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April-June, 2011

Tomas Awakened — The Story

by Nouk Sanchez

Tomas awakened quite some time before he left the body. There was no ‘individual, personal’ Tomas left. He was like the Christ — open, loving and joyous, regardless of all appearances with the body. It was not his body after all and he knew this. He used the illusion of sickness to awaken quickly, to overcome the world. He chose to prioritize peace above all else, quite literally.

He allowed Holy Spirit to use what the ego made (disease) to awaken. He didn’t try to ‘save his life’ out of fear. What was there to save his life from if God (Love) is all there is? While this seems to be an extreme lesson, choosing to see past all appearances contrary to Love is an invitation to instant awakening.

Many of us say we want to awaken from suffering but we don’t prioritize peace consistently. Daily we have a multitude of earthly priorities that top our list of goals and mindfully choosing to perceive peace is usually our last ditch attempt at problem solving. We’d much rather see change outside our mind, in our body, a situation or another’s behavior.

Tomas faced a situation and his choice was to awaken. And he did so by consistently choosing only peace in each moment when ‘appearances’ tempted him to believe that he was a body and not an eternal Being.

Only hours before Tomas lay the body aside, his body slid into rapid decline and was quickly shutting down. He was incredibly lucid during this phase but I had a melt-down as I tried to make him as physically comfortable as possible. I saw the body falling away and I cried out of sheer frustration and confusion. Tomas was not able to speak, so he motioned to me for a pad and pen. And while I sat beside him sobbing, he scrawled out the following note to me: “Noukie, look beyond appearances… we turn every doubt, every fear and every appearance over (to Christ). We trust in His Plan for our Salvation — one moment at a time. Then we witness that we are still here, but more than that, we witness the stillness and peace and we know that it can only be Him Who is achieving this goal… we must be on track.”

The particular discipline he chose was to surrender all concern for the body to the Holy Spirit. I believe that you cannot do this and not awaken quickly. After all, the body (physical and emotional desire) is our greatest distraction and obstacle to remembering that we are one in God.

Jesus talks about this in The Song of Prayer booklet: False healing rests upon the body’s cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by... S-3.II.6:1-3

Rikki and I returned to our home in New Mexico in December after Tomas had passed. I fell on my knees unfortunately. My dilemma was not so much that Tomas had left his body because we have such a holy Love between us that I know the absence of his body cannot threaten our consistent communication.

One huge advantage to undoing the ego and special relationships is discovering that the Love between you can never be threatened by anyone or anything including death. My real test was confusion over two irreconcilable beliefs — fear and Love. As far as I understood, Jesus teaches that even in the dream, once the ego falls away and the Christ is restored to awareness as our Self, dominion over all ego’s laws is established. This means that once one lives out from the Christ within, he can heal the sick and raise the dead (Miracle Principle number 24 in ACIM).

Living out from the Christ to me meant the body was no longer the weapon of ego but the temple of the Holy Spirit, having only one purpose while needed, and that is to extend God’s Love. Death was a non-issue as the Christ lives through the body and not the personal self. This being so, there was no need for disease and suffering because these are ego projections. Instead of death as we know it, Jesus tells us that when the time came to leave the body it could be a willing, peaceful and joyful event.

I see that Tomas did not suffer and was joyful and in great peace. Where I came ‘unstuck’ was with these questions: “Why did Tomas leave through disease? Why didn’t he awaken in a healthy body?” And as I write this I see that he had a simple priority — to awaken now, not later, but now.

The ‘means’ by which he did this took the form of disease. It gave him a vehicle through which every temptation to perceive fear, pain and death, was challenged unflinchingly. He prioritized peace and consistently chose it, totally disregarding ego appearances. I doubt that without this extraordinary challenge he would have awakened so quickly. He saw through the dream and overcame it. I guess in Tomas choosing disease, it offered him an intense vehicle that required vigilant discipline to choose only Love. In doing this he chose to travel at warp speed along a one-way street to awakening from the dream; whereas most of us choose to meander along many two-way streets for lifetimes.

When I arrived back home in New Mexico after Tomas had passed, I slipped into a fearful state of confusion and grief. Rikki helped me to remember that only love is real. How could separation be real as well? How could Tomas be anywhere but here and now? After all he hasn’t gone anywhere.

If there was grief, then there must also be a belief in separation… that Tomas had indeed died and that we could no longer communicate. On the night of my darkest time (even darker than when we nearly lost our daughter Rikki a few years ago), hell made itself known in my mind. Even with all the trust in Holy Spirit that I had developed (or more like despite all the trust I had developed), it all appeared to fall away that night. What was left was a godless hell in my mind. That was when I realized I must be hallucinating. Either this was real, or I was delirious.

I had two major breakthroughs at this time. My desperate desire to understand exactly what happened to Tomas had overshadowed the trust that I had developed in Holy Spirit. The result was a dreadful sense of separation and I cried out for understanding.

An answer came almost immediately but it wasn’t at all the answer I was seeking! I heard Tomas’ voice in my mind ask me this question: “Do you want to understand OR do you want peace?” — I got it. The need to understand was an ego ploy…choosing to accept without understanding would bring me back to peace and open communication with both Spirit and Tomas.

The second breakthrough came when I pulled an ACIM card and this is what it said: ...if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time.” T-7.VI.8:9 And that — was that! Like Rikki, from that moment on I let everything not of God just fall away. Any thought, any emotion, any manifestation — they’re all just appearances and I choose to look past appearances to the face of Christ. The Course tells us,
“And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and [then] understood.”T-30.V.1:6

So the most astounding thing about all this is the lack of grief for Rikki and me. We see now how each moment that we consciously choose joy and peace, when we choose to be in the now moment without judgment, without believing a ‘story’; that Tomas is here too. It’s impossible to be separated unless we go into the personal mind, the past and sentimental (special) love which has nothing to do with the real Love we share. How can we miss Tomas if we’ve been blessed with the awareness that he is still here and more accessible than ever before? Sure, it’s a bit weird not to have him around in a body but this is another lesson that proves that ‘form’ is temporary and forever changing. And thank God we are truly eternal and unchanging!

From our experience in the development of trust, I am not going to let this change of form (seeming death) cause me to doubt. Contrary to what the ego teaches, I am still learning that it’s safe to surrender the ‘form’ (in this case, Tomas’ body) in order to keep the ‘content’ (the Love we share). The last time Tomas and I did this was when we went through a huge transformation of our relationship as many of you remember. We joined in allowing our special (conditional) relationship to be transformed into a holy (unconditional) relationship.

At one point we were guided to end our marriage (form) in order to save the relationship (content = Love). While this sounds insane to the ego, for us it was a real test of faith; one which revealed a profound Love that could never be threatened — not by anyone, or anything… not even death.

To experience a Love like this while in the world is absolutely life-changing. It delivers us from the ego’s addiction to the fickle and fragile realm of ‘human love’ that is constantly under threat by self, others, life situations and finally, by death itself. It is this desire for ‘special’ human love that is responsible for keeping us separate and isolated. It’s this seeming love that poses one of the greatest obstacles to remembering the real eternal Love that we are.

And now I feel I’m being asked to embrace an upgrade of our earlier test with our relationship. Accepting that there is no break in communication with Tomas now seems to pose a larger challenge than the one we had earlier (ending the marriage to save the relationship). However I remember what Jesus says in the Course: There is no hierarchy of illusions and there is no order of difficulty in miracles. I can sustain this wonderful perception as long as I stay vigilant and consistently choose to look past all appearances contrary to truth, to love and to changelessness.

Tomas said this to us: “I am not going anywhere. And I pledge to expose the lie that death is! Stay tuned…” And so, we believe that he will expose the lie of death. And Jesus in the Course says the following: In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without the body’s interference, and where there is communication there is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love by teaching that communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice nothing, and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed. T-15.XI.7.1-4

I continue to learn, allowing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence to fall away. I see now exactly what our greatest power is here in the dream. It is the power to choose in every single instant. This means that in any moment our buttons are pushed, we choose to look past all (ego) appearances and onto the Face of Truth. If God (Love) is all there is in reality, then we must learn to deny anything not of Love the power to hurt us. This is true forgiveness.

It’s a discipline. And we don’t really make this consistent choice for peace until we’ve had enough suffering. Jesus talks about making this choice: I have already told you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you [must] be. It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. This lesson is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long, since they are mutually exclusive. As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness, and still believe that you can choose either one. By teaching [what] to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately teach you that you need not choose at all. This will finally liberate your mind from choice, and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom. T-6.V.C.4:2-10

I must end this on a humorous note… I hear Tomas in the background laughing! He awakened in the dream first through giving all his dream symbols to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation. And then he awoke from the entire dream.

The funniest thing is that I sit here aware that I have not awoken in or from the dream, from a personal identity — yet. However as many of you know, 21 years ago, it was me who dragged Tomas kicking and screaming along the path of A Course in Miracles. What a reluctant learner he was back then! And just when I thought headway was being made and most obstacles to my awareness of love’s presence had fallen away — Tomas appeared to catapult over me, zipping past all of it, finally returning to the Love he is and always was. What a laugh! He beat me to it! He leaves me with one lesson now and if I can vigilantly hold to his magnificent demonstration of faith and trust, this one lesson will take me to Truth, to the one Love that we are. I hope, no — I trust that you too will join me on this journey in remembering to choose only Love, only Peace, regardless of so-called appearances.

© 2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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