Commentary on ACIM Lesson 163

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

My joy today was to paint 'three dimensionally' and at the same time, journey into another world.

A friend decorates her patio garden with cast spiritual figures, which she has had painted as she has collected them. The 30" tall +200 lb. cast concrete gray figure she refers to as 'the Buddha' was 'all mine' (artistically) to transform, and I approached the project with a keen interest and also with an 'OK God, what are we going to do here?' curiosity.

As I was getting my paints and tools set up and organized, I kept looking at the statue, imagining it in color, and in my mind tracing the lines of color separation etc. Gradually I realized that this was no Buddha at all, really (at least from my POV). Most Buddha's are pictured in a meditation posture, and are serene in countenance. This fellow was someone else, and, I realized, someone a lot like me.

There's a lot of spiritual traditions around the world with their version of him--- in the Tarot, he's the Fool; for a Sufi, he's a desert madzub/dervish, in Native American tales, he's a Trickster (like a coyote), but this Mexican-made Taoist/Zen rendition shows him as a stout, amply girthed wandering monk radiating an idiot's grin of ecstasy, carrying his beggars bowl in one hand and all his other worldly possessions in a bag tied to a stick over his shoulder in the other.

Can you relate? What an image of freedom.... to be a wandering beggar holy man with no cares or worries in the world. From another era in time, this spiritual brother reminds me that even now such freedom from the world is possible.

I know this because of his 'idiot's grin'. While it has been the physical freedom of such a life that the world has generally seen (and often not understood), it is his expression, which does not speak of a mind entangled in the world, that is the real message. Yet, to the world, he just looks 'crazy'. There is a wise saying in the east that comes from his times: "Trust him only if he looks crazy"...(that's paraphrased... the point being that oftentimes the freest most truly sane people LOOK crazy, 'as the world judges appearances').

In our times, we also do not need to have our minds entangled by the world either. Perhaps the world is 'denser', or there are 'more pressures' for us to 'embrace without resistance' (CLUE), but that is 'at our own command', for we are the ones creating the circumstances within which we study our spiritual curriculum. But it is still 'only circumstances within the phenomenal world' at play in our lives, and we can either resist them or surrender and accept them.

These days, my practice is 'surrender', and as quickly as I am able to remember to do it (let go resistance). I'm just being spiritually selfish, in a way. I have simply learned I would rather be a happy God-intoxicated 'fool' than be all tied up and entangled 'being somebody special' (by believing whoever I am thinking I am is the real 'me'). So the only game left is 'being nobody' which then (as long as I remember that) leaves me the freedom to 'be anybody' too. That should make sense if you're an 'idiot' too....:-)

Sorry, I forgot to take my camera. Maybe another time, OK?

Namaste,

David

__________________________

My personal version in first person

Lesson 163

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

'Death' is a thought that takes on many forms, most are often unrecognized. 'Death' may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as I am not may come to tempt me. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as a 'savior' and 'giver of release'.

As the 'embodiment' of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, the thought of death does seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals that can be perceived in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For itseems it alone will surely come.

All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost no matter how hard to gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they once engendered, and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake, in place of aspirations and of dreams. But 'death' is counted on. For it will come with certain footsteps when the time has come for its arrival. It will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself.

Would I bow down to idols such as this? When here is the strength and might of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust? When here is the opposite of God proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God's Will for life, the endlessness of love and Heaven's perfect, changeless constancy? When here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God?

In this unholy fantasy of 'defeat', the Son of God is imagined as becoming what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: "Here lies a witness that God is dead." And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that 'it is so'.

It is impossible for me to worship death in any form, and still be able to select 'a few' I would 'not cherish and would yet avoid', all the while still believing in the rest. For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible. For here again I see an obvious position, which I must accept if I am to be sane; that what contradicts one thought entirely can not be true, unless its opposite is proven false.

The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished; killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.

Death's worshippers may be afraid. And yet, can thoughts like these be fearful? If death's worshippers saw that it is only this which they believe, they would be instantly released. And I will show them this today. There is no death, and I renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and my own as well.God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand I take today. And, it is given me to look past death, and see the life beyond.

Our Father, bless my eyes today. I am Your messenger, and I would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. I live and move in You alone. I am not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And I abide where You have placed me, in the life I share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. I accept Your Thoughts as mine, and my will is one with Yours eternally. Amen.