Chapter Four*:

Loving Fear and Fearing Love—The Ego’s Story

This verse introduces the ego’s story as presented to us in A Course in Miracles (ACIM). The final line, “you can choose love for that is what you are,” embodies the purpose of our existence according to ACIM.[i] Namely, that we are asleep and merely dreaming that we are separate from our essential selves, from God, the Source, or however, we label Him, Her, or It. We have the power to choose to wake up and decide whether we want to live our lives based on fear and ego or love and essence.

The Ego’s Nonexistent Existence

Once upon a sacred time, when there was no time,

when there was only Love—

And once upon a sacred space, where there was no space,

where there was only Oneness—

Where there was only sacred, timeless, space-less, No-thingness,

there suddenly arose “a tiny mad idea” that we might like to separate from Oneness.

We took this tiny mad idea seriously and

with a big bang we found ourselves in

the center of the universe!

Surrounded by the sun, the moon, the stars and a tiny,

helpless physical form,

we became increasingly afraid, ashamed, guilt-ridden, forgetful and

we fell into a deep, dreaming sleep.

In our frightening nightmare we believe that we are

separate from our Source,

the sacred, timeless, space-less, No-thingness.

In our frightening nightmare we believe the voice of the

egoic-mind which lulls us with its untruths,

“Stay asleep, oh separated Sonship—

there is no salvation for you,

you are damned to misery, suffering, limitation, lack, and,

oh! don’t forget—death.”

This voice sounded, and continues to sound,

so real to us that we began to, and we continue to

defend it, believe in it, and buy into the belief that we need to

love fear and be afraid of love.

So real is this nightmare to us, that we continue to construct universe upon universe out of it.

We move farther and farther into our

materialistic and dualistic nature

until the pain gets so great we have to pause a moment…

take a deep breath—and be still.

It is here in the depths of a quiet pause,

where we discover the still small space that exists within

each and every one of us—

where we start to hear a different voice,

a soft and loving voice,

waking us from our nightmare, whispering,

“Wake-up, my child, it’s only a bad dream

you can choose love for that is what you are.”

–C. E. Mattingly, 2013

 [i] This 1,200 page three-volume manuscript has sold over two-million copies and has been translated into twenty languages. Wouter Hanegraaff described it as “the one single text which might be said to function as ‘sacred scripture’ in the New Age network of spiritualities.” Ruth Bradby, “A Course in Miracles,” (Partridge 2004)

 * Mattingly, Celeste Emelia. Celestial Psychology: A Guidebook for Co-Creating Miracles, Luminosity & Conscious Evolution, West Hartford, CT: Adam Kadmon Publishers, 2013.  p. 93.