The first thing that’s going to surprise you about your relationship with your conceptual self is that each moment you not only deal with but depend on death to be a part of your association with your conceptual self. Is it okay if I talk to you that way? Everyone that you meet…. I came onto the street this morning, and I said, “Good morning.” I said, “How you doing?” He said, “Oh, I’m doing pretty well.” “How you doing?” obviously means “How are you doing in your existence of your association in comparison with the factors of your search for a solution within this impossible situation that both denies and asserts your necessity for your own termination?” Everything that you do is an indication of your temporal awareness that guarantees that your compensation for all of the hard work that you do in existing, in suffering, in losing, in finding, in loving – your compensation, my dear one, is death. And you know it, and I know it. 

And when I come to you (if you’d like to see what my real threat to you is), when I come to you and declare to you in your own consciousness association with yourself that it is impossible for you to die because there isn’t any such thing as death, I have threatened the maximumness of your association to exist within your own nature of body, wherein the proof of your existence is your own termination. What a particular place to be!

Those of us (and there are many of us now) who are sharing with me my predetermination that life had to be something besides coming here and aging and dying are beginning to enjoy their overcoming, if we use the term of our savior Jesus, their overcoming of death through the change of their mind about their association with who they think that they are. What I have offered you as an illuminate mind is the possibility, since you are a deciding factor of your own existent association, that you can decide at this moment that you don’t want to die. 

Now, that decision would have to involve all of the evidences that you use in your existent capacity that justify life based on death. I need to have you look at that with me. There is no doubt that you use the remedy of death to repair the illusion of ultimate sickness. Can you see that with me? All of your demonstrations of the comparison of wellness and sickness will be factored in your determination that you are in fact suffering from something, and all of the remedies that you employ will have byproducts that continue to justify the sickness and death that you think are you. Is that all right? Can you see that?

I looked at your remedies that are always compensations for a form of wellness that inevitably have side-effects that you have to deal with, and finally you end up with “the lesser of two evils,” which is an amazing thing. Yet your maximum evil can only be death, of which love, which is sustained by God, would have nothing to do with it. There was commercial on the television before I left this morning, and it was for inconstant bladder condition. It’s a prescription drug that, if you take it, it will help you with the inconstancy of urinating, of over-urinating. And the lady is coming out of the drugstore and she’s saying, “John!  John!  It really worked!” I forget the name of it. No Wetty Panty or something. She comes out and says, “No Wetty Panty really works. And I’m suffering very little from dizziness and fatigue that often accompany the use of the drug.” Excuse me. So everything that I see you do is sort of a compensation for your capacity to stay here and suffer pain in alternatives. Excuse me. That’s kind of funny.

So we’re left with my certainty that death is impossible, and you inquire to me, “How do you know that there is no death?” And I said, I know that there is no death because I discovered that since death was always accompanying me everywhere that I went, I should challenge it as to the purpose for my life. When I challenged death as to the purpose for my life, it refused to answer me. Shall I try this for you for a minute? Death is an impossible situation of the indication of how you feel about yourself in your deathful mode of body identity that is accompanying you and is, in fact, a factor of your spatial, temporal identity. We call it, “dark form,” don’t we? In a particular way you represent death. And while you protect yourself from the ultimate darkness by proclaiming your capacity to resist it, the simple fact of the matter is that your capacity to resist death is how you defined yourself. And the proof of your capacity is your succumbing to it. 

Is that all right? I get past a certain point. But I’d like to have you see that that is true with me. Why? Because I look at you now and I see that you have death standing next to you. This is going to scare you a little bit, isn’t it? Because death is next to you. Because everything that you do is an association with death. 

Now, in our Master Jesus’ Course in Miracles there is a particular lesson, and I’m going to glance at it just a moment with you. It’s Key Lesson 163. It says, There is no death. The Son of God is free. But it immediately proceeds to Death is a thought that takes on many forms, and is thought as sickness, loneliness and pain, many unrecognized. In effect, what I am declaring to you is that your association with the Yama man…. I used to call him…. When we grew up, death was always lurking somewhere, and we’re always protecting ourselves from it. 

The manner of my illumination came about very simply from my inability to deal with my association with death and my admission that my existence from death finally was a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable. My life became unmanageable in my declarations of a purpose why I should exist here at all. I asked for assistance from some power of mind that was not contained within my conceptual death association. I was immediately compensated by an alternative of a power of mind that assured me that I had been associating with temporalness, that I had been defining my life as a form of beginning and end, wherein I could exist in a continuum that would guarantee my demise. 

So here I am with you, and I promise you that I’m going to represent life to you if you’ll let me, and what I’m going to do for just a moment, I’m going to look at you and invite you to come and sit with me and bring your death form with you. Death is right there with you. All right?

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