School for A Course In Miracles

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School for A Course In Miracles

“The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity.” T-14. II. 6:4
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Course References on Death and Dying:

“There is no death, the Son of God is free…”

27. WHAT IS DEATH?

Manual p.66

1 Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as “the way of nature,” not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the “natural” law of life. 

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 Text, Chapter 23, p.493, par.19

19 There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true. 

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WB Lesson 163, p.309

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

 1 Death is a thought that takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release.

The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished; killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive…

Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. 

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28. WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION?

Manual p.68

1 Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a re-awakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. 

2 The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. 

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

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Text, Chapter 19: The Attainment of Peace

C. The Third Obstacle to Peace: The Attraction of Death, p.416

1 To you and your brother, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For it was offered you, and you accepted. Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third obstacle that peace must flow across… What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction.

 7 Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they call to it, and bid it come to save them from communication. For death is seen as safety, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice That speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is not the end of conflict. Only God’s Answer is its end. The obstacle of your seeming love for death that peace must flow across seems to be very great. For in it lie hidden all the ego’s secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego’s making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on Life Itself.

 

D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God, p.420

1 What would you see without the fear of death? What would you feel and think if death held no attraction for you? Very simply, you would remember your Father…

4 See how the belief in death would seem to “save” you. For if this were gone, what could you fear but life? It is the attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel and tyrannical. You are no more afraid of death than of the ego. These are your chosen friends. For in your secret alliance with them (death and the ego) you have agreed never to let the fear of God be lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ and join Him in His Father…

… The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, which you love as you could never love the body. And the appeal of death is lost forever as love’s attraction stirs and calls to you. From beyond each of the obstacles to love (and peace), Love Itself has called.

Also see:

*Workbook, Les. 167, p.318-319:

“You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea (in the mind)… Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator… What seems to be the opposite of life (in Heaven) is merely sleeping.”

*Song of Prayer Pamphlet, Part 3. Healing:

Sec.I p.16, par. 1-2

Sec. II p.17-18, par.1-5 (including…)

“This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us.

But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at  most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without the blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again. — We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release.

 

If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own. — Death is reward and not a punishment. But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive.”(S-3.II.2:1-4/3:1-5/5:5-6)

For Further Discussion

on Death & Dying

by Ken Wapnick:

(Click on pictures below for info)

 

 

Musings: Your Way Will Be Different… Out of the comfort zone. Help is available.

“If you want to be like me, I will help you, knowing we are alike. If you want to be different I will wait until you change your mind.” – Jesus, A Course in Miracles Text, page 145

You may not be willing yet to be shown another way because you are not so sure it offers more than what you’ve got. Rather than set sail into unknown territory, almost everyone agrees to the lie of separation and specialness. To walk out of the dream would be like turning your back on the tribe. You may be considered a traitor.

In this post I want to let you know that,  a. stepping out of your comfort zone is not easy, and b. help is available.

I have become convinced of a few things on this journey and from time to time I will pass these on to you in the hopes of saving you time and unnecessary suffering.  Here is the first time saver:

You need a teacher to help you navigate this transformation. This teacher will act as a guide and a comforter, showing you how to distinguish truth from illusion, pleasure from pain, and loving you more than you presently love yourself. Because you don’t love yourself you cannot help yourself.

You need a teacher to motivate you to wake up. Only one who knows what is on the other side of the dream could promise that waking offers you everything and mean it.

Without a teacher to show you how to train your mind you would stay on the battlefield, defend the little that you have, and die in the process. The teaching  of A Course in Miracles offers you resurrection, not death.

You need a teacher to show the cost to you of your choice to remain separate. You can’t see what you are doing because you believe it is reality.

You don’t know the way out of your self-inflicted suffering. But you can be shown by one who went beyond it and who offers to talk you through your own resurrection. In A Course in Miracles Jesus offers us his education and companionship in overcoming the world. Who better to teach us the resurrection of our mind than the one who accomplished it? By listening to what he has to say you can perhaps become a willing and coachable learner.

It is my pleasure to point you to the one who said, “If you want to be like me, I will help you, knowing we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind.”

Now that statement is certainty, is it not?

That certainty is yours if you would learn how to join with the mind that could say such a thing. If you can, think of Jesus as a symbol of  love-without-opposite  in your right mind, and not what unhealed minds have made of him. That he died while suffering for our sins is a tragic misperception of a brother who only tried to teach us that we are loving and lovable by demonstrating it himself.

Musings: There Is No Death

“Death is a decision not to decide.”

Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira

I was on an interview years back with friends and Course teachers Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Viera, authors of Take Me To Truth. The interviewer was Carrie Triffet author of Long Time No See.

Carrie asked Tomas about his life threatening health challenge and how he was dealing with it. (That’s Tomas in the picture on the right.)

His remarks were those of someone whose vantage point of perception had shifted from within the body to beyond the body. This shift in perception is the reward of practicing  forgiveness that A Course in Miracles promises. It’s like lucid dreaming where you are awake in the dream and therefore not affected by it.

What I heard in Tomas’s voice was the absolute conviction of someone that no longer sees the body as his home. It is a rare person indeed that does not care if their body lives or dies.  The freedom and peace that he enjoys was absolutely palpable.

The best it gets within the dream is to (fearfully) prolong the body’s life and feel as good as possible until its inevitable end comes. Why don’t more of us ask, “Is this as good as it gets?”

The best evidence that there is a God are these  folks, who appear to be living in a body, who see a different world in which there is no fear. Having left the world of sickness, pain, suffering and death, they reside in the deathless zone of the Eternal. Every one of them would tell us that this transformation of mind is available to all of us without exception. Tomas is one of those examples.

Just today on Facebook I read about three very unexpected deaths. The suffering of friends and family is enough to make anyone want to see a different world. First we must believe that it is possible. I invite those who know this place of residence and the new vision that arises within it,  to speak out. Let those who suffer know that it does not need to be this way.

Many many years ago, when A Course in Miracles first came into my life, I remember reading, “Death is a decision not to decide.”

I puzzled over that for a long time. It wasn’t until recent years that I fully understood. Death is a decision made in the mind that is ruled by the ego. It is the will of the separated self. It’s not God’s Will. It is a way of preserving our false sense of identity. We seem go out one door (in death), and come back in another (in birth), but we are still simply dreaming of separation.

The mind only changes when a decision is made to place it under the authority of God’s Teacher who shows us there is no death. It is an illusion of suffering that only exists in the mind under the authority of the ego. We must each make that decision to change what rules our mind.  Once we do our Eternal nature is revealed and death is forgotten as a possibility.