Karen and I have contemplated and been transformed by A Course in Miracles for decades, especially during the last few years. One year we read a section of the Text each morning and review it during the day; the next year, we read and contemplate one of the daily Lessons. If the house were burning down and we had time to grab only one book, we both feel it would be the Course. Christ literally speaks to us through it. The Course is so multidimensional; its depth, breadth, and heights are like no book we have ever opened.
This morning, Lesson 167 brought up the idea that death is unreal. These lines initiated the illuminating thought stream: ”There is no death because what God created shares His Life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.”
As often happens, this brought up objections from the mind. I always find these to be the doorways to popping more illusions, so I allow them to surface and then turn them over to the Christ Mind. Then I sit quietly and listen within for the truth.
Today’s mental difficulties went like this:
How can there be no death? I see it everywhere here on Earth. All living forms die — the trees, the animals, even this body. If God’s will is all that is, how can death happen?
And here is how the Christ Mind responded (in bold throughout):
What you see is but an appearance caused by a mind in separation. The body and its witnesses, the senses, are part of the same illusion. Remember, apparent “things” are really a manifestation of Mind. Think of the Buddhist definition of Mind here. The Kingdom is an expression of MIND, that of Source Creator/Father/First Cause — the highest, absolutely Real dimension of MIND. Then there is what is created by Mind, which is Second Cause, the second aspect of the Godhead, the Son/Daughter.
So MIND of Father/Source creates the idea/image of Mind, which is the myriad souls who are the collective Son/Daughtership, the second aspect of the Godhead. Then there is that which is created by mind, that which the souls dream into creation in the dream of the separated state, which itself is an illusion. All that arises from mind is thus an illusory appearance. It appears in a field of mind which is illusory. It is like a hypnotic suggestion which the mind turns into its perception. When people are hypnotized, they perceive what the mind has been induced to believe is true.
So we’re using three different definitions here of “Mind” — the original One MIND of Father/Source is one, and its idea/dream/creation of differentiation as Mind is the second aspect of the Godhead, the Son/Daughter. Mind, or Son/Daughter, then can also form ideas/dreams like the illusion of separation, which then forms an illusory sense of self for mind. Thus, we have MIND, Mind and mind.
This morning, Lesson 167 brought up the idea that death is unreal. These lines initiated the illuminating thought stream: ”There is no death because what God created shares His Life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.”
As often happens, this brought up objections from the mind. I always find these to be the doorways to popping more illusions, so I allow them to surface and then turn them over to the Christ Mind. Then I sit quietly and listen within for the truth.
Today’s mental difficulties went like this:
How can there be no death? I see it everywhere here on Earth. All living forms die — the trees, the animals, even this body. If God’s will is all that is, how can death happen?
And here is how the Christ Mind responded (in bold throughout):
What you see is but an appearance caused by a mind in separation. The body and its witnesses, the senses, are part of the same illusion. Remember, apparent “things” are really a manifestation of Mind. Think of the Buddhist definition of Mind here. The Kingdom is an expression of MIND, that of Source Creator/Father/First Cause — the highest, absolutely Real dimension of MIND. Then there is what is created by Mind, which is Second Cause, the second aspect of the Godhead, the Son/Daughter.
So MIND of Father/Source creates the idea/image of Mind, which is the myriad souls who are the collective Son/Daughtership, the second aspect of the Godhead. Then there is that which is created by mind, that which the souls dream into creation in the dream of the separated state, which itself is an illusion. All that arises from mind is thus an illusory appearance. It appears in a field of mind which is illusory. It is like a hypnotic suggestion which the mind turns into its perception. When people are hypnotized, they perceive what the mind has been induced to believe is true.
So we’re using three different definitions here of “Mind” — the original One MIND of Father/Source is one, and its idea/dream/creation of differentiation as Mind is the second aspect of the Godhead, the Son/Daughter. Mind, or Son/Daughter, then can also form ideas/dreams like the illusion of separation, which then forms an illusory sense of self for mind. Thus, we have MIND, Mind and mind.
I am reminded of my first experience of witnessing hypnosis during a dance party when I was a senior in high school. Two of the participants, Jimmy Rodkey and Debbie Hill, were deeply hypnotized. They were then induced to believe they were horses. During the next ten minutes, we watched them prancing around the room, making the neighing and snorting noises that horses make. Clearly each was in the experience of being a horse. When they were brought out of trance, they remembered none of it. Later some snippets came back into their conscious minds.
This is exactly how the trance induction of the belief in separation works. When we deeply believe we are separated from God/Source, we generate an illusory dream state that we perceive as absolutely real. Because we are imbued with the infinite creative capacity of Source, we generate “illusory dream realities” that are just as real in their context.
The Course took things deeper in Lesson 167, paragraph 2.3:
Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.
Barry: Wow, this seems rather extreme. The slightest sigh when one is tired or weary from the world is a form of death acknowledgement. How can that be?
Christ Mind: If you but knew the truth each moment, there would only be the Kingdom in your mind and thus your perception. Forgetting it, you believe you live outside of it, which is the only reality. In this strange, foreign world, the infinite joy and happiness of eternal love and light is not apparent. It is lost to the “through the lens darkly” perception that Apostle Paul referred to.
Simply put, you perceive a world that is not there. It is based in separated mind, which is a dream~illusion because separation itself does not exist. Remember, God/One/All That Is, is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient. There is no opposite to it because it is All That Is. There can thus be no power that can oppose it. This is all created in the separated self sense or separated mind.
Barry: How can separated mind even occur? If God is all that is, and MIND is the only true reality, then how can anything other than this exist?
Christ Mind: The MIND of Father/Source dreamed the dream of Mind or the Son/Daughter. The Son/Daughter is a THOUGHT contained within the MIND of God. Because this thought is not separate from its source, MIND, it must be of it, and thereby be a manifestation of MIND or Source.
Here we come to the idea of holographic and fractal as practical means to explain this. The Son/Daughter is a holographic fractal of Source/Father. Each aspect of the Son/Daughtership is identical in every respect to the Father/Source (holographic) but exists as a subset of the fractal matrix. Thus, the Son/Daughter has all the qualities, characteristics and capacities of the Father/Source, but manifesting as a subset of the multi-universe. Since, as the Course says, no idea leaves its source, the Son/Daughter can never be other than a manifestation of the MIND of God. It can never separate and go out on its own as a separate creator. Its Mind is always held within and a manifestation of MIND. Because it is a holographic fractal, it is infinitely creative and can manifest within its Mind many images and “dreams” just as the Father/Source does.
One such idea was the concept of separation which caused the “Fall” — the formation of a dream in Mind of a separate reality and beingness. This is a dream not much different from the ones each human dreams at night. On awakening it is clear that they were dreams, yet while asleep they seem very real. So there exists an illusory, sleeping subset of Mind that we shall call mind, in which all humans live to one degree or another. Bhagavan, the founder of the Oneness Movement, called it the Ancient Mind. This separated individual and collective unconscious is the group creation of myriad souls in forgetting, in the illusion of separation. It is a collective dream, or more accurately, nightmare.
The Course went on in paragraph 4:
Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.
Barry: I understand that the underlying foundation is the thought that we are separate, which immediately creates a dream in mind that we are also separate from all the innate divine qualities, characteristics and capacities that the Father/Source imbued us with as manifestations of its own nature. Love, Beauty, Life, Light, Joy, Happiness are qualities of its nature of MIND. Only these can be the fabric of its creation, because it is all that it is. Therefore, we must be these things, too, and anything we experience otherwise is a testimony to that fact we are asleep in the hypnotic trance of separation. The separated mind sense is operating.
The Course continued…
5. Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains. In that they can go far beyond themselves. But they cannot give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will their making be. As they were born, so will they give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.
I see that is absolutely impossible for the ideas of Source to birth other than what Source is. Being ideas of Source, we too can only give birth to what our Source is. There is no other possibility. So, what then is all that we perceive with the senses? It is the manifestation of a dream of separation, a mind and sense of being that cannot have true reality or existence.
We think we are awake, but we dream. What we perceive and experience with our senses is the dance of mind/maya, a dream play. We are convinced it is absolutely real because we are asleep, just as the mind is convinced a dream is real when we are asleep and dreaming within the human experience…dreams within Dreams… illusions within illusions. We are all hypnotized, just like Jimmy Rodkey and Debbie Hill were when they were sure they were horses. We all forget the power of Mind to create what we call “reality”. It seems too hard, dense, and real to our senses, but the senses themselves are part of the dream.
Time to wake up. Time to pop the bubble of Maya.
This is exactly how the trance induction of the belief in separation works. When we deeply believe we are separated from God/Source, we generate an illusory dream state that we perceive as absolutely real. Because we are imbued with the infinite creative capacity of Source, we generate “illusory dream realities” that are just as real in their context.
The Course took things deeper in Lesson 167, paragraph 2.3:
Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.
Barry: Wow, this seems rather extreme. The slightest sigh when one is tired or weary from the world is a form of death acknowledgement. How can that be?
Christ Mind: If you but knew the truth each moment, there would only be the Kingdom in your mind and thus your perception. Forgetting it, you believe you live outside of it, which is the only reality. In this strange, foreign world, the infinite joy and happiness of eternal love and light is not apparent. It is lost to the “through the lens darkly” perception that Apostle Paul referred to.
Simply put, you perceive a world that is not there. It is based in separated mind, which is a dream~illusion because separation itself does not exist. Remember, God/One/All That Is, is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient. There is no opposite to it because it is All That Is. There can thus be no power that can oppose it. This is all created in the separated self sense or separated mind.
Barry: How can separated mind even occur? If God is all that is, and MIND is the only true reality, then how can anything other than this exist?
Christ Mind: The MIND of Father/Source dreamed the dream of Mind or the Son/Daughter. The Son/Daughter is a THOUGHT contained within the MIND of God. Because this thought is not separate from its source, MIND, it must be of it, and thereby be a manifestation of MIND or Source.
Here we come to the idea of holographic and fractal as practical means to explain this. The Son/Daughter is a holographic fractal of Source/Father. Each aspect of the Son/Daughtership is identical in every respect to the Father/Source (holographic) but exists as a subset of the fractal matrix. Thus, the Son/Daughter has all the qualities, characteristics and capacities of the Father/Source, but manifesting as a subset of the multi-universe. Since, as the Course says, no idea leaves its source, the Son/Daughter can never be other than a manifestation of the MIND of God. It can never separate and go out on its own as a separate creator. Its Mind is always held within and a manifestation of MIND. Because it is a holographic fractal, it is infinitely creative and can manifest within its Mind many images and “dreams” just as the Father/Source does.
One such idea was the concept of separation which caused the “Fall” — the formation of a dream in Mind of a separate reality and beingness. This is a dream not much different from the ones each human dreams at night. On awakening it is clear that they were dreams, yet while asleep they seem very real. So there exists an illusory, sleeping subset of Mind that we shall call mind, in which all humans live to one degree or another. Bhagavan, the founder of the Oneness Movement, called it the Ancient Mind. This separated individual and collective unconscious is the group creation of myriad souls in forgetting, in the illusion of separation. It is a collective dream, or more accurately, nightmare.
The Course went on in paragraph 4:
Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.
Barry: I understand that the underlying foundation is the thought that we are separate, which immediately creates a dream in mind that we are also separate from all the innate divine qualities, characteristics and capacities that the Father/Source imbued us with as manifestations of its own nature. Love, Beauty, Life, Light, Joy, Happiness are qualities of its nature of MIND. Only these can be the fabric of its creation, because it is all that it is. Therefore, we must be these things, too, and anything we experience otherwise is a testimony to that fact we are asleep in the hypnotic trance of separation. The separated mind sense is operating.
The Course continued…
5. Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains. In that they can go far beyond themselves. But they cannot give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will their making be. As they were born, so will they give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.
I see that is absolutely impossible for the ideas of Source to birth other than what Source is. Being ideas of Source, we too can only give birth to what our Source is. There is no other possibility. So, what then is all that we perceive with the senses? It is the manifestation of a dream of separation, a mind and sense of being that cannot have true reality or existence.
We think we are awake, but we dream. What we perceive and experience with our senses is the dance of mind/maya, a dream play. We are convinced it is absolutely real because we are asleep, just as the mind is convinced a dream is real when we are asleep and dreaming within the human experience…dreams within Dreams… illusions within illusions. We are all hypnotized, just like Jimmy Rodkey and Debbie Hill were when they were sure they were horses. We all forget the power of Mind to create what we call “reality”. It seems too hard, dense, and real to our senses, but the senses themselves are part of the dream.
Time to wake up. Time to pop the bubble of Maya.
RSS Feed