Inviting Death In
A Joyous Experience Of Light
Those of us, and there are many of us now who are sharing with me my predetermination that life had to be something besides coming here and aging and dying, are beginning to enjoy their overcoming, if we use the term of our savior, Jesus, their overcoming of death through the change of their mind about their association with who they think that they are. What I have offered you as an illuminate mind is the possibility, since you are a deciding factor of your own existent association, that you can decide at this moment that you don’t want to die.
So, we’re left with my certainty that death is impossible. And you inquired to me, “How do you know that there is no death?” And I said, “I know that there is no death because I discovered that since death was always accompanying me everywhere that I went, I should challenge it as to the purpose for my life. When I challenged death as to the purpose for my life, it refused to answer me.“
Shall I try this for you for a minute? Death is an impossible situation of the indication of how you feel about yourself in your deathful mode of body identity that is accompanying you and is, in fact, a factor of your spatial, temporal identity. We call it, “dark form,” don’t we? In a particular way you represent death. And while you protect yourself from the ultimate darkness by proclaiming your capacity to resist it, the simple fact of the matter is that your capacity to resist death is how you’ve defined yourself. And the proof of your capacity is your succumbing to it.
Is that all right? I get past a certain point, but I’d like to have you see that that is true with me. Why? Because I look at you now and I see that you have death standing next to you. This is going to scare you a little bit, isn’t it? Because death is next to you. Because everything that you do is in association with death.
Now, in our master Jesus’ Course in Miracles there is a particular lesson, and I’m going to glance at it just a moment with you. It’s Key Lesson 163. It says, There is no death. The Son of God is free. But it immediately proceeds to: Death is a thought that takes on many forms, and is thought as sickness, loneliness and pain, many unrecognized. In effect, what I am declaring to you is that your association with “the Yama man,” I used to call him; when we grew up, death was always lurking somewhere, and we’re always protecting ourselves from it.
The manner of my illumination came about very simply from my inability to deal with my association with death and my admission that my existence from death finally was a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable. My life became unmanageable in my declarations of a purpose why I should exist here at all. I asked for assistance from some power of mind that was not contained within my conceptual death association. I was immediately compensated by an alternative of a power of mind that assured me that I had been associating with temporalness, that I had been defining my life as a form of beginning and end, wherein I could exist in a continuum that would guarantee my demise.
So here I am with you, and I promise you that I’m going to represent life to you if you’ll let me.
And what I’m going to do for just a moment, I’m going to look at you and invite you to come and
sit with me and bring your death form with you. Death is right there with you. All right?
Hello, Death.
Now, I want you to see what just happened in my mind. I did not attempt to protect myself from your association with yourself, which was going to demonstrate to me your capacity to get old and die, or remain in that dark form. What do I ask you to do in this lesson? Invite death in. It’s impossible that you love death, which is really the idea of eternal life, within your own association and not overcome the fear that will be the compensation for your love of death, because it won’t work. Your existence, right here in the dark form, is only an indication of your determination to get old and to get sick and die, and it won’t work. The conversion that I am about to offer you will show you in an instant that the light of God is all around you, and the picture that you have of death will be converted instantly to a joyous, happy realization of your surety of identity of perfection with your Creating Source.
So here’s some death for you. What are you going to do with it?
Come and sit with me, Death.
Come and sit right next to me. I need to see what you’re representing.
I need to look at you and begin to practice the lesson I have been given by my savior Jesus Christ through his resurrection that you are a ridiculous form of human existence in which I do not intend to participate.
My decision not to participate with you will be a fundamental decision not to participate with
this world, because this world in my mind is representing all of my needs to get old and die,
and they are what I protect in the demonstration of my human condition.
Now, if I invite Death to come in with me, he doesn’t know what to do. He literally doesn’t know what to do, because Death’s existence depends on my resistance to him. Do you see that? Just as the Devil’s identity depends on my resistance to him through my advocacy of him in my association to both protect and assert him. I don’t know where that went, but that’s a true thing.
When I underwent my experience of death, I saw instantly that there was no death. It would be impossible for me to die, since I have no association with death that you may still find momentarily in your correspondence with yourself. The lovely message of Paul in the New Testament, when he says, “I die daily,” is an indication... Hi there. A new light form just came in here. I was able to recognize instantly that we were sharing life rather than death. See? Now, see what happened there, if you’d like to know. When I looked at that bright association, we represented to each other our Christhood, which is what eternal life is. I turned to you, who are also a part of a product of our contemporary associations with each other, and I offered you the life that I had received from that association. And you accepted it. Your acceptance of it is the basis for our teaching that through Jesus Christ, who is risen and is with you at this moment, we can share together that moment of the totality of our realization that there is no death that had to be experienced by the death experience itself.
It would be literally impossible for you to come to know who you are without a death experience. As Jesus teaches it, to be born again. “Know ye not ye must be born again?” Being born again is the experience of death and the realization of its non-existence. Time lasted but a moment in your mind, with absolutely no effect on eternal life whatsoever. What you are accepting from me, if you’d like to hear it, are moments of life-death. See? By not resisting death, which is what your compensation, what your conceptual mind is, you have a moment of a holy instant, of an experience of the light and love that is shining all around you.
So, here I am as the answer to your problem. I’m an offering to you at this moment in time of my certainty that this world that you believe that you inhabit within your own dream was over and gone a long time ago. And your acceptance of it within your own consciousness condition will be your admission that you truly want another choice. You say, “I need to choose again. I have been wrong in the decisions that I have been making in regard to what I am. I have decided in this time and this place that I would choose again.” The offering that I am giving you is my unqualified certainty that when I chose, when I faced death and was unable, finally, to deal with it, that my experience of eternal life was yours.
As our Master Jesus would say, one entire resurrection from pain and death would be the representation of any one single mind, being born again in the realization of his divine association with God, his Creator, and the continuing extension of the joy and happiness that he experienced in that recognition. I am certain that I can offer you this solution because there is no world. Your acceptance initially of the idea of the value of my alternative cannot not be enhanced, because heretofore your value system has been based on the protection of death, rather than the release of it and the momentary protection of the Christ who is beginning to emerge in you.
Excepts from
The Great Reversal - Shining Through - Episode IX
with The Master Teacher of A Course In Miracles
