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The End of Death, Volume 2; blog reference
The End of Death, Volume 2; copyright 2020
Link to audio version of blog article
 You Are Worthy…

Did you know the one thing we resist and even defend our self against more than physical death itself – is genuine peace? We’re not referring to the ego’s fleeting “forms” of peace which are dependent on external factors (including the body’s state) being met. We are speaking of the kind of peace that contains the immediate solution to every conceivable problem here in the body, in the dream we call life.

This kind of peace holds within it something we so desperately want but rarely get to access. In this precious peace lay an immediate portal, an entry point through which we escape that insidious and persistent sense of threat, that gnawing feeling of just not being worthy enough. Here, we don’t need to earn or qualify for God’s Love. All secret sins instantly evaporate within its calm embrace. Here, in this Holy Instant we rest deeply in His Love because we are willing, finally, to recognize we are His Love.

We accept and receive the Truth of our Being. And in this moment of receiving, we become God’s Loving Will in our awareness. We are the light, the all-encompassing Love in which all concerns and problems dissolve. This Love knows of no hierarchy of healing. It looks upon all problems as one. It knows that all pain regardless of its severity is merely our resistance to accepting its immediate remedy – the Atonement in the Holy Instant.

This sovereign moment is where all miracles await our joyous welcome. Access to this peace, available to us in every second, is an open invitation to literally bask in our immunity to all adversity and suffering. In the Holy Instant, we learn to step back and allow the Holy Self within to step forward. This light we are is ever present…

“There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.” … “The light in you is what the universe longs to behold.”… “This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world.” W-156.4,5:1,6:1

This is the peace of God. This is the ever-present doorway to healing. There is no order of difficulty in miracles here because all of them are accessible in the instant we sincerely accept His peace. But to do so, we must be willing to recognize our incorruptible innocence even if for just an instant.

Recall that God’s Will is already complete. Healing of everything has already been given us. We don’t need to earn, qualify or wait for God’s Healing. We are eternally worthy to claim God’s Healing in this Holy Instant, now. It is already made manifest. Our only problem is that through our belief in the ego’s fear-filter, the body’s five senses and its past, we are blind to it. The ego sees only what it desires to see –hallucinate – which is separation. But that does not make it true.

Every conceivable adversity we appear to see in our body, in another, in the world or in the past, arises from just one illusory source – fear, as the opposite of God’s Love. Yet fear, along with all its devastating consequences does not exist. It’s a thoroughly convincing trick made by the ego to dupe us. That way, in the tiny band of time between birth and death, we become entirely absent. Absent to the glorious Holy Self we are, and the staggering dominion we share with God over all illusory phenomena here in the dream.

Through belief in the illusion of fear we are busily seeking to enhance or defend our tiny life seemingly imprisoned within the body. We are kept habitually consumed moment to moment trying to attain the “love and worthiness” we think we lack, or fending off the dreaded onslaught of what appears as random chaos.

When we are consumed by a seeming problem, “we” as the Holy Self who heals all just by quietly forgiving it, are absent. In the moment we believe in fear we are literally “missing in action.” We have abandoned our Holy Self, the Source of all healing. The very moment that we believe a problem is real and requires defense, reveals that we believe what the ego has projected. And then it is the same ego that attempts to heal the problem which it invented. And all the while distracting us from recognizing the one real cause of the problem – our belief we are separate and unworthy –which can only be healed though the Holy Instant of Atonement.

We can gauge which “self” is present by how fearful we are. The ego can even disguise fear in the forms of worry, anticipation, and even hope. Is it the ego or the Holy Self that is present? As long as the ego can continue to divert us from accepting the one Answer to all problems in the Holy Instant, it is happy to seek a plethora of magical remedies. Just so we never recognize and heal the aching abyss of worthlessness that is the ego. After all, in the quiet majesty of the Holy Instant, as we rest deeply in total fearlessness, the ego ceases to exist. No wonder it abhors peace. No wonder the peace of God is its worst enemy. The peace of God is the absence of fear, the annihilation of the ego.

“False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a “nicer” one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be free to strike again. False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer [is] answered.”  Song of Prayer, S-3.II.1-7

When we enter a Holy Instant of peace and open our heart to receive what God has already willed for us, the false-self’s hallucination begins to shatter, revealing the glorious Love and healing that is our divine Inheritance.

Are we willing to enter a now moment and surrender to trust that all our problems have already been solved?  Are we willing to “show-up” in this most Holy Instant to genuinely claim the undoing of what never was in reality?

In this blessed moment we join as God’s healing Will. We are the beloved and eternally innocent Child of God. Gratitude overflows. In this receiving lies the peace of God. We don’t “do” anything. The body becomes redundant in this instant as it falls away from awareness.

Because the ego is the idea of an opposing substitute for God’s beloved Child, everything it does, either negative or positive, is done via false responsibility. By believing it is God this illusory self makes up further illusory images of people, illness and situations so that it can “do” something about them. It really does believe that it can actually do something, be it seemingly good or bad (sin). But the truth is that because it is nothing and has no reality at all, everything it does, everything it appears to accomplish and every imaginary sin it ever committed – never happened.

Jesus tells us that we need do nothing. And now we know why. I need do nothing because the false-self can literally do nothing real! Think about that. It is the obstruction to God’s perfect Creation as our Holy Self. In the quiet Center of the Holy Instant, there is no body, no doing, no qualifying, no fixing, and no trying at all. The ego with its fearful threats is made completely redundant. There is only a deeply grateful surrender to trust. In that trust we accept and receive the miracle.

No Body Here

The illusory body, this convincing image which we projected as our greatest block to true union with our brothers and God, is the central idol around which all our mistaken beliefs, values and stories revolve. The body is used by the ego to prove that the illusion of sin is real. But if sin (irrevocable error) is real then God does not exist. Only one, either God or sin, can possibly exist. If we believe in both then our mind is split.

The body is the central idol for all our interactions with our self, others and the world. Through the false-self we mistakenly believe we are the body, not realizing that we are the incorruptible Holy Self who employs the body exclusively for our sole function of forgiveness. This is true communication. Until the body has been wholly repurposed by Holy Spirit, it remains as a guilt (pain) magnet.

“You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes the body an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this always means you still find sin attractive. No one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your [one] responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction.” … “There is one thing that you have never done; you have not utterly forgotten the body. It has perhaps faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens.” T-18.VII.1,2:1-3

When we enter a Holy Instant the body falls away in our awareness. All false-responsibility dissolves here, leaving us with nothing to do. In the sanctity of this moment we relinquish all false responsibility for solving problems or healing sickness. We wholly surrender our mistaken perception of problems. We open our heart to recognize that all adversity we perceive does not exist because it all arose from just one mistake. We thought we were excluded from God’s Love and healing. We thought we weren’t worthy. And now we graciously accept the undoing of that single belief that we are separate from our beloved Creator. All healing is ours in this precious Holy Instant as we truly accept that we need do nothing.

“To do anything involves the body. And if you recognize you need do nothing, you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and escape from time. This is the way in which sin loses all attraction [right now.]” … “To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He will remain when you forget, and the body’s activities return to occupy your conscious mind.” T-18.VII.7:1-4,7-9

As we practice entering the Holy Instant more frequently we will eventually carry it with us in all our interrelating, and as we go about our daily tasks. One significant change occurs in our “doing mode.” Happily, the body fades in our awareness as our central idol and the actions we take are no longer coming from fear (sin). They are truly inspired by the Holy Spirit.

“Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.” T-18.VII.8

The Holy Relationship

The Course’s path is not a solitary journey. Contrary to what some earlier teachers of the Course may have said, the Course in not exclusively a self-study program. Let me be clear, there is much in the Course that we can contemplate alone, however the rubber does not meet the road in our transfer of trust from fear to Love until we experience true joining with another person in the mutual quest to overcome specialness. This is the special means – the Holy Relationship – which the Course uses to collapse both time and matter (space). This is the undoing of the separation.

“You could no more know God alone than He knows you without your brother. But together you could no more be unaware of love than love could know you not, or fail to recognize itself in you.” T-18.VIII.12:4-5

Jesus explains that other pathways which share the same purpose of returning to God get us there, but they usually involve copious effort and enormous amounts of time. Of the two predominant paths other than the Course, one is focused on struggling against sin while the other largely involves much contemplation and long periods of meditation which are aimed at detachment from the body. These two pathways differ from the Course’s central means of return to God, in that they seek for freedom in the future from a present state of unworthiness and inadequacy. While the Course is one of miracles, the Holy Instant and Atonement give us access to our divine Inheritance and freedom right now where all miracles abide.

“It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless, just for an instant, you are willing to see no past or future. You cannot prepare for it without placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it does aim at saving time. You may be attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.” T-18.VII.4.

The Course offers us the Holy Instant of (immediate) Atonement and the Holy Relationship within which to quicken the extensive collapse of the dream. This is the path of miracles which, broadly speaking, constitutes a comprehensive and quantum collapse of the separation as the illusions of time and matter, of bodies, birth and death.

A central and necessary teaching in the Course is the Holy Relationship. It is through this most sanctified of all relationships in the dream of time, that we experience the complete undoing of the ego’s most fiercely defended argument for separation and death – the special relationship.

In the Holy Relationship we enter “joint” Holy Instants, where there is an unequivocal recognition of the innocent Christ within our brother. And the body concept fades into a thin veil through which we behold the magnitude of our unified Self as Love. The concept of time goes hand in hand with the belief in sin and separate bodies with private minds. As we close this single gap with one brother or sister, a quantum leap takes place for all imprisoned minds because two or more have joined in Truth.

Do we even realize the massive healing we bring for our self and others by entering just one Holy Instant? In one Holy Instant we can effectively collapse one hundred years of suffering.

“Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you. You [are] prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do nothing. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you should do. When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; “[I need do nothing.]”

“Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. You do not need this time. Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for [you.] Save time for me by only this one preparation, and practice doing nothing else. “I need do nothing” is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation.” T-18.VII.5,6.

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The End of Death; A Manual for Holy Relationship

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