
THE FRIENDLY ENEMY
from Temple Not Made With Hands by Walter Lanyon
I received a letter from New York while sojourning in Florida which contained the following:
"The report has gone around that you died last week. Of course we know it is not true, but how do these things get started?"
I had to reply to this letter somewhat after the following manner:
"In the language of Mark Twain I must say that the report of my death is greatly exaggerated-and yet somehow or other the same report is true."
The offices of death are many. According to St. Paul, death is one of the most helpful and necessary things that can be performed. He advised the habit of dying daily, and this prefaced the glorious possibility of being born daily also. There is something back of the "idea" death which is replete with substance for meditation.
Death brings with it oblivion-a blotting out, as it were. In reality it can only occur on the plane of changeable manifestation. There is no possibility for death to enter the precincts of the Changeless Life of Spirit.
When you die to anything you are through with it. Just as in the relative sense of the word, when a man dies he is immediately separated from all his possessions; good, bad, or indifferent. His debts are cancelled as far as he is concerned. His estate is disintegrated almost immediately, and no longer is attached to him. Like cloud of dust in a hurricane, his entire affairs are scattered in all directions. When the dust settles, the "place thereof is no more" and the particles have gone into another pattern.
Not understanding Life, the greatest enemy is death. It deprives Life of its manifestation. When Jesus became conscious of Life, he could pass in and out of the shadow called death almost as if passing through a purifying fire. When he arose from what appeared to be physical death, even his disciples did not recognize him until he allowed himself to take on enough of the former beliefs, to which he had died, for them to do so. All along the way to Emmaus, they could not distinguish the man with whom they had been for three years.
....To die daily, as Paul instructs, is to be born daily. It is a letting go of used ideas, and a taking up of new and fresh possibilities, without any "hang overs" or memories or beliefs. "The former things shall pass away; they shall not be remembered nor come into mind any more."
"The Power of Life and Death"-surely this is not the evil power from which the human mind shrinks in terror. It is the redeemed "idea" from which the "sting" has been removed. "Nothing shall be destroyed in all my Holy Mountain." In this day we are reclaiming all the lost enemies and making them into friends.
To tell Jesus of a death was not to upset or startle him. He did not seem to be any more moved than when he heard of a blind man, or a poor man, asking for aid, even though the evidences of the death had gone so far that the greatest imagination of the human mind could not possibly piece the body together again. He went into the tombs and pronounced the "Lazarus come forth" which brought about results.
When the eagle is born or hatched, it means death to a thing or a state of things called "egg"-that much is sure. The former things which were true about the egg are no longer true about the eagle. It is under a different set of beliefs entirely. As an inanimate egg it is acted upon, but with the death of the egg it acts. All the beliefs that were true of the egg fall away for ever.
"Marvel not, ye must be born again"-and in this newprocess it is impossible to carry any of the old estate with you. Many are seeking the new birth, but they do not want to go through death to get it. In other words they want to hold on to old ideas, and at the same time try to express new capacities. It is quite as impossible for a caterpillar to fly as it is for an egg; both must perform the death upon the thing of which they want to be rid, and re-embody themselves with the new idea, before they can attain the expression they are seeking.
When you learn the proper interpretation of the word "death" you will see that it becomes a friend, for it is a cleansing process. It is a letting go completely and ascending to a place where the former things cannot enter in, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the present manifestation. Instead of getting rid of things temporarily, man dies completely to the idea and its manifestation. In the new place he finds himself as incapable of experiencing his former limitations as an eagle flying over the abyss would have in experiencing the cramped quarters of the eggshell from which it evolved.
"Awake thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee
Light"; "Awake and arise from the dead."
UNION LIFE JUNE 1979 Page 27