…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.
Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God.
Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator.
What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.
What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 167, W-pI.167.2:3-7;3:6-11;4:1;6:7;9. See also ACIM Lesson 167 Insights.)
The Course tells us what it would feel like if we were wholly true to our Self — supreme happiness and perfect joy. It also points out some of the feelings which come from not being true to our Self, some of which are so common in our experience that we don’t realize they are signals of Self denial. Based on these signals, most of us probably spend most of our time in Self denial. Fortunately Self denial only makes us unaware of our one Self, but does not change It at all.
The fact that thoughts cannot leave their Source is the basis for healing this mistaken denial. The first step to healing denial is learning that we don’t like what we experience in denial. The next step is to learn that what we have been denying ourselves is what we truly want. We want to know supreme happiness and perfect joy. We want peace. We want to know that we are love, loving and loved.
These characteristics of our true Self are guaranteed because of the irrevocable law that ideas cannot leave their source. And the Source of our one Self is the changelessness of God. The fact that our true Self remains Love as Love created It is the justification for forgiveness that will release us from the dream of Self denial.
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