who have shall be given,” becomes clear in consideration of the ego’s law of giving in order to get. Those in their right mind know Abundance, and they can truly give and receive because they know that giving and receiving are the same. Because they already have (Abundance), they don’t give to get. They give simply to express Love and extend Its Abundance. And the Abundance they have and extend through giving It away, without thought of getting in return, is therefore received by them. This is how they know they truly have It.

Validity in the sense of Truth is closely related to giving because for giving to be meaningful it must be valid rather than invalid or worthless. How does one who has and thus receives within the Completeness of Abundance know that this has true Validity? Ego ideas about validity are necessarily confused and inherently meaningless, just because the ego is outside of Completeness and thus seeks validity through comparing unconnected things. Yet only within real Connectedness can true Validity be established.

Consider the inevitable confusion that must arise from a perception of the self that responds, for instance, to the sentence completion stem: “When I was completely on my own . . .” with the conclusion: “. . . I had no idea what was possible.” The ego as a state of mind or mindset does believe it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and equate with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of “strength.” An ego is free to complete the stem: “When I was completely on my own . . .” in any way it chooses, but it is not able to consider the validity of the premise itself, because this premise is its foundation. The ego is the split mind’s sad belief that it is completely on its own and has been abandoned by its Creator, though this mind actually believes that it abandoned It. The ego’s ceaseless attempts to gain acknowledgment from something real, and thus establish its own reality, are utterly useless, because spirit in its knowing is unaware of the ego, since the ego doesn’t exist in Reality. Each human spirit is therefore also incapable of attacking the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the spirit, it does experience itself as rejected by something that it believes must be greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be a myth.

The Divine and Its Creation do not create myths, knowing Reality, but the creative activity of human beings can express itself as mythology, yet only under one condition, namely that what is then brought forth is no longer truly creative. Myths are entirely images and are so ambivalent in form, and so characteristically good and evil in nature, that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful components, if only in innuendo. Myths and enchantment magic are closely associated, in that mythological systems stem from “creation” myths, or ego origins, and are based on “magic” as a power that the ego ascribes to itself. Every mythological system includes an account of “the creation” and associates this with a particular image of enchantment or ego fantasy magic. The “battle for survival” is nothing more than the ego’s interpretation of its own beginning and its struggle to preserve itself. This beginning is always associated with some type of physical birth, even if cosmic in nature, because it is difficult to maintain that the ego existed before that point in time, given its connection to the body. The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the soul existed before a temporary lapse into ego-life in a body, and will continue to exist afterward. Some actually believe that the soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in Reality the soul, or human spirit, could not possibly know anything about such imagined punishment.

The terms “salvation” as used in the traditional Christian faith, and “awakening” as used in this Course, do not apply to the spirit, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged, nor does it sleep and need to be awakened. The true meaning of salvation and awakening is that they are nothing more than fully established “right-mindedness.” This is not the One-Mindedness of the spirit in Oneness with the Divine, Its Creation (Divine Essence), and Holy Spirit. But fully established right-mindedness must be accomplished before One-Mindedness can be restored to the mind. Right-mindedness indicates each next correct step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, so that judgment and fear (wrong-mindedness) are dissolved. The ego mindset cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly when judgment is no more. The mind will then have only one direction in which it can move—toward undoing and awakening from the dream of illusions.

The direction that the mind takes is always automatic because it will always be dictated or indicated by the thought system to which it adheres. Every thought system has internal consistency, and this does provide a basis for continuity of behavior. However, this still only reflects consistency and not validity. Consistent, “reliable” behavior is a meaningful perception as far as ego thinking goes. However, “valid” behavior is an expression that is inherently contradictory, because validity is an end and behavior is a means. These cannot be combined logically because when an end has been attained, the means for its attainment are no longer meaningful. Specifically, for the goal of Validity, or Certainty in Truth, to be attained, the means of behavior are not meaningful because Truth doesn’t engage in behavior.

Test constructors recognize that there are different kinds of validity, and also that they are of different orders. The specialized use of the word “validity” in this context demonstrates that test constructors do not mean Truth, and do not pretend to mean It. Test validity can be judged by logic, by theory, and by practice, each being regarded as a different dimension. In each case, the amount of confidence of “validity” or accuracy is expressed either in some form of percentage, such as 90%, or merely in terms such as high, moderate, and low.

Validity with regard to ideas about the world are first posited as hypotheses. A hypothesis is tested and judged to be either true or false, to be accepted or rejected accordingly. If a hypothesis is shown to be accurate it becomes formulated as a theory, and if this proves repeatable without exception it is accepted as a fact, or law of the world, after which no one attempts to evaluate it unless its status as a fact, i.e., its validity, is somehow brought into question with the discovery of new data that contradict the fact.

Every idea that the ego has accorded the status of fact in the realm of perception is questionable, because the unchanging Laws that facts are supposed to be expressions of reside only in the Realm of Knowledge. Confusing realms of discourse, such as physics and metaphysics, is a thinking error that leads to invalidity, something philosophers and other logical thinkers have recognized for centuries. Psychologists are generally quite deficient in this recognition, as are many theologians. Data from one realm of discourse do not necessarily mean anything in another because the data can generally only be understood with validity (note the lower-case spelling) within the thought system or realm of which they are a part. Psychologists fail this validity test when they concentrate on the ego in an attempt to unify what is clearly unrelated data from realms of knowing and perception. It need hardly be said that an attempt to relate the unrelated cannot succeed.

The ecological theory of perception, which suggests that the impressions received through the senses contain enough information directly from the world even for children to make sense of, allowing those receiving these impressions to continuously adapt to the world without the need to “learn” more complex information about them, is merely a different ingenious way of trying to impose order on what is inherently chaotic. The ecological theory is right in suggesting that not everything needs to be explained. It is only wrong in the realm it applies this insight to.

This Course has already credited the ego frame of mind with considerable ingenuity, though not with true creativeness. But it should always be remembered that inventiveness is ultimately wasted effort, even in its most ingenious forms, because of the unstable realm the creative ability of the mind is being applied to in the process of invention. This is why we need not trouble ourselves with inventiveness. The highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the universal creativity of the Divine’s Children.

Those who know Abundance know that the only gift in this world they need give is forgiveness. Through this giving they receive what they have given. Then the giving of miracles becomes as natural as breathing, and each miracle provides to everyone involved just what is needed by each.

Ultimately true Validity is known, and not surmised through comparisons between various realms of discourse. Those within the Completeness of Abundance do not require something from outside of this Completeness to provide validity to that within It. For there is nothing outside of It in truth.