Teachings of Christ Mind

^39.1 My beloved,

^39.2 It is time now to come to your own discovery of who I Am to you. No one can give you this answer, not even me, because this is the nature of who we are. Individuated beings are who we are in relationship to one another.

^39.3 You have heard of life spoken of as a projection. Because we are all one being, we must either extend or project in order to individuate and be in relationship. You are an extension of I Am into form. Through your extension, you can become who you are to me, instead of who I have been to you.

^39.4 You may find it difficult to give yourself an answer to who I Am to you in words, and even if you are able to do so, you may not be able to share this answer in a way that makes sense to anyone else. Let this tell you something.

^39.5 We are going to speak again of contradiction here. Of the importance of your knowing who I Am to you, and of the importance of being able to continually discover who I Am to you. Of your embrace of knowing, and your embrace of mystery. Of knowing me as your God and as God of all. Of knowing you are no longer being on your own and yet of having to come to this realization of who I Am to you on your own.

^39.6 This is the beginning of individuation in union and relationship. This is the beginning of wholeness. What you strive for here is revelation. For only through revelation can you know all and still hold the mystery. This revelation is not something being withheld from you. But it is a revelation that can only come to you as an individuated being in union and relationship. This is what makes it a true revelation. Because true revelation is between you and me. 39.7“Between” you and me is the presence of Christ. Remember we have talked about the Christ “in” you. Remember that you have been told of Christ being a bridge. When you relate to anyone, Christ is there, bridging the distance that would keep you separate and holding you in relationship. Christ has provided the necessary link between the separate and each other, between all and God. Yet if the time of Christ is about the end of the need for the intermediary, what becomes of the intermediary relationship Christ seems to offer? Are you ready to hold relationship on your own?

^39.8 Contemplate the “buffer” nature of all that is intermediary. An intermediary stands between as well as links. It is a totally unnecessary requirement in unity because the boundaries of separation have fallen. To be individuated being in union and relationship is to be Christ, to realize that what we call Christ is the integration of relationship into the Self.

^39.9 Being in union is being all. Being in union and relationship requires individuation, and individuation requires relationship. Thus you must now accept yourself as Christ, or as the bridge of relationship between all that is individuated in union and relationship.

^39.10 This is why you must discover your own relationship with me. Discovering your own relationship with me is discovering the Christ in you. When you have discovered your own relationship with me is when you have discovered that you are who I Am because you realize—or make real—your oneness with Christ. When you have discovered your own relationship with me is when an intermediary is no longer needed—because you have realized and made real your oneness with Christ. When relationship is established you realize that relationship is the intermediary link between individuated beings and that you hold this link, through relationship with me, within yourself. Christ is direct relationship with me.

^39.11 Establishing this relationship with me may sound lofty and difficult, but it is simple. It is as simple as relationship is within your everyday life. You may not think that relationship within everyday life is simple, but you also know it as a constant. You know that you have had “good” relationships and “bad” relationships, love relationships and work relationships, and that being in relationship with “others” is an inescapable truism of your life. Even these relationships of separation, the types of special and not-so-special relationships you have chosen to leave behind, are not done away with but only transformed. Relationship is part of life. Inescapable. Acceptance that our relationship is and that it is a determinant of who we both are, is all that is required. The relationship that you accept with me is the relationship of union, for union is no more than this, as we are one in being and when you have discovered relationship, we are one in union as well.

^39.12 Relationship itself is intermediary, it is what you carry, the connection between one thing and another. In this instance it is the connection between two individuated beings in union and relationship. You and me. In order for this link of relationship to exist there must be two beings for it to link (where two or more are joined together). In other words, there must be a you and a me. In other words, as you are individuated, so too am I. We jointly individuate rather than separate. We can only do this in relationship. We can only have relationship as individuated beings.

^39.13 Thus, both must occur as one.

^39.14 This is like the big bang, the explosion of creation. It is all at once. All of Everything. Yet in relationship.

^39.15 What must occur now must occur between you and me. Your willingness is all that is required.

^39.16 Let me tell you what has occurred in the past so that you know not to respond to love in the same way again.

^39.17 Who I have been to you is who you have been to yourself. Remember the idea of projection. This is what projection does. It projects outward. It is different from extension in that extension is like a projection that remains at one with its source. Projection separates.

^39.18 You have separated me from you through your projection. And yet what you projected and called God, just as what you projected and named thousands of other “things,” you separated from yourself only in time and space. In time and space your projections became separate and other than you. This is what the world of time and space is. A world that is a projection that you have made, a world that has the shape and form, the character and value, the image and meaning, that you would give it. This is your universe. I have been, to you, the God of this universe.

^39.19 Thus your ideas of the universe and your ideas of me have been inseparable projections. As have your ideas of the universe and your ideas of your own self.

^39.20 Have I been a benevolent God in your universe? Then you have been benevolent and seen your universe as a benevolent universe.

^39.21 Have I been a judgmental God in your universe? Then you have been judgmental and lived in a judgmental world.

^39.22 Have I been a powerful God who can work miracles? Then you have been a powerful miracle worker.

^39.23 Have I been a distant God who does not show his love for you or others? Then you have been distant from yourself and those you love.

^39.24 Have I been a God you have sought and never found? Then you have not found yourself.

^39.25 Have I been a fair God? Then you have been fair and the world has treated you fairly.

^39.26 Have I been the God of your religion? Then you have been religious.

^39.27 Have I been a God of vengeance? Then you have been vengeful.

^39.28 Have I been a God of love? Then you have been loving.

^39.29 Have I been all of these? So, too, then, have you, and so too has your universe been.

^39.30 Has your God not been a god at all, but science, money, career, beauty, fame, celebrity, intellect? Then these things have become the content of who you are. Science, money, fame, celebrity, intellect or any other concept that has become your God can be a tough taskmaster, or a fair friend, loving or unloving, distance you from yourself and others or bring you closer to yourself and others. No god who has been projected is without attributes, even gods such as these.

^39.31 Have you had no god, no science, no beauty, no wealth, but only a meager and hopeless life? Then your god has been the god of defeat.

^39.32 Have you had no god, no science, no career, no fame, but only a life of hate and violence? Then your god has been the god of bitterness.

^39.33 Everyone has a god because everyone has a being and an identity for that being. Everyone carries the memory of I Am.

^39.34 What memory of I Am will you carry with you now that you know that I Am is who I am and who you are? What memory has this Course and this Dialogue returned to you? What memory is without attributes because it is who I Am and not a projection? Only love. What memory is not a memory, but your identity? Only love.

^39.35 Only that which is by nature without attributes can be one in being in union and relationship and individuate. Could you become your sister or your brother? A tree become a frog? The sun the moon? Yet love could become all of these, because love, by its nature, has no attributes. Love is creation’s genesis, the unattributable given the attributes of form.

^39.36 Who Am I to you? Only who you are to yourself. Now it is time for you to be not who you have been to yourself, but who you are, and have been, to me.

^39.37 Here is where we must return to paradox, to knowing who you are and who I Am and to constantly discovering who you are and who I Am, because who you are and who I Am are the same being in the constant creative tension of differentiating from one another.

^39.38 This is a time of knowing who you are and who I Am while at the same time, holding, or carrying, the mystery within you. That mystery is the tension of opposites. It is time and eternity. Love and hate. Good and evil. In other words, All and Nothing. It is the tension of individuation, a tension that has existed since the beginning of time, between time and eternity, between the attributeless love and the attribute-laden being. Between the one being of love and the many beings of form, between love’s extension and form’s projection.

^39.39 This is a time of knowing you are not on your own but that you must come into direct relationship with me on your own and of your own free will.

^39.40 All of these aspects of what stand between are also an aspect of the Christ in you.

^39.41 But breathe a sigh of relief, my beloved, for you do not have to learn all that the Christ in you learned. This is why we have had to enter the time of non-learning—so that you accept that you do not have to try to learn the unlearnable. This is why we have left the time of becoming behind, why you stand ready to enter the time of being in union and relationship. The Christ in you is the accomplished. The Christ in you is that which, upon this final acceptance, returns your wholeness to you.

^39.42 Realize your own expansion, the expansion that has taken place under the tutelage of Jesus, within the dialogue with Christ-consciousness, within the recesses of your heart where your relationship with love has never been severed. Realize your readiness. Proclaim your willingness.

^39.43 Realize that I love your smile, your teeth, the hair upon your head, the warm, smooth shape of your skull. Realize that I love your hands and that as you take another’s hand, you hold my own, and that I am with you as well as within you. Realize that I love all that you are, and that as you snarl in anger, cry in despair, hang your head in weariness, howl with laughter, I am with you and within you.

^39.44 You will realize as you enter union by means of the bridge of our direct relationship that you will not leave your humanity behind. You will realize that as you enter union by means of the bridge of our direct relationship that you will no longer see me as an inhuman God. You will know I am as human as are you and that you are as godly as am I.

^39.45 Do not expect perfection, only union. Do not expect sainthood, only Godhood. Do not expect the world, expect heaven. Do not expect answers, only knowing. Do not expect learning, only revelation. Do not expect all, without also expecting nothing. Expect to know that you hold both within yourself and that you hold me as I hold you.

^39.46 You will realize as you enter union that the tension of opposites is the individuation process and that you are the bridge. You are the bridge to me. I am the bridge to you. You are the bridge to your brothers and sisters. They are your bridge to yourself. You will also be the bridge between war and peace, sadness and joy, evil and good, sickness and health. You will turn anger to gladness, tears to laughter, and replace weariness with rest. But you will still know all of these. You will know the All of Everything and the emptiness of nothing and our relationship will bridge the distance and become cause and effect, means and end.

^39.47 You will realize that as we individuate we are in a constant state of creation as well as of creative tension. As we become individuated beings in union and relationship, we continuously create one another. We create from the field of the possible which must include everything.

^39.48 Do you not realize yet, that this is what we do and who we are? That we are creators? That we think, feel, know, and create. Creation is the manifestation of all we think, feel, know and come to know. Because we are constantly creating, we are constantly coming to know anew. This is eternity. A being in time wants to be known in time but can only be known in eternity. You now are the bridge between time and eternity.

^39.49 And so am I. As the Christ in you ceases to be a bridge, the Christ in you is not only integrated into you but integrated into me. I could no more reach across time and space without this relationship than could you. Only with our willingness joined, are we able to negate the need for intermediaries and be in relationship. Only with our willingness joined do we both become, welcome, and share, the Christ relationship to and with each other.

^39.50 This is who I know you to be and who you, in union with me, know me to be.