Teachings of Christ Mind

^31.1 Joining is both about union and about relationship. Let us consider this by considering the two levels of experience—that of the mountain top experience—and that of the experience on level ground.

^31.2 While you have been immersed in one level of experience you have been either knower or known. This is why experience has seemed to exist apart from you. You say, “I had this experience” or “I had that experience,” as if you have “had” contact and interaction with circumstances or events that are separate from the Self. In saying this, you express your realization of relationship but no realization of the unity in which relationship exists. You “know” the experience because you have “had” the experience. The truth that you are the experience escapes you.

^31.3 What the mountain top experience is helping you to see is that you are the experience. The mountain top experience did not happen to you or happen separately from you. It has happened and is happening within you. You are the experience and the experiencer, the knower and the known. This joining is the point of the experience and the key to experiencing wholeness.

^31.4 As has already been stated, wholeness could not be experienced without division. Wholeness and oneness are the same. You are one in being with your Father, your Creator, the originator and denominator of life.

^31.5 To have experienced only separation is to have known only half of any experience, to have seen every experience in only one dimension—in short, to have seen experience as happening to you rather than as you. By realizing the unity of the relationship in which experience becomes manifest, you not only realize oneness, but realize that you are a creator and that you always have been.

^31.6 All experience is a product of knower and knowee. It is the One Self knowing itself as one individuated Self.

^31.7 Joining is differentiated from union only by experience. Union is the realm of the One. Joining is where the realm of the One unites with the realm of the many. In each of the many is the One—the common denominator. By knowing the One in the many, experience can be achieved within wholeness.

^31.8 The beginning of this knowing occurs within, with the knowing, or experiencing, of the One within the individuated Self. Notice the link here of knowing and experiencing. To know experience as the Self is to know the Self as creator, or in other words, to know the One Self within the individuated Self. To know the One Self within the individuated Self is to join the two. The two are thus joined in the relationship of experience. Experience is not known separately from the Self. Self and God are one and experiencing together in wholeness. For the individuated Self to experience separately from God is to negate the purpose of the experience of the Self which is God. To negate is to deny what is. The denial of what is is the source of separation. The acceptance of what is is the Source of union and the ability to experience in wholeness.