End the Bitter Dream of Death

ACIM Workbook Lesson 237 – for Thursday, August 25, 2011

Affirmation:  “Now would I be as God created me.”

“I bring the world the tidings of salvation which I hear as God my Father speaks to me.  And I behold the world that Christ would have me see, aware it ends the bitter dream of death; aware it is my Father’s call to me.

“Christ is my eyes today, and He the ears that listen to the Voice for God today.  Father, I come to You through Him Who is Your Son, and my true Self as well.  Amen.  (WB411)”

Reflections:

The dream of death is indeed bitter.  I remember a short story read in my high school, in which the refrain of a man who was to be put to death was, “Cowards die many deaths.  The brave never taste of death but once.”  Before we read A Course in Miracles, we may indeed fear death.  We may not truly believe what we have been taught in church, or we may believe that hell is a real possibility that we must fear.  Have we been saved from hell?

A Course in Miracles indicates that guilt is hell (a Text tenet).  And who among us is free of guilt, unless we have awakened?  We need not fear the hell that previous generations tried to avoid going to after death.  ACIM would not have just clutter our minds with this ego-inspired dark dream.

Ruth Montgomery’s Guides (from automatic writing) say that death is like walking through an open door.  And we can avoid suffering (though not always avoid pain) by rising above the ego’s idea that we deserve what we get before death, in illness.  These dark thoughts do not need to destroy the happiness of our days.  We will be cared for by God.  We will walk salvation’s pathway into the joy that is our birthright.

Salvation can be thought of as a “game that happy children play” (a quotation from ACIM).  We do not have to take life nor ourselves so seriously.  Perhaps we make a mistake we do not lighten up in the midst of our trials.  Trials, says the Text, are a time to revisit past choices, and, this time, to choose a new and better way.  Previously we had made a faulty decision, but we do not have to make that same mistake again.  We can choose again.  Always we can choose again.  Even if a given day starts badly, we can choose to begin anew at any point.  Such is the power of the Holy Spirit to redirect our course.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for ending my fear of death.  I do not wish for death, but I am ready, so far as I know, if it comes.  I would not hurry death, for there may still be work for me to do on earth.  And happiness in that work.  Salvation, Jesus says, is play.

May I come to look upon anything that I do for my brothers and sisters as “play.”  May I lighten up, beginning today.  I do not wish to take this world too seriously.  God is above the fray, and He will lead me there, in my mind and spirit, if I listen to His Guide, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.