“IT IS ACCOMPLISHED!”

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

by Ray Comeau

Part One        Part Two        Part Three        Part Four          
              

Part One

A few hours after walking out of the movie on Ash Wednesday, 2004, I was going about my business, being in the world, but not of the world, and I received, “received” in the sense of experiencing clear, concentrated thoughts, an outline, a template, of this paper.

 It will be a prose poem, start where film ends, eye of the beholder, state of mind, it is accomplished, I am God’s Son, Lesson 325, Lesson 196, Castaneda, the template, and end with me holding your hand and leading you.

           Let’s begin where the movie ends, the last 80 seconds of a movie that lasts for 126 minutes. 

There is total darkness within the tomb, and then the massive stone begins to roll away.  As the light enters, it moves along the wall to the back and down, moving across the strips of linen from Jesus’ body, lying rumpled on a stone slab, and the light finds Jesus, sitting on the end of the slab, his face in profile, vibrant, radiant, and serene, reflecting the light. In the next moment, he swiftly stands up, his right hand completely healed with a clean hole running through it, and he strides through the bright opening of the tomb.

          These are precious seconds of a movie that we endured for two hours and six minutes, but it is the one scene that always comes to my mind, and it is the only one that really matters because, finally, it is the resurrection that counts, not the crucifixion.

          Two thousand years ago, Jesus played his part exceedingly well in fulfilling the scriptures by allowing himself to be crucified.  The image of his suffering, the passion of the Christ, is seared into our minds so indelibly that the intention of the scriptures is overlooked.  The crucifixion and resurrection are the final demonstrations that forgiveness and love have overcome the world.

These things I have spoken unto you,

that in me ye might have peace.

In the world ye shall have tribulation:

but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

The crucifixion is meant to be a visual representation of the violence we commit in our minds moment to moment by investing in worldly thoughts, while all the time our kingdom is not of this world.

This is one of the ways that Jesus expresses it in His Course in Miracles.

I am not a body.  I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

Review V1:Intro.3:3-5

Knowing who you are requires coming into the full realization that you are as God created you, not as you think you are.  It always comes back to the thoughts you think.  Jesus was a man who learned to overcome, to forgive, his worldly thoughts so that he could come into the full awareness of his heritage as the Son of God. 

          Although it is almost impossible to express in words, it is necessary to attempt to express what it means to declare,

For I am still as God created me.

To begin with, just look at that sentence, again:  Still, meaning both, “I continue to be,” and “I am the stillness.”  What God created is formless—Truth, Light, Tranquility, Peace, Love, Eternal Joy, Wholeness, Perfection, Purity, Infinity, Stillness. 

Now, when you ask,  “Who am I?” this can be your answer:

            I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,

shining in the reflection of His Love.

In me is His creation sanctified

and guaranteed eternal life. In me

is love perfected, fear impossible,

and joy established without opposite.

I am the holy home of God Himself.

I am the Heaven where His Love resides.

I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,

for in my purity abides His Own.

          W-p11.14, What am I? 1

Since this expresses what I am as formless, what is it that I am not?

I am not a body.  I am free.

It appears that I am form, a body, existing in time and space, seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting, verifying my objective existence.  The ego directs the body, making up an illusory world.

          Illusions will not last.  Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world.  It is the ego's world because of this.  What is the ego?  But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not.  It is a thing of madness, not reality at all.  A name for namelessness is all it is.  A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist.  We name it but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality.  But what could come of this except a dream which, like all dreams, can only end in death?

          What is the ego?  Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something.  In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real.  Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?  Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so. C-2.1,2

 There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

 I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.

T-31.V.17:7

One way of understanding the paradox of formlessness and form existing simultaneously is to look at it this way:  I am in the world, but not of the world.  I, as the ego, appear to be walking in the world in a body, but I, as God’s creation, abide in eternity, not in space/time.  God knows nothing of form.  God knows His Son as He Created Him, formless. 

Thank you, Father, that there is a bridge between form and the formless, the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit mediates between

illusions and the truth.  Since He must bridge

the gap between reality and dreams,

perception leads to knowledge through the grace

that God has given Him, to be His gift to

everyone who turns to Him for truth. 

Across the bridge that He provides are dreams

all carried to the truth, to be dispelled

before the light of knowledge.  There are sights

and sounds forever laid aside.  And where

they were perceived before, forgiveness has

made possible perception's tranquil end.

W-p11.7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind.  One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions.  The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides.  There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear that the ego always engenders, and the love that the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it. W-p1.66.7:2-5

As the Master Teacher of Endeavor Academy is fond of expressing it in the vernacular, “God is, I ain’t.”

Now, the groundwork has been established for understanding the meaning of the crucifixion and the resurrection:  When you invest in body identity, ego thoughts, you crucify yourself.  When you recognize that you are as God created you, you resurrect.

Before we move on to the crucifixion, a visual symbol that is so loaded that it hurts the mind to think about it, let’s first look at how we crucify ourselves from moment to moment.  To keep us preoccupied as a body, the ego always sets up duality, so that we appear to have to make a choice between this or that.  Say you are in pain because of a friend.  You have a grievance that he did this, and you wanted him to do that. Everything is limited to your awareness of wanting the resolution of this duality. 

Now, Dear Reader, if you just thought, “Duh,” I want to remind you that we have already established that the ego’s duality is made up; these are not real choices: this is a dream, it illusory.  It appears to be a choice in form, yet only the formless is real.  You are not a body, you are free.  And God knows nothing of your duality.

The trick is to stand still for a moment and refuse to choose.  If you were to suspend the habit of choosing for a moment, something new could enter in.  Something new is the realization that you are free to recognize your true function.

On this clean slate let my true function be written for me.

W-p1.65.6:4

When every concept has been raised to doubt

and question, and been recognized as made

on no assumptions that would stand the light,

then is the truth left free to enter in

its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt.

T-.31.V.17:5

Your true function is to be the light of the world, to experience and express Truth, Light, Tranquility, Peace, Love, Eternal Joy, Wholeness, Perfection, Purity, Infinity, Stillness.

This is the central motif running through this paper:

Just as the crucifixion is simply the demonstration of conflictual ego thoughts, so is the resurrection the action of the mind returning to the awareness of the peace of God.

No matter how harrowing the scenes of the crucifixion, your salvation depends on your remembering that this is simply a visual symbol of attack, and may be transformed by forgiveness into resurrection.

What is going on in your mind is all that matters, the forgiveness of ego thoughts, and the remembrance of your knowledge of God.

In each moment, you are undergoing your own crucifixion, or your own resurrection.

          Finally, we have a context for understanding what happened in Jesus’ mind on the cross between crying out, “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?” and exulting, “It is accomplished!”

          In the silence between the cry and the exultation occurred the most significant accomplishment ever to occur in the mind of man.  Jesus, experiencing total fear, despair, and devastation, believes, for a moment, that he has done something in the dream.  For a moment, he thinks, “Father, I have done everything you asked.  Why have you left me to suffer?” 

Silence.

He is tempted by his investment in duality, suffering pain, and wanting only cessation of pain, to think that what is occurring in form means something.  But for a moment, a moment of stillness that resounds through the centuries, he refuses to choose.

 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

Luke 22:42

Something new entered in, writing on the blank slate the allowance that I am as God created me.  God knows nothing of my deeds in form.  And, exulting in this recognition, Jesus cries out, having come into the full knowledge of his Divinity, “It is accomplished!”

          This is one way that Jesus expresses it in His Course in Miracles.

In my own mind, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack, is the knowledge that all is one forever.  I have not lost the knowledge of Who I am because I have forgotten it.  It has been kept for me in the Mind of God, Who has not left His Thoughts.  And I, who am among them, am one with them and one with Him.  W-p1.56:5

Even Jesus is tempted to forget for a moment that he is the precious Son of God, just as you and I forget, and just as you and I share with him that Sonship.

          It is just that even under great physical pain he remembered, and in that remembering he is saved, and when we remember that we, too, are eternal, we are saved from the temptation of believing that we are separate bodies, leading separate lives in a world where we come to live out our brutish existence, growing old, getting sick, and dying. 
 

End of Part One

***********************************
           

            Raymond H. Comeau, Ph.D.

Teacher of God, Endeavor Academy

chris.ray@verizon.net

www.throughamirrorbrightly.com

(608)254-2320