What's Behind the Costume? Halloween Reflections: Drop the Ego Costume and See the Love Within

Life as a Costume: The Roles We Play

Even though I am a student of A Course in Miracles, I regularly attend a Science of Mind church. My minister, Rev. Liz Luoma, likes to refer to us all as adorable little packages of God. We’re all in different “packages,” but underneath, we are all the same essence.

Last month, during the Halloween season, she likened these packages to costumes. When we live on earth, we take on a costume (or role or character) and develop it over a lifetime. Our entire lives become a process of refining this character—often haunted by egoic fears and shadows.

Which costume have you chosen?

The Ego as a Scary Costume

Which costume have you chosen? In A Course in Miracles, these costumes are called the “ego.” The ego is our creation, not God’s. Take away the costume, the role, the character, and what is left? The part of us that God created—timeless, endless, unlimited, perfect, and One with God.

Underneath all the costumes and roles, we are not ourselves as the world sees us—we are the love and essence God created.

Lost in the Spooky Movie of Life 

But we get so busy living in our costumes that we forget who we really are. We become utterly consumed by the fantasy, convinced that our roles define us. It’s like going to a spooky movie—the lights go out, the story becomes our world, and we are completely absorbed.

Our lives on earth are similar. We get caught in the haunted illusions and forget our true selves.

Drop the costumes to forgive   

Forgiving requires that we simply drop those egoic costumes for a moment.  There is a larger part of us and it is not here in this false Halloween-like world of costumes.  We must remember that everyone is really only Love and always One in God. 

Forgiveness is the act of accepting that people come here to this 3D earth and put on a costume and do silly things.  They are deluded, they have simply forgotten who they really are.  When we forgive, we remember for them, who they really are.

Words for Haunted and Creepy Forgiveness

You can start your forgiveness practice with these words:  

You are Spirit,

Whole and Innocent,

I forgive you.

I release you.

I bless you with Love.  

I often begin with these words, then continue through a deeper process to see the higher truth for someone I am forgiving. It takes about five minutes and allows me to shift feelings from egoic fear to Love, no matter how personally scary, creepy, or even globally destructive someone’s actions may seem.

Learn the Process in My Book

The full process is detailed in my book,  Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness. It walks you through seeing through the costumes of this temporary world, focusing on higher truth, and practicing forgiveness for greater peace and joy.

Want to go deeper into forgiveness?

• Explore how forgiveness reconnects us to divine compassion in Unblocking our Connection to Love. Read it here →

• My book, Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness, offers heartfelt guidance, spiritual tools, and real-life practices. Read it on Amazon → | Barnes & Noble → | Balboa Press →

• Let daily affirmations support you too — discover the Forgiveness Metta Card Deck for a gentle morning practice of peace and release.

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Let these tools light your path — because forgiveness sets you free.
— Sue Pipal

It's Simple...We're all the Same

I woke up thinking about the Middle East this morning.  I'd just love to throw a big blanket over Syria and Iraq.  "Sleep, everyone, just sleep", I'd whisper into the blanket.  "Calm down, sleep and find some quiet."  

When everyone is finally sleeping peacefully, I'd continue my whispering.  This is what I'd say:

We're all the same.  

The Divine created each and every one of us in exactly the same way.

He made us all out of the same substance.

He made us all exactly in his own image.  We are just like him.  Every single one of us.

We are love.  That is what he is.  That is what we are.

He love us infinitely.  Yes, each and every one of us is loved infinitely by the Divine himself.

And the Divine gave us each a function.  That function is love.   

We have a job to do, an assignment, a purpose.  Love is why we exist.  

Exercise that love.  Put it into action.  Fulfill your purpose.  

Be who you were created to be.

Forgive.  Accept.  Love. 

It really is all just this simple.  We're all the same. 

Live in peace.  Nothing is more important than this.  Nothing.  

Ask to Forgive

An "angel" will come.  An angel from deep within ourselves. A voice for love.  Ask to have that voice.  An experience of truth, not the same-old ego-story.

When you are sick and tired of chaos, confusion, pain and fear, ask for help.

Be willing, even if it is willing that it will happen later.

Ask for the help.  Love is available to every one of us.  Love is our deep immortal truth.  No matter who you think you are and what you think you've done, you are actually only love,  what you have done is only love.  You cannot be otherwise. You are not the exception to love.

We are all one.  We are all the same.  We were, each and every one, created by the Divine to be perfect.  The Divine creates in his own image and he is, simply, love.  Therefore, no matter how you deny it and run from it...you are love, too.

And you can be nothing but love.  God is only love and God is all there is.  There is nothing more that you can be.  You are not separate from God.  You are what he is, no matter how you decieve yourself.  You may choose to perceive that you are bad, wrong or sinful.  You may choose to perceive that others are bad, wrong or sinful.  But it is merely perception, not truth.

 There is no duality.  Our "dream world" of fear, violence, hatred, anger and frustration is only an illusion.  Ask to be freed of this illusion and to see the truth of yourself.  You are love.

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"Compassion is an attitude that upholds the memory of wholeness for people when they are lost in separation, pain and conflict."

I often talk about "flipping the switch" from love to fear.  Forgiveness happens at the very moment that we flip that switch.

One moment we are feeling thoughts of fear; anger, hurt, resentment, frustration, annoyance, irritation, victim-hood, upset, pain, rage and most importantly a sense that we are ultimately unloveable.  We flip that switch by dropping the fear thoughts of separation and isolation and replacing them with love thoughts.  We don't have to go all the way to full love, the switch happens the moment we start up the road to love; sympathy, understanding, compassion, hopefulness and a sense of sharing and oneness.

"Love is also grounded in an attitude of compassion.  Compassion is necessary for our survival and our evolution.  Compassion is an attitude that upholds the memories of wholeness for people when they are lost in separation, pain and conflict.  Compassion is love's holding environment.  It is how love whispers to us, "I will remember the truth of who you are even when you cannot remember this for yourself."  This compassion sees through what Einstein called the "optical delusion" of separation.  Einstein taught us that we can free ourselves from identifying with this ego-consciousness by 'widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.'" --Robert Holden in Loveability p. 29 (emphasis in italics are mine)

And just what exactly is "the truth of who you are when you cannot remember this for yourself"? Everyone's truth is the same--that we are all one, that we all are a part of God's creation, that we are all one thing and one thing only...love.  We are perfect, whole and complete.  We are created by God in his own image.  God loves us infinitely and our one and only task is to extend this love by returning it to God and to each other.

When we flip the switch from fear to love, all we need to do is acknowledge this truth for the other person.  We simply need to know that they are a Child of God.  In a sense we are actually switching from the smallness of our ego minds to a much bigger and more truthful picture, in fact we are switching to the whole picture.  It's a matter of changing the perspective of our thinking and broadening our minds so that we see and think as God himself does.

This life of separation is only a dream our egos created anyway.  It's not real.  Nothing involving fear really exists. Fear is only an invention of the mind.  it is an illusion.  Yes, living here on 3D planet earth, we think it's real, but we've only forgotten the truth that we are all one and that in that oneness, we are love.

"To love and be loved is the true joy of every human heart.  There is no higher happiness than this.  Alas, in any human dramas there are also wounds and disappointments, mistakes, betrayals, pain and heartache.  Even so, love comes to our rescue.  Love offers us a solution, which is a process called forgiveness.  Forgiveness is an angel that comes to us when we sleep and wakes us from the hypnosis.  It is the ground of love that supports you when you are falling, breaking apart, and coming undone.  Forgiveness undoes the blocks to loves awareness.  It shows you that a universe of love doesn't ever stop, even when all you can see is pain.  Love always loves you, even when you can't or won't love yourself." --Robert Holding Loveability p. 29

Oddly, flipping the switch from fear to forgiveness is surprisingly easy once you get some practice with it.  It's true that when you are in the throes of anger and hurt, the thought of forgiving can feel very distasteful.  But once you learn that a feeling of love and relief flows over you with forgiveness, you will become more motivated to do it sooner.

Also, there is that little matter of increasing annoyances.  While you are in a state of separation and amplifying those fear feelings by cherishing the anger and hurt, your 3D earthly life will reflect this separation.  This is the time that you will stub your toe, lose an important business contract, upset the feelings of those you care about and wake up with a bad hair day.  This is absolutely true, and if you don't believe me about this yet, just watch how it plays out in your life.

So, learn to get over it quickly.  Drop the feelings of fear and let the hurt and anger switch over to love as quickly as you are able to.  Remember that when you give love, you get love.  Find the love and happiness you are seeking.  It's there waiting for you and all you have to do to receive it is practice forgiveness.

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Who Are You Forgiving Today?

We are

                     all one.

We are simply only forgiving......

                                                                                      .....Ourselves

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there.  Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness.  Now you are holy and perceive it so.  And now the mind returns to its creator, the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all.  God is not seen but only understood.  His Son is not attacked but recognized."

A Course in Miracles, Manual for Teachers p 84 

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Olympics--Oneness vs. Separation?

Many people like to think that the Olympics are about oneness.  And in some ways they are.  After all, people come together from around the world to participate in the same events.  That seems like oneness, doesn't it?

This kind of thinking can be a sneaky trick of the ego mind.  Beware of it.  Yes, people are coming together in certain ways, but they are also separating in distinct ways, too.  They are separating into winners and losers, winning teams and losing teams, winning countries and losing countries.

As, one by one, we watch each athlete compete, we are secretly judging them.  Who has the greatest skill, the highest speed, the most grace, the best physical body, the best uniform, the superior coach, the most interesting story.  We are judging a multitude of aspects for each of these athletes, teams and countries.  We pick our favorites and we cheer them on.  Worse, we pick our least favorites and we secretly hope they will fail.  We are attacking them in our minds.

Judging is not oneness.  In fact, judging is the opposite of oneness, it is the act of separating individuals or groups of individuals out for "specialness", as the Course of Miracles call it.  We can be special because we are better than others or we can be special because we are less than others.  Either way, "specialness" thinking is separation thinking.

Seeing every one else as equally important is the goal.  Why not try to watch these Olympics from a new perspective.  Can it be done without judgment?  Can we simply watch to celebrate everyone's beauty, effort and accomplishments?  Can we enjoy the creation of participation?  Can we love each and every athlete for who they really are...a child of God, created in His own image whom He loves infinitely?  When we can do this, we are thinking with love, accepting and forgiving the world as it is.

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Recognize the Oneness of All Life

We are all the same.  We come from the same source.  We are all a permanent part of that source.  This can never change.

It is only our perception that we are separate.  We come here to earth, and we think we separate into individual beings, but that is only a perception that we create as part of our adventures here on earth.  We can never change the fact of our true nature.

We are each and every one of us actually all a part of the same one source.  We forget that a lot here, but our forgetting does not change its truth.

Forgiveness is simply the act of remembering.  We remember the truth about the other people in our lives.  We see and know their oneness with us, with all others and together with our source.  They are perfect, whole and complete.  We are perfect, whole and complete.  There is only one.

"Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself.  It is the wish that you be joined with him and not apart."  --A Course in Miracles Chapter 26, VII, 9, 1

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Download a beautiful forgiveness meditation that helps you remember and experience this feeling of oneness:

Fragments

We are so much larger than what we are here on earth.  This is only a fragment of our whole self.  In reality, we are made by God, exactly in his image.

We are endless and everywhere.  We are timeless and always.  We are everything and all that is.

We are in God.  We are of God.  We are part of God.  We are one with God.

However you look at this bigger picture, we are so much more than the mere fragments of ourselves that we project into this illusory dream that is our life on earth. 

When we see a brother behaving badly.  We must learn to take a leap in our minds to that place where we know his real truth.  He is not the fragment we are seeing here.  He is a Son of God and his real truth is only love. 

Knowing this for him is your true act of forgiveness.

 

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What Could Bring You Greater Happiness?

All minds are joined.  Ultimately we are all part of the same universal mind.  When you forgive, you heal the universal mind just that little bit more.  As you heal yourself through your forgiveness you are also healing the world.  This is no small thing. 

"The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness."

 

"How holy are you who have the power to bring peace to every mind!  How blessed are you who can learn to recognize the means for letting this be done through you.  What purpose could you have that could bring you greater happiness?

 

You are indeed the light of the world with such a function.  The Son of God looks to you for his redemption. It is yours to give him, for it belongs to you."  

 --A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 63 

 

 

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A Forgiveness Blessing: Sending Healing to Those Who Trigger You

Try this sometime on someone you feel annoyed with.  Simply close your eyes and feel these thoughts going out to them, blessing and healing.  All thoughts are shared.  When you know your brother's truth, it becomes available for them to know, too. 

You are immense, because you are everywhere. 

You are magnificent, because you are what God is. 

You are always, because you live in eternity.