Jesus was the first since the separation to complete his full return to God. He was the first to recognize and overcome the entire separation dream by undoing its nucleus, being the concept of death. In the illusion of time, he was our initial Pioneer, the one who entirely demolished the veil of death and fulfilled God’s Will completely. Until Jesus triumphantly overcame death through his resurrection, we all, as the one sleeping mind, were in darkness.
Through his resurrection, he overcame all ego laws, gifting us with the Atonement; the undoing of fear. Now we have an immediate tool to correct fear in our perception, eventually undoing our unconscious devotion to death, so we can follow him out of the ego dream. Jesus is the Atonement. In his completion of God’s perfect Will, he accomplished our healing too. It is already done. All we need do is to accept it.
“You were in darkness until God’s Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father’s Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give you,…” T-8.IV.3:1-5
The extraordinary holographic message of A Course in Miracles is gradually recognized and then integrated as a way of living and thus, of being. The deeper calling that beckons us to consistently live out from the one Power within, is only accepted once we willingly join with Spirit to exhume and relinquish (forgive) our unconscious fears, guilt and false humility. As our trust in Love increases, fear falls away. And that’s when we genuinely withdraw our dependence on the world to tell us who we are and what reality is. Because what we see out there, is exactly what the ego mind sends our senses to go fetch; precisely what it projects and wants us to react to. When we withdraw our trust in the physical senses, we learn to rely on inner Vision (Guidance) to show us what Reality is.
These deeper teachings of Jesus are quite astounding, even to long time Course students like myself. Jesus is not just exposing the most epic of all unconscious myths since the beginning of time…death. He is urging us to overcome death, in all its sinister forms, just as he did. Death is universally believed to be the one outcome of all life, that we’re absolutely sure of. It is deemed a natural and legitimate part of life. And…it’s the one outcome of life, that we all expect. The ego’s survival depends on the belief that physical death is non-negotiable, inevitable and inescapable. It deems that we are victims to the ego’s laws of time, deprivation, disease, decay and death. In other words, that we are prey to a power other than God’s all-encompassing and uninterruptible Love. But how could there possibly be a power other than God’s Love unless we, using our free will, choose to value it.
This is not a teaching in immortality of the body. Death, like all imagined powers other than God’s Love, does not exist, unless we desire it in our experience. In Jesus’ physical resurrection he overcame the concept of death in all its forms; for us all. He calls us to use this ego dream to reverse the ego thought system and to reclaim our true Inheritance as expressions of God’s Love. Death is not part of Life. Otherwise fear would be part of Love and the ego would be part of God.
The ego mind made the body to attack ourselves and the world, expressly to teach and to prolong separation and time (suffering). As we undo the ego, the purpose of the body and world are reversed. It is understood that they are purely teaching devices for Love and forgiveness. As the mind returns to sanity, it withdraws its beliefs in ego laws and strengthens its recognition that the body is under no laws but God’s. This is such a tremendous relief! Finally we can quit taking false responsibility for the body (ours and our loved ones); and learn to trust in Love. Our increased trust in the Holy Self takes over and miracles flow. Jesus reminds us to give over everything that does not matter (including the body) and allow his guidance to direct everything that does matter:
“My control can take over everything that does not matter, while my guidance can direct everything that does, if you so choose.” T-2.VI.1:3.
And, “I will substitute for your ego if you wish… I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance.” T-4.I.13:1,4
As Jesus shares, we recognize that it is not the body that sustains us, but the Mind and Heart of God. So as our trust is withdrawn from the ego thought system, biological ego laws that appeared to govern the body previously, are eclipsed by God’s Law of unopposed Life.
Our return to Love involves unlearning and reversing the body’s purpose. While under the ego’s reign, the body was believed to be our source of life and being. It was also erroneously idealized as our identity and goal; an “end” in itself instead of purely a means by which we un-learn our dependence on the ego, the body and the world. Through the ego, the body became an identity of its own, an image that we mistakenly assigned with powers to change, to sicken and to die. In short, we gave the body false authority over our mind, to prove that the illusion of attack is real. We gave to it emotional and biological intelligence so that it appeared to overrule our mind. The ego set this up as an overwhelming distraction from awakening to our Holy Self. Until we join God’s Will in undoing our unconscious devotion to death in all its forms, we will continue to believe, manifest and demonstrate, that the body is more powerful than the mind, our Holy Self.
Jesus explains in the following quote that the body cannot create either sickness or health. Physical illness represents a belief in magic, which is the temptation to believe that something other than the Will of God, is real. The is no will but God’s and everything except this, is magic. Physical illness is not part of God’s Will therefore it is magic. The whole distortion that made magic, is that we mistakenly believe that there is a creative ability in matter (body), which the mind cannot control. This compulsive ego belief, that the body can develop symptoms of sickness or health independently of the mind, must exclude trust in God’s Will as our primary devotion.
“The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. Physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion that made magic rests on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control.” T-2.IV.2:6-8.
As we awaken, we will learn that the body is not who we are. It is not a purpose or goal in itself. It is solely a means, a learning device, to remember our true purpose. As the mind is healed, our secret devotion to suffering and death is undone. The body is returned to its proper role and is no longer used to demonstrate the illusion that it has power and dominion over the mind.
The body will eventually be restored to its rightful place in our perception, as an effect only and never as a cause. This is when we will know without doubt that the body is simply not real. As an effect it has no ability to create; to cause, to attack, to get well, to get sick or to die. When this level of mastery is achieved, as Jesus’ demonstrated, we will witness to ourselves and the sleeping world that indeed the healed mind and not the body, is supreme Cause. Then and only then, will the body have served its divine purpose of demonstrating the reversal of the thinking of the world, and may no longer be required. This, I believe, is the state of the Real World yet to come into our awareness fully. But as our fear of Love (God) is undone and trust in God as Self is restored, the Real World will expand in our perception.
“Only the mind can create because spirit has already been created, and the body is a learning device for the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to facilitate learning. The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors. The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application.” T-2.IV.3:1-6.
The healed mind will lay the body aside in perfect health, peace and joy, once it’s mission is complete. However until it is known and demonstrated in our experience, that the body is not real because it has no creative ability to cause change, to get well, to get sick or to die – then we have not as yet discovered the sovereign power of the fully healed mind. Until we accept this truth into our experience, we will continue to believe, accept and witness that the body is real regardless of how much we intellectually espouse the body’s unreality.
While we choose to remain victims of the body, we continue to believe and validate the body’s reality. And we will not know a fully healed mind until we realize, accept and demonstrate that the body cannot be victimized. When the body is real in our experience, the power of the mind (cause) over the body (effect), is un-attested. Until we are ready to exhume, examine and release our false dependence on ego laws to sustain or attack us, we will be afraid of the power of our mind, and our Holy Self.
And while death resides as our unconscious central dream, and the most cherished idol on our inner altar, then life will not be known or experienced. While death eclipses God’s Love in our awareness, life as we know it, will continue to reflect fear rather than Love, guilt rather than innocence, suffering rather than joy, and deprivation rather than infinite supply. As for the world’s most cherished value and idol, unfortunately death beats God’s Love hands down.
Jesus tells us very clearly and undeniably that death and God’s Love, cannot both be real. Death and God’s Love are mutually exclusive and wholly irreconcilable. They cannot coexist. Yet through the ego we try to reconcile these daily. This is insanity. We say we believe in God yet we believe and therefore see death daily, either in the media or in our own personal life. If we’re to be honest, of God and death on a daily basis, which one of these is more likely to feature as true in our beliefs?
Jesus is adamant that only one, either death or God, is real and therefore, true. While we maintain both as having reality, we are in terrible turmoil, confusion and fear. Disease is another idol. We believe it is a natural and legitimate part of life, which is extreme delusion. We have no idea that we made disease and death, in a supreme effort to convince ourselves that we are powerless and helpless, separate from our Creator. If we keep ourselves asleep, helpless and powerless over the ego’s laws, we effectively reject God’s Love as our Holy Self.
Jesus shares with us:
“You see in death escape from what you made. But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. Death cannot be escape, because it is not life in which the problem lies. Life has no opposite, for it is God. Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life. Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real.” M-20.5:2-7
“You made the god of sickness, and by making him you made yourself able to hear him. Yet you did not create him, because he is not the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal and will be unmade for you the instant you signify your willingness to accept only the eternal.” T-10.III.9:4-6.
Jesus’ message is for us to wake-up to the fact that we made all this suffering to attack ourselves and to separate from God’s all-encompassing Love. He, as the one Awakened Christ within us all, has released A Course in Miracles into the world as a major wake-up call. He is asking us to acknowledge what we made to attack ourselves and to keep ourselves asleep. And he’s giving us the principles by which to take back our power, to unmake all that has kept us dreaming a dream of suffering and death. He is also telling us that we do this by using the body, in order to transcend the body. A good many of us have unknowingly misunderstood Jesus’ teachings about the body; and I must confess that I was amongst those who were confused in this area. The popular Course quotation, “I am not a body, I am free” became a spiritual bypass, another devious form of ego denial…as I was to discover later.
Jesus called his teaching tool, A Course in MIRACLES. Yes, miracles. All good Course students know that everything we seem to see including miracles, originate from one place only, the mind, the level of cause. Many miracles that take place, are not really seen with the body’s eyes because they are purely shifts in perception and might not be physically recognized; they may not have observable effects. However, the deeper message of the Course has Jesus boldly proclaiming that we can and we will, be the instruments through which many miracles will materialize in form, as a direct result of accepting the Atonement for our self (correction of error in our mind).
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Thanks Nouk….perfect timing as today clarity arrived and I got to understand Cause and Effect and the distortions of! I understood that I really don’t fear illness or disease but that I choose to defend them. What I fear more is not having illness/disease because without them to define me as a powerless body, then I would have to see my powerfulness and magnificence as Perfect Spirit and this I fear more than the break down, decay and death of my body! I saw that illness is a safety mechanism against the Truth so as to remain asleep in the illusion of unreality. As lesson 136 says: Sickness is a defense against the Truth….and I see that now! Thank-you so much for your writing and sharing it always deepens my awareness. xxoo
Kay! What a wonderfully life-changing insight you just had! Thank you for sharing. These deeper teachings of Jesus really hit the ego’s bulls-eye…
With Love,
Nouk 🙂
Dear Nouk, your excerpts from “The End of Death” have really been so clear and enlightening
Looking forward to book.Thank you so much for all you have written for us all to share.
Much love and appreciation. Julie
Julie, I am happy that these teachings are helping you. As you heal, we all heal with you.
With Love,
Nouk 🙂
This note it’s so good Nouk, thank you!
I feel that I’m going into a new avenue, now that I’m reading you and doing the traslation unto Spanish for facebook. I’ve practicing the Course for almost seven years and I’m starting to understand more profound Jesus’ teaching, I’m so happy, thank you very much! I’m grateful I’ve found you!! Love to you!