Fearless Literary is honored to serve as a production and publicity consultant for the long-awaited Volume Two of The End of Death series by Nouk Sanchez:
A Course in Miracles means exactly what is says when it tells us there’s a place in us where the strength of God abides, where there is perfect peace, and where nothing is impossible. This is not metaphoric. The Course meticulously guides us toward recognizing and awakening to our truly shared, Holy Self. Many in the continually growing and evolving Course community have already investigated the metaphysical teachings of the Course from an intellectual standpoint. Most are now willing or even eager to delve deeply into the very experience that the Course has pointed to all along – the knowledge that we are only changeless Love. This experience that we long for, but which has seemed insurmountable, is realized through the gifts of Holy Relationship. Now is the time. The way is clear. Truth and Love will triumph. The Holy Relationship is the means by which we finally learn and demonstrate the Course’s number one miracle principle: There is no order of difficulty in miracles. These are the teachings for our final victory lap! Please visitwww.nouksanchez.com or www.HolyRelationship.com for more information.
A MANUAL FOR HOLY RELATIONSHIP • The End of Death, Volume Two The deeper teachings of A Course in Miracles
by Nouk Sanchez
Trade paperback, 750 pages • ISBN 978-0-578-70688-7 • $29.95
"One Message – One Purpose"
Excerpt from A Manual for Holy Relationship
Listen to Nouk read this excerpt:
Having spent many years with A Course in Miracles I can say that I recognize the Course itself is already complete. There is nothing left to add. However, there are still vastly unrecognized and therefore unembodied teachings within its earthly pages. After all, Jesus does say that we will come to do as He did – and more. And that has not yet occurred in the dream of time. The “and more” aspect of this statement is yet to be witnessed in this particular phase of the dream; although time is collapsing comprehensively as abundant miracles are now piercing its flimsy defense.
There appear to be a few differing interpretations of the one complete, singular and total teaching of the Course. The reason for different interpretations of the Course is because each interpretation arises from that particular individual’s level of trust, their demonstration of trust. The more our trust is transferred from fear to Love the more undiluted and literal Jesus’ message becomes. There is just one message, one truth and one purpose.
We all read, absorb and begin applying the principles of the Course through the mechanism of our own ego filter at first. We initially embark on these teachings through fear more than through Love. Only gradually do we begin to loosen the fear and open to surrendering our tightly defended beliefs, our values, our stories, our identity, our bodies, our past and all our relationships to the Holy Spirit.
Jesus explains that we have carefully taught our self to trust the ego to tell us what reality is. We trust its fear paradigm and what it seems to see through the body’s five senses as well as our past. The ego unconsciously and consistently wishes to be unfairly treated so it can perpetuate separation. What it sees and hears will always confirm exactly what it’s looking for; a sense of separation from Love, from God. This doesn’t seem to be conscious at first, at least not until we desire to become aware of it and to heal it.
The ego holds onto pain and drags it forward into the imagined future. Out of fear, it obscures the present moment, which is the only place healing can occur. What we believe was done to us was not done to us. It looks as if it happened in the past but it appeared in our mind as a memory of fear to separate us from our present safety (innocence) in God’s Love.
The holographic nature of miracles extends to every facet of life, even to people and situations that seem impossible to reach from the ego’s limited scope of awareness. The miracle quite literally heals the past. It undoes the false memory by removing it from the split mind because that is the only place the past exists – in memory. It does not exist in truth.
Nouk Sanchez began her passionate journey with A Course in Miracles in 1990. She is best known for her very practical approach to undoing the single cause of suffering — the ego. In 2007 Nouk co-authored Take Me to Truth with Tomas Vieira, which became an instant bestseller.
During her darkest night of the soul in January 2011, brought about by Tomas’ passing, she experienced a revelation that profoundly shifted her perception. Since then she has received a series of divine transmissions that joyfully reveal Jesus’ deeper teachings in the Course.
The End of Death trilogy is the exciting culmination of these insights. The End of Death, Volume One, The Development of Trust, was released in 2014 and also became a bestseller. The mind-blowing story of Nouk and Tomas’ transition from ‘special’ to Holy Relationship is shared in Volume Two, A Manual for Holy Relationship.
In 2015, after a 25-year gap, Nouk was blessed with a profound reunion with treasured soul buddy, Daniel Boissevain. Nouk and Daniel have joined in a total commitment to help extend these life-changing teachings to the world. Their journey in advanced Holy Relationship is nothing short of soul-stirring and miraculous, and is also shared in A Manual for Holy Relationship.
Nouk literally lives for nothing else but living and extending Jesus’ message. Her own embodiment of these teachings has escalated through her latest experience and transmissions, revealing that Holy Relationships are the crucial, invaluable key to undoing all forms of suffering. This is the subject of A Manual for Holy Relationship.
Together with Daniel, their hands-on, extraordinarily practical approach has contributed to startling and miraculous breakthroughs and life-changing turnarounds. These breakthroughs have served as the foundation for the teachings that have resulted in deep transformations for many people in their Global online Total Transformation Classes (TTC).
I have come to know the Course as immensely holographic. It reveals itself in my awareness to the exact extent that I have shifted my trust from fear to Love. One truth, recognized, just continues to unpack itself in a multidimensional way as my resistance falls away and open mindedness replaces it. It is not that the words of the Course have changed in the years I’ve been reading it, but that my experience of what it is pointing to has changed. When I believe that I was mistreated in the past, and there is an emotional charge remaining, then I unwittingly project my painful memories of mistreatment onto the future. I have stashed the illusory cause in the past. This is separating cause from effect and blocks my awareness of the miracle. Remember that all cause and effect remain together in the mind. They can never be separate.
If I blame someone for something or I hold a grievance, I have isolated the real cause in my own mind from the effect, which is the situation or the person along with the behavior. Both the offending person (or situation) and my mind are one. That person is not external to me, nor are they doing things independent of what my own mind directs them to do. The degree to which I am triggered tells me the extent to which the cause arises from my own unconscious wish to be unfairly treated.
To receive the gift of liberation we begin to recognize that we cannot be attacked unless there is a conscious or unconscious decision to be unfairly treated. We can only accept healing and demonstrate it to the degree our own fear has been replaced by Love in our awareness. And this comes from valuing the gifts forgiveness gives above valuing attack and taking things personally. Every area of our life must be given over to Spirit for divine repurposing and reinterpretation.
If I still attempt to keep some areas of my life compartmentalized from Spirit (relationships, past, body, financial affairs, career, family, etc.) that shows I must still trust the ego more than I trust in Spirit. I will then read the Course through a filter of fear and will only be willing to see, accept and practice that which does not threaten my present beliefs and values. I will be valuing and boosting my false identity.
Transfer from Fear to Love
My own development of trust has been a gradual letting go of my limited, fear-based beliefs and values. As I willingly release fear, Love’s clarity further reveals the depth of Jesus’ teaching. This for me has been an experiential process rather than an intellectual one. I don’t however regret the years spent gaining an understanding of the metaphysics of the Course on an intellectual level. That understanding now serves as a foundation from which I can feel secure as I experience the Course. I trust now that when I drop fear and guilt and invite Holy Spirit’s Help, I not only receive His Help and listen to His Guidance, I am also courageous enough to act on it.
The miracle is perfectly applicable in every facet of life. For instance, like most, I despised being triggered. Yet now when it occurs I am quick to accept a miracle, to recognize that it’s a divine opportunity to forgive yet another layer of the false self’s previously unseen self-hatred and unworthiness. Why then would I defend myself from it? Why would I react to a trigger if it is a literal gateway to my infinite liberation? This movement toward liberation inspires me to not exclude any part of my relationships or my life from God’s all-inclusive and comprehensive transformation.
This process has involved the demolition of many of my unseen misidentifications; my miscreations both in belief and form. These were used as idols to block me from resting in the infinite safety and security of God’s Love as my Holy Self. My fear-filter is falling away. I really appreciate now exactly what all these fears were initially made to hide from my real vision. As trust is extended to all aspects of my life, the miracles which had been hidden behind my guilt and fear spring forth far and wide.
As we practice turning over to Holy Spirit all the areas of our life which we previously held back we develop and strengthen our trust in only Spirit. This divine transition in trust moves us significantly from fear to Love. This mighty shift is facilitated from within and inevitably affects every single aspect of our miraculous life.
Only One Truth Not Many
As our trust is transferred from the ego self to our Holy Self, we learn that there is only one truth. And that means we recognize there to be just one purpose for all our perceived challenges and triggers. This fact is consolidated in our experience as we literally recognize that we all share one mind. As our own mind is healed we will see healing in others as well. We never heal alone because there is only one mind to heal.
Given its nature, it is logical for the ego self to interpret the Course as highly metaphoric and to assume that parts of the Course are not to be taken literally. Even some highly respected and sincere teachers of the Course have approached the teachings in this manner. As an example, emphasis has been greatly diminished on physical miracles such as healing the sick and raising the dead. The idea of physical death is still accepted by the ego self as the natural, inevitable and legitimate outcome of all life. For many years I was among those who interpreted the Course in this way.
Our own “fear-filter,” especially when we first embark on our Course journey, can deny us access to Jesus’ deeper teachings. Our belief in death as the natural outcome of all life is indeed the denial of God as Love and Life. Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. In a nutshell, if we believe that death is natural then we are unknowingly still terrified of God (Love), of Life Itself. And we will continue to try to escape from Love (God and Life) through our attraction to sickness, special relationships, conflict and death. We will also believe unconsciously that death actually comes from God. In addition, there is a widespread misconception that we go home to God through the ego’s dream of death. We have to ask then, “Who would turn their body, their relationships and their life completely over to a god if he wills our death? Who can trust a god like this?”
Think about this: If death is real there is no God. If God is real there is no death. Death is the fear of awakening to our Holy Self. We don’t go home through death as many mistakenly believe.
As Jesus tells us: “The world is not left by death but by truth…” T-3.VII.6:11 “All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce sleeping out of fear of waking. This is a pathetic way of trying not to see by rendering the faculties for seeing ineffectual.” T-8.IX.3:2-4
Another logical conclusion that the ego self reaches is that death offers the peace that we have been seeking but which life has denied us. Death is seen as the end of conflict. When someone passes away and it’s posted on social media, we see Course students and teachers who seem to not yet see or accept Jesus’ uncompromising message about the unreality of death. Either that, or they may lack the confidence to express their views honestly.
It can feel safer to talk freely among like-minded, fellow ACIM students and teacher’s about important subjects like this. But if we could be more unafraid to express truth, even in an open forum like social media, truth will be recognized at the Christ level. The more often that undiluted truth is expressed, the more natural it feels and the easier it is to drop the façade of the ego self.
Good Intentions Are Not Enough
Often, we witness messages of sympathy being offered with good intentions. But the common blessing, “may they rest in peace,” is an example of confusion over the central message in the Course. I made this common mistake repeatedly in my earlier years. Jesus gently corrects us:
"Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining” T-8.IX.3:5-6
The holographic message of the Course is gradually unpacked, seen, accepted and finally embodied in increments according to our own release from guilt and fear. I predict that as we release our own fear-filter, we will all see that there is only one complete and ultimately simple truth of Jesus’ message in the Course. There will be just one interpretation then because there will be only one consistent experience. And it is this experience and demonstration that speaks louder than a thousand words. Only Love is real. “Nothing real can threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” T-in.2-4
In my experience, the need to learn to clearly delineate between the real and the unreal is paramount. We cannot possibly discern Love until we have learned to identify and release everything that is not Love. The false self has never known Love without fear, guilt or loss (which is not Love). It cannot know Love because its existence depends on fear. The experience of Love, like light shining away darkness, obliterates the false self.
Unknowingly we are terrified of God (Love) hence our obsession with the personal self and the erroneous belief that it can be attacked. We see this unfortunate dynamic played out in every special relationship that was ever made.
God is Love without any form of conflict or fear. This is “What” we are beneath our superficial and illusory self. We cannot trust God (Holy Self) implicitly until we first uncover our secret beliefs (fears) about God and His intent. And when we do, we will be shocked.
The unconscious terror of Love (God) has such a grip on our split mind that we choose suffering and physical death over awakening to the changeless Love we are with all our brothers and sisters. This unrecognized resistance to Love and its attraction to conflict, suffering and death is what prolongs the illusions of time and separation.
The greatest single contributor to this ongoing attraction to separation is the lure of “special relationships.” Everyone in the world has special relationships. Because the ego uses these relationships as its predominant means to abandon our Self, they become the primary dumping ground for unseen and unforgiven self-hatred and unworthiness. Yet these relationships offer us the greatest opportunities for quantum healing since the beginning of the separation. The key to releasing ourselves from our unconscious fear of Love (God) is found in our brothers, and specifically in the transfer of special relationship to Holy Relationship.
While we insist on believing that we were, are, or could be unfairly treated, then we must equally desire to maintain the guilt that prolongs our unconscious fear of God. Our unforgiven grievances against our brothers ensure the guilt – as blame – the ego needs to protect itself from the memory of union, the light of God’s Love and healing. This fear of God equates to the ego’s hidden attraction to pain, sickness, relationship conflict, scarcity and death as its defenses to the Love we are. Whereas when we genuinely forgive our self for having unwittingly chosen to use others to attack our self, our fear of Love and union is healed.
From the false self the only love we know is “special,” a changing love, which means it is heavily imbued with guilt, fear, sacrifice, change, conflict and loss. We cannot really imagine real, changeless Love until we’ve at least had an experience of contrast learning by repurposing our special relationships to Holy Relationships. As we do this, we can begin to drop our unconscious fear of genuine union (Love), and of the one continuous Christ Mind we share with our brothers.
Contrast learning is an important process where we begin to learn what Love is not. With Holy Spirit we learn how to discern the valuable from the valueless, and how to distinguish Love from fear. The ego is always in strong resistance to this because its false identity depends on the insane belief that Love is fear, and that fear (sin and guilt) is Love.
The ego rejects sincere forgiveness because forgiveness eradicates sin, guilt and fear, which the ego regards as the tragicloss of “its” twisted form of love, andthe very sustenance it requires to maintain separation. In quantum forgiveness, we recognize that no one hurt us. It was the ego’s projection of guilt that “used” another to hurt us. As we forgive our self for having believed in the separation as real, the guilt and fear as “effects,” are erased. Without belief in sin, guilt and fear, our projections cease and the gap in which our fear of our brothers and God was maintained, collapses.
As we open to undoing special relating (guilt), we find that we are given more opportunities to experience a Holy Relationship with one or more companions. It is in our experience of this blinding contrast between special relating and Holy relating, that we drop our deeply hidden fear of Love.
It is in a Holy Instant of selflessness with a brother that we initiate our return to innocence. It is in those “joint” Holy Instants where we truly join with a brother, that incorruptible innocence and changeless union are returned to our awareness. In this blinding light of perfect Love, bodies are eclipsed, and the ancient memory of Home, God, and union are experienced. This is when we come to understand that through the miracle of Holy Relationship, we overcome the belief in bodies as well as death, the ego’s final obstacle to peace, to union and to God.
“The form of the course varies greatly. So do the particular teaching aids involved. But the content of the course never changes. Its central theme is always, "God's Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation." M-1.3:2-5
Fearless Literary is honored to serve as a production and publicity consultant for the long-awaited Volume Two of The End of Death series by Nouk Sanchez:
