The ego ...

... from start to finish:

- I start out in Heaven

- I am one with Everything

- I am and have Everything

- But the ego whispers a tiny mad idea:

- 'You can be special'

- 'Give up Everything for this'

- I say: 'Deal!'

- A veil descends

- And the dream is born

- The game is on

- But Heaven offers no means for specialness

- So I reject Heaven

- Project out the rejection

- And feel that Heaven has rejected me

- I now have a sense of wrongness ('sin')

- I feel responsible for that wrongness

- So I feel guilty

- Yet guilt brings down judgement

- And judgement brings down vengeance

- And I fear Heaven's vengeance

- So I escape Mind

- And flee into the body

- Where I cannot be found by Heaven.

- Within the body, I am doomed to die

- But before then I can achieve pleasure and comfort

- This takes the form of specialness

- To achieve which, I have a blueprint

- Which involves scripts, outcomes, image, and ideology:

- The scripts are how I want everyone to behave

- The outcomes are how I want my life to look

- The image is the set of roles I want to inhabit

- The ideology is the worldview that supports the above

- Together, these give me identity, value, and purpose

- But resources are limited

- And everyone has their own blueprint

- So I am in competition with everyone else

- Others are therefore enemies

- Or, at best, allies

- For as long as the alliance serves my purpose.

- I am vigilant for attack on the blueprint

- And respond viciously to attack:

- Actual or potential.

- The game is made up of special relationships

- These are relationships where I give 'myself' ...

- ... to get specialness in return.

- I love to be loved back;

- I give to receive.

- Because of the internal sense of wrongness

- The 'self' I give I believe is rotten

- So the deal is a swindle

- So I feel guilty

- Suppress the guilt

- And project it onto the other

- And start to see sin outside myself.

- Thus specialness, once achieved, is tarnished and decays

- And love turns to hate

- So the ego rejigs the blueprint

- And this continues without lasting satisfaction

- Until death brings down the curtain

How could this be undone?

- The only solution is to go back to the Junction

- Which is the Decision-Making Point

- Or, in the ego's eyes:

- The scene of the crime

- That is the moment I said 'Deal!'

- Once returned, I undo the error

- By rejecting the tiny mad idea

- And, in a moment, wake up

- And the perception of the world disappears

- Because nothing has really happened

- Except in the dream

- Yet if I did go back and decide against the ego

- The ego would be forever undone

- So the ego needs defences

- The ego's first defence is the body

- If I am a body, there is no Junction to return to

- Because the Junction is in Mind.

- The ego's second defence is sin, guilt, and fear

- If sin is real, so is guilt

- If guilt is real, so is fear

- Because guilt brings down judgement

- And judgement brings down vengeance

- Thus, if fear is real, I dare not go back

- For fear of Heaven's vengeance

- Which is not real

- But appears real because of my own projection

- Which is why the ego is bent on finding sin

- In myself or others

- To produce guilt

- To produce fear

- To keep me here

- Reliant on it as my guide.

- Thus I, too, find guilt attractive

- Because, if guilt is real

- Sin is real

- And if sin is real

- The original sin

- The error

- The separation

- Really happened

- And so I, as a separate entity, am real

- And therefore special

- Hence the attraction of guilt

- And the constant construction of situations

- In which someone is guilty.

- This continues

- In ever-decreasing circles

- Until the body's faint candle is snuffed out.

The solution

The Twelve Steps. A Course In Miracles. Mystical Christianity (de Mello, Rohr, Coutinho). Mystical Judaism. Buddhism. Taoism. Really any system that conceives of a reality beyond the three dimensions and lays out a path to get there. The paths will differ in their constructs and methods but have the same goal and content. But be sure to avoid any path which casts the material world as the ultimate reality and views sin or evil as real, when in reality it is blindness, error, or sleep.