Teachings of Christ Mind

^21.1 Love is.

^21.2 Love is eternal, and you do not as yet grasp its meaning or the meaning of eternity. This is because, as a particular being, you are time-bound. You can realize the eternal even in your temporary form if you can let go of your particularity. Particularity has to do with mass, substance, form. Your being is far beyond your imagined reliance on the particular. The particular is about parts and parts are all you see. I remind you of what was said earlier concerning relationships existing apart from particulars. I repeat that relationship exists between one thing and another and that it is in the intersection of parts that the holiness of what is in-between is found. This will be discussed in more detail later, but for now, I return you, through the embrace, to the holy relationship but in a broadened form.

^21.3 The holy relationship in its broadened form is eternity, the eternity of the embrace. If the embrace is the source of all, the one heartbeat, then it is eternity itself. It is the face of love, its texture, taste, and feel. It is love conceptualized. It is an abstract rather than a particular concept, even while having a seeming structure that your heart can feel. Concepts that cannot be felt with your heart are of no use to you now, for they are meant for their usefulness rather than for their service. Concepts that touch your heart serve you through this touch. They also begin to help break you away from the need for comparisons, for there is no need to compare what your heart can feel. When your heart can feel, you need no judgment to tell you the difference between one thing and another. You thus can begin to quit relying on your body’s eyes to distinguish the true from the false, the real from the unreal.

^21.4 Love appeals to you through the heart. God appeals to you through your heart. Your heart has not been open to the appeals of love partially because of your use of concepts. Concepts have been used to order your world and to assist your mind in keeping track of all that is in it. Your mind does not need this assistance. To begin to conceptualize in ways that touch your heart will free your mind of its reliance on thought concepts, thus allowing heart and mind to speak the same language or to be communicated with in the same way.

^21.5 There has been a division between the language of your mind and heart. Your mind insists on thinking and learning in a certain way, a way contrary to the language of your heart, and so, like two people from different countries speaking different languages, there has been little communication and much misunderstanding. Occasionally the problems associated with a lack of a common language have been set aside when the actions needed in a certain circumstance have demanded cooperation. You see this in times of emergency or crisis of every kind. And like the two people from different countries who do not understand each other, working together momentarily diminishes the boundaries of language, and a temporary solidarity is formed through like action. At such times two strangers who are foreign to one another might recognize that the other’s “heart is in the right place.” The “right place” with two people—as with mind and heart—is the place of no division. The unification of mind and heart that produces right action currently occurs primarily in crisis situations because of a lack of shared language. The formation of a shared language can thus be seen to aid in unification.

^21.6 The embrace can now be likened to the starting point of a shared language, a language shared by mind and heart and by all people. It is a language of images and concepts that touch the one heart and serve the one mind.

^21.7 Conflict between mind and heart occurs for an additional reason as well, although this conflict has at its root the problem of language as determined by perception. This is a problem of meaning. Mind and heart interpret meaning in different ways. You do not even begin to understand the enormity of this conflict or what it means to you, but I assure you that as long as mind and heart interpret meaning in different ways you will not find peace. You have, in the past, accepted these different interpretations as natural. You see that there are two ways of viewing a situation, even if you do not label one way of viewing or perceiving being of the mind and the other of the heart. And you accept this conflict-inducing situation. You accept that your mind sees one truth and your heart another, and you act anyway! You act without agreement or resolution. You act without unity. And, just as if you were two people acting on different truths in the same situation, conflict cannot help but continue. No matter which path you follow, the path of the mind or the path of the heart, you will not get where you are wanting to go until they are joined. You might imagine three paths—one path representing mind, one path representing heart, and one path representing wholeheartedness. The path of neither mind nor heart alone will take you where the path of unity will take you, and the journey will not be the same.

^21.8 The major cause of the conflict that arises between mind and heart is the perception of internal and external differences in meaning. In extreme instances this is considered moral conflict, an example being the individual knowing the “right” thing to do but acting instead on what is the accepted thing to do within his or her community. In such an instance the external and internal meanings of the same situation are considered to be different. This is fairly easy to see in extreme circumstances, but it is a situation that exists constantly and in every instance until unity is achieved. Until unity is achieved you do not understand that you give meaning to all things, and that there is nothing and no one external to you who can determine meaning for you.

^21.9 The final thing you must understand is that meaning does not change. While only you can determine meaning, and while only a wholehearted approach will determine true meaning, the truth is the truth and does not change. Only unity, however, allows you to see the truth and to claim it as your discovery and your truth as well as universal truth. Seeing the truth returns you to unity and to true communication or communion with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Your brothers and sisters in Christ is an expression that has always been meant to symbolize the unity of those who know the one truth.

^21.10 Knowing the one truth is not about knowing a certain dogma or a set of facts. Those who know the truth do not see themselves as right and others as wrong. Those who know the truth find it for themselves by joining mind and heart. Those who know the truth become beings of love and light and see the same loving truth in all.