Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 4: Discerning the Ego’s Terrain

7. “What Is the Real Question?” Is the Real Issue

All things work together for Good, because all Children of the Divine do love their Creator, and are called together for the Divine Purpose of Atonement. There are no exceptions except in the ego’s judgment.

It should be clear at this point that the term “ego” as used in this Course refers to a frame of mind or mindset that the split mind constructed, and represents an entire thought system that the separated ones made in their temporary madness in opposition to the Divine. From this thought system the world of illusions arose. The ego is not an autonomous entity operating outside of the human being, though it seems to act as if it were. It is simply an erroneous perspective that speaks as a voice in the mind. Going forward the term “ego” will generally not be clarified with additional terms such as “ego mindset” or “ego frame of mind,” though it is understood that this is always implied. It should also be noted that reference to the “mind” going forward generally will refer to the split mind rather than the true mind, or spirit. This is the case even in references such as “balanced mind,” which simply indicate that the split mind is healing. A term like “balanced mind” would be redundant in reference to the spirit, which has never chosen to be unbalanced.

Control is a central factor in what the ego permits into consciousness, and one to which it devotes its maximum vigilance. This is not the way a balanced mind holds together. The control of a balanced mind is unconscious because it has given control over to the superconscious.

The ego is further off balance by keeping its primary motivation unconscious, and raising control rather than sensible assessment to conscious predominance. It has every reason to do this, according to the thought system that both gave rise to it and that it serves. Sane assessment would inevitably find the ego wanting. The ego must attempt to obliterate such assessment in the interest of its self-preservation.

A crucial source of the ego’s unbalanced state is its lack of discrimination between Inspirations from the Divine and impulses from the body. Any thought system that makes this confusion must be upside-down and unbalanced. Yet this demented state is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or nonthreat to itself. In one sense, the ego’s fear of the Idea of the Divine is at least logical, because this Idea does dispel the ego. Fear of dissolution from the Source of Everything – the “higher” Power referred to in certain healing approaches – thus makes some sense in ego terms, though not in spirit terms, which seeks and welcomes dissolution of anything unlike its Creator. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, is more blatantly senseless. The body is the ego’s home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body’s vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of the Divine. This is the belief that it sponsors eagerly. Yet at the same time the ego despises the body because it does not accept the idea that the body is good enough as its home.

Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed by the ego’s contradictory input. Being told by the ego that it, the mind, is really part of the body, and that the body is its protector, it is also constantly informed that the body cannot protect it. The latter, of course, is not only true, but perfectly obvious, because the body cannot even protect itself from what it fears. Therefore, the mind asks, “Where can I go for protection?” To which the ego replies, “Turn to me.” The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it, the ego, is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there isn’t any. But it does have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind’s awareness. Once unconscious, this unanswered question can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked while it remains unconscious.

This is the question that must be asked: “Where am I to go for protection from all that assails me?,” because this then leads to the real question in this regard: “Protection from what, actually?” Only a mind lost in illusion fails to ask the first question, which would lead to the second. Even the insane hold this first question unconsciously, but it requires real sanity to ask it consciously. The real problem in any situation is correctly stated as: “What is the real question?,” because, as each one knows in spirit, the true Answer could be found if the real question were recognized and asked. As long as the real question itself remains obscure, any number of solutions to the problem of protection and safety will be attempted, but none of them will work because they are all ego-based.

When it is said, “Seek and you shall find,” it does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you wouldn’t recognize even if you found it. Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized, and consciously directed. A major contribution to the venture of mastering this Course, as to any seeking, is that the goal be formulated clearly, and kept in mind, so that when it is found you know you have it. Some are not yet skilled at doing this. They seek many goals simultaneously, and this goal confusion, given a strong will, will produce chaotic behavior. Behavior is not chaotic when it becomes goal-oriented rather than goal-driven or goal-divided. But there is the danger that in avoiding becoming overinvested in many goals, a person become underinvested in all goals. They may experience the advantage of potentially greater freedom from distractibility, but may not care enough to use such freedom. The goal-driven and goal-divided may experience the advantage of greater effort, but may keep losing sight of their goals.

It would be an intelligent suggestion to set yourself the goal of really consciously studying this Course. There can be no doubt of the wisdom of the decision to do so for any student who wants to master it. Knowing your individual strengths and challenges as a learner, and being a teacher with some experience, I will remind you that learning and wanting to learn are inseparable.

All learners learn best when they believe that what they are trying to learn is of value to themselves. But values in this world are hierarchical, and not everything you may want to learn has lasting value. Indeed, many of the things you want to learn are chosen because their value will not last. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything that is timeless, because the Timeless or Eternal must come from a Dimension or Realm that the ego has no access to. Eternalness is the one function that the ego has tried but has systematically failed to develop.

It may surprise some to learn that had the ego willed to do so, it could have created something eternal, because, as a product of the mind, it is endowed with the power of its own creator. But the decision to do this, rather than the ability to do it, is what the ego cannot tolerate. That is because the decision from which the ability would naturally develop would necessarily involve true perception, or seeing, a state of clarity that the ego, fearful of being assessed truly, feels it must avoid. The results of this dilemma are peculiar, but no more so than the dilemma itself. The ego has reacted characteristically here as elsewhere, because mental illness, which is always a form of ego-involvement, is not a problem of the reliability of one’s conceptions and perceptions as much as of their validity. (Recall the earlier discussion of these terms.) One’s conceptions and perceptions may be reliable in one realm, such as in a city, or in parts of a realm, such as in one’s neighborhood or home, but invalid and therefore unreliable in another, such as in the natural world or in the Realm of the Eternal.

The ego compromises with the issue of the Eternal just as it does with all issues that touch in any way on the real question regarding its supposed protection: “Protection from what, actually?” By compromising through giving temporary solutions in connection with all tangential questions, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind. Its characteristic “business,” or busy-ness, with non-essentials is precisely for that purpose. Consider the alchemists’ age-old attempts to turn base metals into gold. The one question that the alchemists did not permit themselves to ask was: “What for?” They could not ask this because it would have immediately become apparent that there was no sense in their efforts, even if they succeeded. Because their ultimate goal was Knowledge, they would have realized that gold would not have brought them any closer to that goal, and probably just made it more difficult to achieve.

The ego has also encouraged some strange compromises with the idea of the timeless, making odd attempts to relate the concept to the nonessential and unimportant in an effort to satisfy the mind without jeopardizing itself. Thus it has encouraged many fine minds to devote themselves to trying to solve the riddle of perpetual (or “timeless”) motion, but not to perpetual or Timeless thoughts. Mental preoccupation with conceptual problems set up to be incapable of solution is another favorite ego device for impeding the strong-willed from real progress in learning. The problems of squaring the circle and carrying pi toward infinity are good examples. The ego-attempt to preserve the body so that it can be reanimated at some point in the future, thus giving it the kind of limited immortality that the ego could tolerate, is a particularly noteworthy distraction of the mind.

It is evident that in all these diversionary tactics the one question that is never asked by those who pursue them is: “What for?” What would be gained through the achievement of these temporary goals? This is the question that you must learn to ask in connection with everything your mind wills to undertake. What is your purpose? Whatever it is, you cannot doubt that it will channel your efforts automatically. When you decide on a purpose, then, you have decided about your future effort, a decision that will remain in effect unless and until you change the decision, that is, change your mind about it. Thus the real question to ask in every situation, that which always invites the true Answer, is: “What is my true will?”

Psychologists are in a good position to realize that the ego is capable of making and accepting as real some very distorted associations that are not true, but they too often do not go deeper than such a realization. The confused association of sex with aggression, and resulting behavior which is similar for both, is a good example. This confused association is understandable to the psychologist, and does not produce surprise. The lack of surprise, however, is not a sign of understanding the basic problem in untrue associations. This lack of surprise and of understanding is a symptom of the ability of some psychologists to accept as reasonable a compromise which is clearly senseless, that is, to attribute such associations to the mental illness of their patients rather than to their own, and to limit their questions about both their patients and themselves to the trivial.

These relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among its more profound mis-associations, although they do reflect them. Everyone’s ego attempts to block the more important questions that their minds should ask. Patients cannot be understood while therapists themselves are willing to limit the questions they raise about their patients’ minds, because they are also accepting these limits for their own minds. This makes them unable to heal their patients and themselves.

Always be unwilling to adapt to any situation in which miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. That state in itself is enough to demonstrate that perception has gone astray, and needs correcting through identifying the real issue, which is: “What is the real question?”