Teachings of Christ Mind

Top
Library of Christ Mind Teachings
A Course Of Love

Hang on a sec…

28.1 At one time there seemed to be little or no choice between staying engaged in an externally directed life and removing oneself from life. This may have seemed to be an either/or proposition and thus one of limitation. Moving from an externally directed to an internally directed experience of life creates unlimited choices. The unlimited choices of internally directed experience are what you must begin to face as we begin our descent from the mountain top. To wait until level ground is reached to begin to view the choices available would be to put off coming to know the difference between externally and internally directed life experiences.

28.2 Most of you have experienced several stages of awareness, and we will speak here of those experienced during the years of what is called adulthood, coming of age, or the age of reason. These have been discussed before so this will be kept brief and illustrate only what is needed for our discussion of the next stage.

28.3 The first stage of awareness is a stage of simple external movement through life. Many people, especially young adults, have little experience other than this. Their lives are directed almost totally by external forces, from parents, to mandatory schooling, to somewhat voluntary schooling.

28.4 As the time of schooling is left behind, the next stage of movement begins, that of external movement toward independence. With this movement, the number of choices increase and the level of awareness increases with the increase in choices available. As young people do not usually move away from the home of their parents until they are at least college age, the opportunity to move away, move out, become more independent increases the awareness of self as self. As the self matures beyond school age, the choices become those of degrees of independence, moving away, moving into one’s own sphere of friends, colleagues, relationships. For some these choices include commitments to partnerships of a personal or professional nature. For some these choices include marriage and starting a family. Some follow a more standard pattern than others, with schooling, career, marriage, and family seen as an almost inescapable as well as desirable norm. Others pursue dreams or adventures.

28.5 All of these choices are externally directed. They may include a great deal of inner reflection in order to be made, but they are still directed at external outcome. By living the experiences of these externally directed life situations, growth occurs, changes happen, new avenues to explore at times open up, leading to the next level of experience: That of external movement toward a chosen type of life.

28.6 At this level, some people reach a crossroad that feels like a choice that will move their lives in such a different direction that it is both exciting and at times excruciatingly difficult. Others reach a plateau of sorts and just keep following the opportunities that are presented along one path. They may have chosen one career, for instance, and made choices within that career path, but never really consider a different career path. Many simply reach a state of reasonable comfort and will make no choices that will affect that comfort level.

28.7 All of these stages may be associated or accompanied by religious or spiritual experiences that seem to help guide the choices, but the choices remain the same: Externally directed choices.

28.8 Now something new awaits you. It is a choice so different and a means so revolutionary that it will take some getting used to. This change is predicated on all the changes that have come before it, including, and most particularly, on that which was most recently spoken of, that of apprehending the new reality of wholeness. It is not wholeness that is new, but the reality of wholeness that is new. The reality of being able to experience the variability of separation from within the state of wholeness is what is new.

28.9 This must be kept foremost in your mind. The reversal spoken of recently, the reversal from believing in a giver and a receiver to knowing that giver and receiver are one, is also of paramount importance.

28.10 You and your life are one. Your life is not the giver and you the receiver.

28.11 You and God are one. God is not the giver and you the receiver.

28.12 This is wholeness.

28.13 Depending on the circumstances of your life, one of these two attitudes will have a reverse side that will have a greater hold on you. Your life may have shown you that you are not in control in many ways and at many times. Therefore, you think that you must take what life has to “give.” This is most likely the attitude of those whose major life dilemmas have been of a monetary or career nature, where success or failure “in life” is seen as the most crucial element of a happy life.

28.14 If the attitude you will have greater need of reversing is that of God determining the circumstances of your life, you have probably been more affected by the relationships of life, by loss or death of loved ones, by accidents, or illness, or “natural” disasters, by the unexplainable forces that have affected you with sadness more so than with ideas of success or failure. Therefore, you think that you must take what God has to “give.”

28.15 Most people feel at least some combination of these two attitudes, but will find that one is prevalent. You must now get past all such notions or attitudes.

28.16 Acceptance has been a main theme of this dialogue and was revisited and defined as acceptance of internal rather than external conditions. It makes no sense, however, to accept what is not the truth. Most of what is not the truth has been identified as old thought patterns. This is all that the notion of a giver and a receiver is: An old thought pattern.

28.17 Thought patterns exist within thought systems that have been externalized and are part of the world on level ground. These external systems are based, as are all that you have made, on the externalization of what is within. At the same time, however, what is within has been based upon what was previously externalized. This is what now must change, and as can be seen, this change is essential to changing the world.

28.18 This change, this transformation, can only take place within time because only within time is the experience of separation possible, and experience is where the power of transformation lies. This transformation will, however, take you beyond time, because once experience is moved out of the realm of separation and into the realm of union or wholeness, new conditions will apply. This is why it has been said that the changes that are to come are not about time-bound evolution. Only this first change, this first transformation, must take place in time.

28.19 This is the change, the transformation, we have been working on by changing your experience of time to one of experiencing two levels of “time.” Our “time” on the mountain would be more rightly described as “time outside of time.” 28.20“Time outside of time” by itself will not cause the shift that needs to occur, however. What will create the shift is the ability to experience “time outside of time” and “time” simultaneously. Thus is the “wholeness” of time, or eternity, experienced and made real. Eternity might thus be seen as the unchanging constant that has not been affected by the variable of time. Said in another way, eternity and time are part of the same continuum as are properties such as hot and cold. They are part of the same whole that is the constant of all that is whole—all that is one.

28.21 So too are giving and receiving and giver and receiver.

28.22 To move to internally directed experience is to make the move into wholeness that will cause the “shift of the ages,” the experience of variability within wholeness.

28.23 The key to this movement is the simple realization that it is possible. This is what our time on the mountain has provided you with: The experience required in order to realize a new possibility.

28.24 As you move toward wholeness, all the pieces of all that we have talked about will begin to fit together. A whole will form within your mind much as if you have been following a thread and now can see the tapestry. This tapestry will bear the mark of your experiences and will be like no other. The thread represents your own journey to truth, your own journey to wholeness.

28.25 Separation is desired no longer, but experience is. Your will and God’s are one and thus it is being made so.

28.26 Presently it is as if you follow two threads, the thread that has led you to the mountain and the thread of the life from which you have not removed yourself. Now you must begin to weave these two threads together into the tapestry of your new life. This weaving will take place as you continue to intertwine the two experiences that you are simultaneously holding within your conscious awareness.

28.27 This is what we will continue to speak of as we conclude this dialogue.



Select recipients from the dropdown list and/or enter email addresses in the field below.