Sometimes we become lax in the way we use the personal pronoun "I." We say, "I feel tired today," or, "I don't feel well," and, again, "My zest for life is gone; I am low and depressed." But when we read Mrs. Eddy's words, "The I is Spirit,"Science and Health, p. 249; we are startled into an alert awareness of what we are doing. Through a false sense of identity we are allowing that impostor, evil, or animal magnetism, to come in the guise of our thought and speak for us.
In reality, all that can say "I" is the intelligent Principle of the universe, divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy uses the term "Ego"— the Latin word for I, or the self—to describe the infinite self-conscious Being whom Christ Jesus called Father. Revealing man's relationship to God she writes,"The Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle."Science and Health, p. 281;
From this we see that the real man has eternal identity, but this identity has nothing to do with the little mortal ego that seems to think, speak, and feel through a brain-centered mind. This concept of man is the illusion of human personality that masquerades as self-conscious being. It is mortal mind's dream-man, the mirage by which animal magnetism would keep us in bondage to sin, sickness, and death.
