To the ego my death is the ultimate proof that it is real and God is not. It is the triumph over Life, and proof of its existence. Every negative feeling and thought is a small death, so every thought of judgment, anger, fear or guilt is proof that ego lives and God doesn’t. That I believe in death does not make it true. The body can only seem to die, but how could it since it has never lived?
Through the study of Manual for Teachers I have been given clarity about death. What I understand now (and this is something I feel to my core) is that Jesus meant what he said; there is no death. How can death exist if God does? It is not possible. God is Life, God is Love, and it is not possible that God could have an opposite.
The belief in an opposite of God is the ego at its essence and the ego is not real. It is the belief in the ego that we are here to undo. I will not be distracted by the imagined effects that we think of as our world and our life. The truth lies just beneath that, and the truth is, death has never occurred.
It’s funny because for such a long time I just could not grasp that death is not real. I would say that, yes, some part of me lived, but some part of me died with the body. I would try to hold onto the idea that there is no death, but I lived in dread of it in spite of my professed beliefs. Now that has all changed. I see that there is no death and I wonder how I didn’t see it before.
I think that I understand the reason it was so hard to accept that death is not real. It is because so many of us believe in death and cherish death as an escape, and the mind is so firmly rooted in this idea of death. This is why it is hard to pull away from the belief. But once accepted, it seems so apparent that I laugh that I ever believed in it.
Death of the story is the only thing that is happening and I am not my story. I just continue on and pick up another story or the same story and watch that until the belief in death pulls me back into its embrace. So not even the story dies, really, just this viewing of the story. The after life is not a solution, it is just more illusion, a way station where we make a choice for another story. We do not die, we simply change form, and if we have not made a clear choice for life, we fall back into another dream story.
There is no salvation in death. It is here, watching our story and making our choices that we have the chance to choose life. Each time we choose anger or fear or guilt, sadness or grief, sickness or suffering of any kind, we have chosen death. We do this over and over until we seek escape through what we hope is the final choice for death, and end the story through sickness or an accident or old age. But we accomplish nothing because death is nothing, and does nothing.
The solution to this endless cycle of choosing between forms of death is simple. Here is an example. I spent the week working very hard to catch up at work. I was working outside and the heat was oppressive. It had been very stressful the last few days and the hard work in the first days of a long hot summer to come, just wore me out. I woke up this morning feeling depressed at the thought of the months to come with more of the same.
But, though I felt these emotions, I also have practiced A Course in Miracles for a long time. I have accepted many of the principles, including the understanding of death. I recognized my emotions as the belief in death and I knew this was not what I want to believe anymore. I accepted responsibility for my story. I asked myself a question that has become so familiar to me as to be a mantra that I live by.
The question I asked myself was this. “Myron, whose story is this? Who writes the script?” Lesson 152 assures me that I am fully responsible for my world and that it represents my every wish. With that thought came a certain peace. I did it; I can undo it. The ego mind pulled me back into the story of my victimhood and for a moment I felt hopeless before the inevitable.
I wanted to beg for release, ask for a miracle. But I understand that this kind of death thinking is not the solution. I was saying that I am a victim of a cruel world and I need help getting out of this situation. The world is not the cause, and the story is not the cause. They are the effect. The solution does not lie in fixing the effect. I had to step away from my enthrallment with the story. With this thought, I had some small clarity.
I surrendered my desire to fix the story. I surrendered my desire to be a victim and to be saved from my own choices. I told the Holy Spirit that I don’t know how to un-believe what I have believed, but I know that I am wrong, that I am making a sick world with my sick thoughts and I want to be healed. I surrendered to His healing power. The ego kept trying to pull me back into the story, insisting something had to change. But I had reached the tipping point and it was over for the ego, at least in this situation.
This is the way I choose life. I choose life over death one dark thought at a time. I do this as long as I need to until I finally accept life and never look back. While all this was going on it felt deadly serious. Once I accepted the Atonement in that situation, it all fell away so completely that I was left vaguely confused about what the fuss had been about. It feels good to be at peace again.
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