The Great Fear: losing your individuality

"People who meditate frequently experience a tremendous peace. But there is no excitement there, there is nothing 'interesting' in that experience. From the perspective of the ego, peace is boring. But conflict is exciting, and a part of us is tremendously attracted to conflict.

One need only observe football or basketball games or any of the other sports that so attract people--it is all competition and conflict. The greater the conflict, the greater the struggle and fighting, the greater the ego's peak experience. The participants like it, and millions and millions of people who watch it like it, because it feeds the idea that separation is real [js: from God], and the conflict with each other is real and desirable.

This then becomes the camouflage for the real conflict and separation that is our opposition to God. By holding on to conflict out here in the world, we do not have to deal with it in our own minds, where it remains buried. And so peace reminds us of what we ;most desperately wish to forget, while external conflict protects us from looking at the inner conflict with God, which the ego tells us would certainly destroy us [js. our existence as separate and independent individuals]." - Kenneth Wapnick, PhD: "The Journey Home", Chapter 3, pages 57 and 58. (facim.org)

PS: My two favorite books are Gary R. Renard's "The Disappearance of the Universe" and then "The Journey Home, The Obstacles to Peace in A Course in Miracles" by Kenneth Wapnick, PhD (get it through the above link).