u/vannablooms

Trigger warning for the Ego (don't bite the messenger). 🐤

I have thought about the reasons for doing spiritual practices and following spiritual paths, considering that the atonement already happened, that the world is unreal, and that there is no do-er or a need to even accomplish something in the world.

And the answer is...you cannot not follow the path, because spiritual paths and lessons of forgiveness are something you asked for the instant the mad idea has entered your mind. You asked for the medicine which would restore peace to your awareness, thus it becomes an obvious choice to TAKE the medicine. You don't have another choice, because you asked for ONLY ONE choice.

There is no free will as the Ego sees it. Ego uses free will in a sense of " doing whatever I want EVEN if it hurts me ", which would be fine, if your will was to be hurt, but even in that paradoxical scenario, hurt and suffering would bring you happiness, because accomplishing a will (wanting-ess) is the highest happiness, so you wouldn't even experience hurt from the pain, but pleasure. Just like a masochistic thought structure within the dream equates pain with pleasure, thus rendering the pain/suffering obsolete and it just ends up with pleasure.

Your seed is that of unconditional love/peace/eternal life and happiness. That seed cannot grow into anything else but itself. The whole Course is aimed at showing you that your will is nothing else but this, and everything that seems to contradict these ideas isn't your will and doesn't exist in truth.

Yes, all of this is predetermined, but even knowing this will not alter the scenarios at all, because even if the Ego rebels and thinks it is " trapped " by this will, you will come to love God with all your mind and body, thus WILLINGLY submitting to His (your) will in the end. Isn't it wonderful that you are " bound " by Love itself and you cannot escape happiness no matter how much the Ego protests and cries for death? You are bound to what you are. But even saying " bound " implies that you are somehow a slave to it, which is impossible since it's YOUR BEING. Then you would technically just be a slave to...yourself and what you want! There is no way around salvation whatsoever.

Ego didn't ask for salvation, but you did. As long as you side with the thoughts of the egoic system, you will side with a will that DOESN'T wish to be " saved " from the mistake, and you will just postpone your awareness of Heaven and God in THIS MOMENT. But even that cannot last forever, because God's will (and yours) are obviously superior to the tiny mad will of the Ego. So even if the perception and time were to last a million years, they have an expiration date. You can speed up that by however much you want by the mere realization that you don't have to wait for the end of the movie and go through this for another 1000 lifetimes. But even THEN it doesn't matter if you do because you will choose a path of salvation at one point ANYWAYS. It is quite inevitable and this inevitability is not dictated by the Ego. Ego will tell you that this lifetime isn't suitable for spiritual endeavors because of a million circumstances but...he doesn't have a say in that. If you were to choose salvation now, trust that the whole universe would rearrange to support it, because you would finally be siding with the infinite power of God himself.