Christmas: The End of Sacrifice

by Monica Dubay

What is sacrifice?  Did Jesus demonstrate the ultimate sacrifice or not?  Did he die for my sins? Until I found A Course in Miracles, I was totally lost in this idea.  I thought that by sacrificing myself and thinking of others first would bring me to my goal.

I wanted to find freedom, yet I was seeking for it in all the wrong ways.  I was looking outside of myself. I was trying to please others.  I had a husband and children and struggled to make them happy. Yet, after years of this kind of thinking, I only made myself more miserable, until I got so depressed that I finally had to admit the truth....how can I make anyone else happy, if I am not?

The underlying game of self-deception was staring me in the face.  It was a wake-up call.  I didn’t want to break up my family, but I had to be honest.  This life I had been living was not working. I was 39 years old, and everything I did brought me the same result.

What is sacrifice?  To continuously look for happiness in something outside yourself, constantly look in the wrong place for the goal, and never find it.  The entire human condition is about accumulation—of power, fame, money, relationships, of an identity as a separate body.   I had money, I had relationships, I had things, I had an identity.  And I was not happy.

Because human beings are in a state of lack, they constantly look for something external to fulfill them.  They are relentless in their determination that it will work even when they have tried it for centuries, with the same result.  What they don’t do is question the nature of the problem itself.

This is from the Urtext of A Course in Miracles: 

Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.

If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced needs.  Wow! Can you imagine having no needs?  This is the crux of the whole problem. So it comes down to the fundamental question:  what am I?

Didn’t God make me in His image? Then if God is whole, perfect and complete, I must be a whole complete idea in His Mind. 

I didn’t realize it then, but the idea of sacrifice went a lot deeper than I imagined.  I had to uncover years of conditioning, of false thinking to get to the bottom of it. To substitute a complete and whole idea with an idea of littleness, lack and death is sacrifice.  Therefore, my entire problem was that I was experiencing sacrifice because I made myself into a body!

After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior. (Ask any behaviorist, and he’s RIGHT, too.) Urtext: The Illusion of Needs

Jesus was in a body and had to undergo an experience of transformation, he chose to experience torture and death to experience his own freedom.  The resurrection proved that he is not a body, that he is indeed not of this world.  Therefore, my problem is solved.  I don’t have to do that.  He calls it “the last useless journey” in the Course.  It was accomplished and it is done. 

If that is true, then what am I doing here—if there is only one Son of God, that would have to be me.  My mind is God’s Mind.  There is nothing beside this.  Reality is whole, singular.  There is no opposite, there is nothing lacking.

But I must accept that it only takes one to save all, which I know to be the true nature of reality—the whole is in every part. Quantum physics proves it.  But then why am I still here in this body?

Good question. 

Finally, it doesn’t matter what you believe. It is not an intellectual exercise.  It is about what you want.  That is the question you must ask yourself. Just like in the last episode of The Matrix, Neo had to answer this most crucial question:  What do you want?

What do you want?  Ultimately, the answer is the key to how you experience yourself right here and right now.

Mind is singular, all powerful.  You will receive just what you ask for… and from what you want, God cannot save you.

You see, you have all power!  Even God can’t save you from what you want.  That is why it becomes so crucial to answer the question. You can stay a body, get sick, old and die, but it won’t make you real.  It won’t make your little pitiful life on this tiny mud ball real.  You will just stay asleep.  Is that acceptable to you?

Jesus never wavered from His total complete contact from His Father in Heaven, even while being tortured.  “Behold I make all things new,” is what he said in the midst of the turmoil he experienced. He knew it would work before it happened.  He was certain that his contact with God was absolute.

He was aware that all this was illusory.  My kingdom is not of this world. John 18:36   

The journey to the cross was the last useless journey. It is already accomplished.  You are free.  But are you aware of it?  Are you really free?

Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.  Now, you must experience your own awakening.  It doesn’t have to be tortuous.  It does mean that you have to be willing to release your memories of pain and death. The past is over but you are retaining it within your body, within your memories.  These memories are what you experience over and over again.  They are not real, they are not here, they are all based on the past…that is why you need the mind training.  To you, they are real.  They are what you experience daily in your dealings with other humans on this planet.  Your entire association with yourself, which includes your thought-form images around you, are mirroring these memories to you constantly.  You must learn to let them go, or you will never be free.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, he is expecting you to make the effort.  To wake up from the dream and finally see it for what it is— nothing.

All the esoteric teachings of Christianity teach that you must undergo an awakening, a transformation of your mind.  You must have an initiation and release your thoughts of judgment. Judge not that ye be not judged.  Matthew 7:1

Jesus states Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Matthew 7:4  Focus on your own judgment, your own falsity, and your own awakening.  When you are free, everyone is free.  Don’t you want to be free?  Straight is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.  Matthew 7:14

I don’t know what it will entail for you, because it is a very individual and personal experience, but when I look back, I’m reminded how changed I am from what I used to be.  I made one decision:  I wanted to know who I am.  Why? Because I couldn’t stand the pain of my separate identity any longer.

Jesus’ Workbook of A Course in Miracles is a mind training program that systematically takes you into an experience of healing and release.  It is designed precisely for you in this time and place. It teaches you how to forgive the past, to release your mind from bondage.  This takes learning and undoing of your past, because as a human being, you have designed yourself to be unaware of how to get out of here.  You are destined to die.  And death is not the way out because it is part of the illusion.  You cannot die.

Jesus resurrected from death and walked the Earth.  Many people saw and touched him.  When the last illusion of Jesus’ body form had gone—he was gone.  But where is he now?

RIGHT HERE!

“And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou has sent me, and hast loved them, as thou has loved me.” John 17:22-23

He stated it so clearly. He is in you!  You are in Him.  You cannot be separate from the savior.  He is in you and all around you. You are the Son of God.  You are not separate, indeed you are the savior of the world. Yet, perhaps you are unaware of it.  If so, you are still asleep.

You must go through your transformation to experience the frequency of the light that is where you are united with God.  This is a physical resurrection.

Perhaps it appears that you have to give something up to get there. 

You do.  This world is an illusion that is of your own making.  Yet it does not exist.

You are tempted by it, you are attached to it, you want it!  Because you made it.  Yet, it is not outside yourself. It is still in your mind.  Your mind is all powerful, you have misused it.  But the mistake has been corrected.

Don’t you want to experience yourself completely joyous and free?  Free of the idea of illness and death.  Be honest.  Aren’t you planning your own death?  Isn’t that why you made this world?

Why not seek and FIND.  Finally, you can come into a brand new experience of yourself that is not of this world.  You will be free, happy, joyous and full of light!

Everything around you shines forever.  You are totally YOU, a complete whole idea in the mind of God.  There is no death, no suffering, no loss.  This is your reality.  All else is madness.

But you must let go of this mad world of death to have it.  You must want freedom above all else. Even though the all else is just pain, suffering and death.

Is this really a sacrifice?  Is it hard to give up? I think not. Give up pain and sacrifice and death for eternal life, freedom, love, happiness and joy?

It has indeed been a sacrifice to give up heaven and eternal life for this dream world, a world where you lose everything you love.  You are in a slaughterhouse, a place of death. Yes, you have already sacrificed everything to find nothing.  Jesus came into this dream world as the hero of the dream to demonstrate the way out.  He did it, it is accomplished.  Now, it is up to you to fulfill your part in the Plan. 

There is a Call going on by God for you to be the Son He loves.  Is this hard?  How could it be hard?  You are You!  But the glorious complete idea of You that God created, not the sorrowful, pitiful, limited you that you have constructed yourself to be.  That is what is impossible.

You may not believe this, you may not accept this, but, if you look at it logically, it is reasonable. Truth is true, and nothing else is true.  There is no compromise in the teaching of Master Jesus.  He says, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

Where is the sacrifice in that? You are perfect!

“But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil...”  Mathew 5:39

Evil is nothing but the idea of separation or sin, which means, in Aramaic, off the mark. You made a mistake.  Now you must realign yourself…get back on track. All your ideas of separation and death have brought you to the point where you must make a choice. 

You can’t have a little bit of heaven, it is total.  You can’t be in hell a little.  You are either in conflict, pain, suffering, and planning your vacations, retirement and death.  Or, you have denied death, denied the idea of aging, of losing everything, and are coming into a new awareness of yourself that is free of the bondage of time and space.  Free of the idea of lack and littleness, pain and death—free of the idea of sacrifice right here and now.

Bless you.  The way is sure now. We are going Home, we have been asleep in a dark dream of death.  But it is over and gone.  This is what you have always wanted, always….I love you.

All quotes are from A Course in Miracles unless stated otherwise. 
 

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