Ego

• Thinking about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is a physical interaction. There could be no better example that the ego is only an idea and not a fact.
• All attitudes are ego based.
• Self esteem in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory.
• The ego literally lives by comparisons.
• Appetites are getting mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself. This is as true of body appetites as it is of the so-called higher ego needs...The ego regards the body as its home, and tries to satisfy itself through the body. But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the mind, which has become completely confused about what is possible.
• The ego is the mind's belief that it is completely on its own.

In another book, unrelated to ACIM, is says, "By going back in our drinking [ego] histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking [egotism] even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression."

The presupposition to alcoholism or drug addiction is the ego. Many do not take their egotism to alcohol, but they take it other places just as deadly. The start of the ego in the human psyche is where the fatal progression begins. Most of us, being children, don't realize what is happening at the human level. But when we get older, we do have the capacity to understand what has happened and take our ego backwards, deflate it at depth. Almost no one wants to do it. Only the most desperate will even try to begin. Only those willing to be rigorously honest with themselves will continue the ego deflation program after some degree of comfort has been achieved. Complacency means the ego has won. Continued intentional ego deflation brings healing of the mind.

Somehow, in this life, I have been given tools to use to work on my ego. Somehow, I have been trying to use them. I have had some success and some failure. When my ego totally ran my life, I was extremely unhappy. Now, the occasional mistake bothers me. The hope of ego transcendence draws me on. I continually have reminders in my worldly life that there is more work to do. I continually have reminders that I am accepting ACIM Atonement for myself. I would do anything to escape my ego prison and become the well lighted potential that I am.

And so...one day at a time.