This is Part 2 of our discussion of death. Last time we talked about the importance of
not confusing symbol with source, body and mind, and the idea that the ego sees death
as the inevitable punishment for our sin. But there's another way of looking at death.
And probably the best description of this other way comes in the "Song of Prayer" pamphlet
which Helen had taken down a year after the Course was actually published. And it comes
in the third chapter of that pamphlet under "Healing," the third chapter being on healing
and the section on "False versus True Healing." And there Jesus talks about that there is
another kind of death and that death is not a punishment for our sin, that death really
is the reward, as it were, of a lifetime spent in the classroom of our living in the body.
And where we lay down the body in gratitude, that it has served us well in terms of learning
our lessons, and then we continue on. And so that death then is seen not as punishment,
not as something to be feared, not as something from the ego's point of view to be attracted
to, as the third obstacle to peace explains to us, but rather something that we look forward
to. That we worked hard, just as when we are in the university and we work hard in a class
and we get a passing grade and we feel good about our work during the semester or when
we graduate...the work that we spent in graduating. And in a sense, it's almost like death then
would be seen like as a graduation present, that we have worked hard in the Holy Spirit's
classroom of forgiveness, learning our lessons as best we could and now we lay the body down.
This does not mean however that we necessarily learned all of our lessons. We may actually
go to our physical death and there still would be things that we still have to learn. There
are still unforgivenesses that would have to be looked at whether we do it in terms
of coming back into the body or we do it still as a mind on the journey. After all, the whole
journey which Jesus tells us ultimately is "a journey without distance," occurs in the
mind because there is no body. So the classroom of learning that appears to be in the body,
as I was indicating just before, really is only in the mind because there is only a mind.
So the journey that we take is really the true journey from our having chosen the wrong-minded
thought system and identifying with it that we now correct. And now we, in a sense, journey
back to our decision-making mind and choose a different teacher and continue on as a right
mind, and so this only occurs in the mind. Our learning only occurs in the mind, but
our experience is that we have to learn in the body. And so whether we believe we have
to come back into the body to continue our journey or we continue it in the mind without
needing to be in the body, basically is irrelevant as long as we continue to learn from the right
teacher. So death then, the death of the body, whether we're talking about our own approaching
death or helping people who are close to us to die, is really to continually remind ourselves
that death is just another part of the journey and it's a journey that occurs in the mind.
And that we should be grateful for lessons that we learn, grateful that what has been
unlearned because we are still too afraid of the total learning of letting go of our
mind, total letting go of our guilt and total forgiveness, that we could still continue
this. And that when Jesus tells us in the fourth stage of the "Development of Trust"
in the manual which is the attainment of peace, that we have not gone as far as we thought.
We still have to go through the fifth and sixth stages or the sixth stage which is the
attainment of the real world, and he says we have not gone as far as we think but that
we should not despair, which is actually not what he says but it's implied, because mighty
companions go on, continue with us. These mighty companions are the lessons that we've
learned and so even when we physically die, we are taking our learning with us. We are
taking the forgiveness that we feel that we have been practicing, the forgiveness that
we've received from others, or the love that we have felt both from reflections in this
world of Jesus' love that we take this with us, and so here too we are grateful. We are
grateful that we have learned our lessons and grateful of the mighty companions of our
learning that we are taking with us that will help sustain us as we continue on. So death
is not something to be feared. Death is not something to be in a sense looking forward
to, death is just the inevitable step or stage when we say I have learned...I have gone as
far as I could go in this stage of my learning, but I know that I will continue. So death
then does not become a big deal. It certainly doesn't become the end of life, and it does
not necessarily mean it's the end of our learning. It is simply another stage. So often when
we graduate, say from college and that doesn't mean we don't pursue graduate studies, master's,
Ph.D's, post-doctoral studies, et cetera. Similarly our death does not necessarily mean
the end of our learning. It simply means that we continue on, and we will continue on and
continue on until we finally accept the Atonement when we recognize that there is nothing more
to be learned because there was never anything to be learned for we never left the Oneness
of our Source.