Jeshua
An Excerpt from The End of Death
Copyright 2013 Nouk Sanchez
Let’s look at cause and effect through the ego. Remember that the ego has the concept of cause and effect reversed. It believes the certain and inevitable outcome of all life, is death. Recall that death in this world, is the one outcome that we’re all absolutely certain of. So if life is the cause then death must be its effect, right? But how could death possibly be the effect of life? Unless …we are much more comfortable with death than we are with life. Unless at least unconsciously, we revere death as the ultimate proof that we are not the guiltless and incorruptible Children of God. Instead we see ourselves as victims of death, victims of a vicious “god” who demands payment for our sins.
You can gauge the degree of your unconscious fear of God(Love) by taking an honest look at your reaction to the idea that death is not God’s Will. If physical death was no longer an option, what could you fear but life? Real life is God’s uninterrupted Love as your Holy Self. If there is a fear of losing physical death as an escape (from God’s Love as your Holy Self) …this is a strong indication of the ego’s fear of God’s Love and its attraction to death.
If God as Love is our Essence, if we share the same guiltless and incorruptible Power of God, why do we wish to die? What are we running away from? What is our greatest terror?
“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 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.” T-19.IV.4.D.4.
“Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds it from awareness like a shield held up to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot coexist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is “laid to rest” in devastation’s arms, where worms wait to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. 6 And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature’s “law of life.” God is insane, and fear alone is real.” M-27.3.
“The curious belief that there is part of dying things that may go on apart from what will die, does not proclaim a loving God nor re-establish any grounds for trust. If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible. There is either a god of fear or One of Love. The world attempts a thousand compromises, and will attempt a thousand more. Not one can be acceptable to God’s teachers, because not one could be acceptable to God. He did not make death because He did not make fear. Both are equally meaningless to Him.” M-27.4.
What does Jesus mean when he says the aim of this curriculum (A Course in Miracles) is to reverse the thinking of the world, thereby reversing the laws of this world? In the ego dream, our perception is the reverse of healed perception. We believe that we are dependent on, and victims of the body and the world. Whereas the truth is that the body/world exist only in our mind (not brain). As projections that exist in our mind, they are caused by our thinking and beliefs. In a nutshell, our mind is the cause of everything we appear to see. The body/world are effects of their one cause which remains in our mind. Yet we react to the body/world as if the opposite is true; as if these phenomena can cause changes independently from our mind. Sickness, pain, conflict, aging, scarcity and death are all ego effects or symptoms that emanate from a single cause in our mind; the ego’s un-relinquished guilt and fear. The world we will see is the world we believe in our mind. There is no world except for the world we value at the time.
My mind is cause and the body/world is effect. So, can an effect (body/world) be a cause? No. In truth, there is no cause in the body or the world that can have an effect in the the body or the world, except if we choose to believe the insanity of the ego. Every cause we seem to witness is an effect only…because all cause must come from the mind. Our experience of the world depends on which inner teacher we choose to perceive with. The ego reveals a world where we appear as victims to causes outside us. And Spirit reveals the opposite; a world where we recognize that we are the cause as the dreamer of the dream and therefore, we can never be victimized.
“The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects.” W-190.7:1-3
Magic, according to Jesus, is the belief that effects can be a cause. For example, a magic thought might be a belief that cancer is hereditary. However cancer is an effect; it’s a symptom of a wrong-minded belief in guilt and fear. It is not a cause. And this symptom as cancer, is strengthened in my mind to the degree that I am in defense of it. The more I defend myself from the disease independently, apart from Spirit, the more I give it reality.
Magic includes the idea of remedies for disease as well. But remedies, like all disease, are effects only. They are not causes in themselves. All remedies in the world cannot heal. They may be able to heal the seeming symptom temporarily, however the guilt that caused it has not been healed so guilt must return as self-attack again at a later time. This is why life appears to end in death. Death is an effect of un-relinquished guilt as the fear of God (Love). Physical death, like sickness, is a defense against God Who is life eternal, which has no opposite. If life is God, then how can life have an opposite? If death is real, this confirms that life has an opposite. If this is true then God must have an opposite as real as He. And this is clearly impossible!
When we use magic to attempt to heal, it is our mind that decides to assign our magic remedies healing attributes. It agrees to use these seeming remedies as substitutes for trusting exclusively in the Atonement to heal the singular cause of all suffering, in our mind. The only cause is in the mind. Regardless of the thousands of different forms of magic that we believe in, some that appear to attack and some that appear to heal, all are symptoms, consequences only. They are effects of the singular cause of them all in our mind. As such, all magic is simply a gigantic cover-up the ego uses to divert us from ever seeing the Truth; that we are cause and not effect.
The ego’s greatest terror is to accept the invulnerable Power that we share with God. We are so afraid of God’s Love and Power within, that we project our remedies to appear out there instead of going within to accept the miracle. That is how terrified we are of healing exclusively through the miracle. However as we learn to accept the miracle through the Atonement, our mind is healed, and we recognize our True Identity which asserts that we can never be at the mercy of the body/world ever again. (For the forgiveness/Atonement process, click here)
Recall that death is the ego’s central dream. Without our investment in the mistaken concept of death being the inevitable end of life — the ego would cease to exist. The ego depends on death as its primary defense against awakening to God’s endless Life within.
Death is not a cause. We cannot be taken by death. We cannot be a victim of death. If the ego is an illusion then it cannot be a cause of any form of suffering including death. Therefore, death has no cause. Think about that. There is no cause of death (or any other form of adversity). There is no hierarchy of illusions, so death has no more truth to it than a petty grievance held. They are both illusions that can be healed equally by the miracle. When we truly embody this knowing we will also know and demonstrate the Course’s number one miracle principle just as Jesus did 2000 years ago; we will become miracle workers: “There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.” T-1.I.1.
“Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?” M-22.1:5-12
“The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him.” M-22.6:1-4
Death is an illusory effect of our belief in fear and guilt. The degree of our unconscious guilt indicates the extent to which we are secretly attracted to death as an escape from God’s Love. Following here, Jesus speaks of the body once it’s purpose has been wholly given to Love. He says the body is neutral and a neutral thing does not die. Its neutrality protects it while it has use and when we have fulfilled our purpose the body is simply laid aside. He makes a point to tell us here that the body is not sick. He also says that the body is not old nor is it hurt in any way. In other words, the body’s state reflects the healed mind that projects it. And the body is not victimized by the ego’s projections any longer. Therefore it is not claimed by death. Death is overcome. And the ego’s laws are reversed.
Where else but in the body will we join with Jesus in overcoming the ego’s most seductive and central dream of death? We will not overcome death by dying! Where else but in the body and the world will we possibly reverse cause and effect? And where else but in the body and world will we possibly reverse the laws of the world? And where else but in the body, will we demonstrate that effects such as pain, sickness and death, cannot possibly ever be cause? This complete thought-reversal lies in the Power of forgiveness and Atonement.
“I am a Son of God. And can I be another thing as well? Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God’s beloved Son for what must die? And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it. Its neutrality protects it while it has a use. And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. It is not sick nor old nor hurt.” W-294.1:1-8
While we still believe in any cause outside us, in the body, in another, in the world, or in the past, etc., we retain this destructive idol apart from God’s Love. Every seeming cause of adversity and suffering must be forgiven in exchange for the miracle…
“Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible and what has been learned can be recognized only by its results. Its generalization is demonstrated as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles when you apply them to all situations. There is no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to all situations you will gain the real world. For in this holy perception you will be made whole, and the Atonement will radiate from your acceptance of it for yourself to everyone the Holy Spirit sends you for your blessing. In every child of God His blessing lies, and in your blessing of the children of God is His blessing to you.” T-12.VII.1.
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Your articles are soooo helpful to me. I was wondering if you could comment more on your statement about the belief in Cancer as a defense; you wrote, the more I defend from the disease, the more I give it reality. I agree with you but can you suggest a prayer of how we stop defending against a belief. I know the defense comes from belief in guilt and the need for punishment. I have been taking it to Spirit but I continue to be overwhelmed with these thoughts of cancer every time I experience pain and I know it’s all magical thinking; but how to let it go is the issue. Thank-you for your brilliant teachings. I look forward to your book being published.
Hi Linda,
Here is perfect prayer. Thank you for asking as Jesus answered through me with this latest post:
~ A TRULY POWERFUL PRAYER TO UNDO FEAR ~
“Holy Spirit, you know that I am fearful of ______(disease, aging, pain, weight gain/loss, scarcity, conflict, death, etc.)_____ . I recognize that this fear separates me from trusting in you exclusively and from accepting your healing with absolute certainty. I choose to remember that what my body’s eyes and senses see are not the Truth because they reveal only what the ego sends them to witness. I also remember there is nothing in my body or in the world that can “cause” suffering. Only my fearful beliefs attract suffering into my experience. I fear sickness, pain or death because I must mistakenly believe that I deserve punishment because I am guilty. And my un-relinquished fear/guilt manifests as “self-attack.” But what I have forgotten here is that when I’m in fear, I am in defense. In defense I unknowingly reject your Love as my Holy and invulnerable Self. In fear, I reject true and complete healing.
However fear about this issue seems to be compulsive, something out of my control. How do I undo this fear? In response Spirit asks me, “What is this fear trying to tell you, what is the worst outcome possible?” After deep and honest contemplation, I then reveal my worst fear. Spirit answers me with this, “Whatever it may be, you must trust that it is NOT God’s Will! You must remember that you have the power to refuse to accept all the ego’s lies in My Name. You recall that all fear is always your fear of God’s Love regardless of the form it takes. In fact, in order to accept the Atonement (miracle) you must firstly refuse to accept the ego’s lies, even if for only one instant. That instant is enough for the miracle to take place.”
I want my perception healed more than anything in this moment. I choose to be vigilant against fear. I may still feel fear but I commit wholly to relinquishing my BELIEF in what these fears tell me. I choose “true denial”. I deny any belief that error can hurt me. This kind of denial is not a concealment but a correction and my Right Mind depends on it. In this precious Holy Instant, I open my heart to receive your miracle and I trust completely that my perception has been healed. Thank you with all my heart for this gift. Amen.” ~ From The End of Death by Nouk Sanchez, READ THE FULL EXCERPT ON NOUK’S BLOG: http://undoing-the-ego.org/noukblog/?p=642
Thank you very much for what I have just read. The points you bring out are so clear and helpful. I am assuming all that you have written here is in your book – seems its am essential purchase for me now, God Bless you and thank you again.
Anne, I am glad its helpful. The AUDIO BOOK (download) will also be released hopefully in the coming days. If you feel guided, please do listen to it. Hearing AND reading really does quicken this transfer of trust from fear to Love. Here is a link: http://www.endofdeath.com/materials.html And you can download Chapter Two for free for now until the AUDIO BOOK is ready via iTunes and Audible. 🙂