Teachings of Christ Mind

^3.1 The Covenant of the New is simply our agreement to proceed together on the palm-strewn path of Christ-consciousness. It is a path upon which joy triumphs over sorrow and victory triumphs over defeat. All that it requires is the acceptance of the new and the denial of the old that will allow for the sustainability of Christ-consciousness in form.

^3.2 My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this is the call you have heard for as long as you can remember, the call you have heard as often as you have grown still and listened. It is the one beautiful note, the tolling of the bell of the Lord, your invitation to return home. This call has always sounded. It is not a death knell but a call to life. It is not of the past or the future but of the eternal now. It is within you as we speak, the tone and timbre of this dialogue.

^3.3 It calls to you and asks you to invest your life with the very purpose you have always desired. You are not purposeless now. Your life is not meaningless. You are the ushers, the pioneers of the new. Your work, as will be often repeated, is to accept the new, and deny or refuse to accept the old. Only in this way will the new triumph over the old.

^3.4 I have purposefully used words such as victory and triumph, words unusual to the body of this work but words that will become usual in our normal conversation in this dialogue. I use them as I use together the words accept and deny. As the old must be denied for the new to come into being, the old must be vanquished in order for the truth to triumph over illusion.

^3.5 As the wholehearted, you have it within your ability to do what those who live their lives with a split mind could never do. You have it within your ability to mend the rift of duality, a state that was necessary for the learning of the separated self but that is no longer necessary. The mending of the rift between heart and mind returned you to your Self. In the same way, the mending of the rift of duality will return the world to its Self. The mending of the rift of duality was accomplished in you when you joined mind and heart and returned to the oneness and unity of Christ-consciousness. Sustaining Christ-consciousness will accomplish the same thing in your world.

^3.6 Duality and contrast are synonymous. In the time of the Holy Spirit, you learned through contrast. You learned from the contrast of good and evil, weak and strong, right and wrong. You learned from the contrast of love and fear, sickness and health, life and death. In this time of Christ, such learning is no longer necessary, and so these conditions of learning are no longer necessary. Thus one of your first acts of acceptance is the acceptance of the end of the conditions of learning. This does not mean, however, that you accept goodness and deny evil or even that you accept love and deny fear. How can this be?

^3.7 Our first action in understanding what we are called together to do is to begin to declassify all the various aspects of life that were needed in the time of learning. This is why we began quite truthfully and simply with an acceptance of the new and denial of the old. This is as far as acceptance and denial need go. For if you give credence to the ideas of contrast, you bring those ideas forward with you into the new. We let the old go, and with it all ideas of contrast and opposites, of conflict and opposing forces. This is all that is needed for the new to triumph over the old. There are no battles needed, no victories hard won through might and struggle. This is what is meant by surrender. We achieve victory now through surrender, an active and total acceptance of what is given.

^3.8 Let us talk again for a moment of the idea of giving and receiving as one that was introduced within A Course of Love and taught quite thoroughly in “A Treatise on Unity and Its Recognition”. Let’s talk of this now as an idea, rather than as something learned, and as an idea for you to carry forward with you into the new. This is the first of many ideas that were previously taught that I would like to talk of in a new way. These are ideas that address your true nature as a being existing in union, and this is why we call them ideas to carry forward. These are new ideas to you because you have recently learned them and through the art of thought begun to integrate them into the elevated Self of form. These are really not new ideas, however, but rather ideas of who you truly are birthed within the self of form so that the Self and the elevated Self of form are able to work with ideas birthed from the same source.

^3.9 Ideas of who you truly are, birthed by the wholehearted Self in union with all, are the ideas that will allow new patterns to emerge and the design of the future to be created. These are the ideas that replace the learned concepts we leave behind.

^3.10 You will notice that all of these ideas have in common a quality of oneness. Oneness replaces duality or contrast. You will be seeking now for replacements for that which formerly ordered your life. Thus we will speak of these replacements.

^3.11 That giving and receiving are one in truth is best understood by taking away the idea of one who gives and one who receives. If all are one, such ideas make no sense. This would seem to make the idea of giving and receiving as one senseless as well. In a way, this is true. Giving and receiving as one is senseless in terms related to a shared consciousness. Giving and receiving as one is not senseless, however, when that shared consciousness is occupying form.

^3.12 All ideas leave not their source, thus giving and receiving is an idea, as are all ideas, that exists apart from form. Giving and receiving are thus one within the shared consciousness of unity, which is the same as saying giving and receiving are one in truth. A shared consciousness is the truth of who you are. The elevation of the personal self, however, requires that this giving and receiving as one be shared in form. Yet the elevated form, which now represents the shared consciousness of the Self, is not separate from the shared consciousness. Thus giving and receiving as one is now the nature of the elevated Self of form, and what we work toward through this dialogue is your full awareness of what this means.

^3.13 Helping you to achieve full awareness of who you are is different than helping you to learn. As was said before, you know what you need to know. What we seek to achieve through this dialogue is acceptance and awareness of what you know. Acceptance is easily achieved through willingness. Full awareness in form of what has previously been hidden by the mists of illusion is the more challenging task.

^3.14 Giving and receiving as one has become one in form as well as one in idea. What this means, simply stated once again, is that giving and receiving occur in unison, or in union. There is no “time” in which giving and receiving seem to be separate actions. There is no “time” in which giving and receiving is not occurring. Giving and receiving as one thus simply describes the nature of the new, the nature of shared consciousness.

^3.15 What might this mean to the elevated Self of form? Using this dialogue as an example will serve to explain. This dialogue is continuous and ongoing. It is giving and receiving as one. It is merely represented by the words on this page and the words on this page are but a representation of what is continuously being shared. So too is it with you. You, as the elevated Self of form, are a continual representation of what is continuously being given and received, what is continuously being shared. You are a representation, for instance, of this dialogue. You are a representation of all of your brothers and sisters in Christ. You are a representation of the truth. You are a representation of all that is given and received in truth. You are a representation of creation. A representation of union. You are a representation of the Self.

^3.16 As the Self, you are giver and receiver. Your Self is a full participant in this dialogue. You as the Self are the truth. You as the Self are the creator and the created. You as the Self are union itself. This is what awareness is about. Consciousness has to do with that of which you are aware. To know what you now know, and remain aware only of the reality of the separated self, would not sustain Christ-consciousness in form.

^3.17 This is why I will often repeat that I am no longer your teacher. You must realize your oneness with me and all that was created and you cannot do so while you think of me as teacher and yourself as student. While you think of yourself as a learning being you will still be looking to something or someone “other” than your Self rather than seeking the awareness that exists within.

^3.18 This is not meant to convey any division between the Self and the elevated Self of form, but to demonstrate that there is a difference in form between the Self and the elevated Self of form. The Self was and will always remain more than the body. The body, however, is also newly the Self. The body is also, newly, one body, one Christ.

^3.19 It is this difference that exists between the Self and the elevated Self of form that makes of us creators of the new, because the elevated Self of form is new. The Self is eternal. Your Self of elevated form is newly birthed, just as I was once newly birthed even though my Self was eternal. One of the major things we will be seeing as we proceed is the difference between form and content and the difference in the way separate forms express content. It will be challenging to become aware that different expressions do not make different. These differences were spoken of within this Course as unique expressions of the selfsame love that exists in all.

^3.20 As the system of nature supports the life of many different trees, the trees are all still of one life-giving and life-supporting system. Can this be said of any of the systems you have developed as a learning being? Are your systems life-giving and life-supporting? The patterns of the new will create only such life-giving and life-supporting systems—as long as the patterns of the new are accepted and lived with your full awareness.

^3.21 Now I realize that this is just the first step revealed and that many of you will feel already as if you are being asked to learn again and not only that, but as if I have presented you with a concept difficult to learn. What you need remember now is that your separated self already learned this concept of giving and receiving, and that for the elevated Self of form it is simply a shared quality of oneness. It is not in need of learning or even understanding. It is. Awareness of what is, is a quality of Christ-consciousness. Thus you are already aware of the truth of giving and receiving being one. This awareness exists within you and you cannot any longer claim to be unaware of it through non-acceptance of what is.

^3.22 These are your ideas as well as mine. They are the ideas of your brothers and sisters as much as they are of God. I am teaching you nothing, nothing old and nothing new. I am reminding you of what you know as I have reminded you of your identity.

^3.23 What this portion of the dialogue attempts to do is to give you a language to support what you already know, and are already aware of, so that you are more comfortable with letting what you know serve you in your creation of the new. All—all—that you need in order to create the new is available within you. The power of the universe is given and received constantly in support of the creation of the new. This is what creation is! The entire universe, the All of All, giving and receiving as one. This is our power. And our power is needed for the creation of the Covenant of the New in this time of Christ.