Ego Contraataca, El

This book contains an edited transcript from a one-day Workshop, The Ego Strikes Back: "The Return of the Repressed," and an edited excerpt on Guilt from the five-day Academy class, Weeding Our Garden. Freud's concept of "the return of the repressed" is the basis for The Ego Strikes Back, which deals with the fundamental ego dynamic of convincing us that guilt is horrifically real, and then "protecting" us from its inevitable punishment by counseling us to deny or repress its existence, and then ensuring its survival by projecting it onto others. This returns to awareness the guilt that had been repressed, which is now seen in the world external to the mind. All this is undone by our looking with Jesus at what the ego has wrought, thus undoing repression and projection by recognizing that the guilt we see in others is what we have first seen in ourselves, which is itself unreal. We therefore are free to choose whether to remain in hell or return to Heaven with all the Sonship. The excerpt on Guilt focuses on the importance of returning to the mind and weeding our mind's garden. Strongly emphasized are Freud's insights into the nature of the ego, the unconscious, and repression; along with the necessity of Freud's fundamental contributions being in place before the Course's ideas of the unconscious mind and projection could be rightly understood. Also stressed are the consequences of not returning to the mind, summed up in the poetic statement of Hamlet: "Things rank and gross in nature possess it (the mind) merely." The edited transcript and edited excerpt are not verbatim to the edited audio recordings stated above.