Teachings of Christ Mind

^40.1 My Beloved,

^40.2 Through your extension of your being into union, you complete a circuit, a circle of wholeness, and I become who you are to me. Thus giving and receiving are one. Cause and effect complete.

^40.3 All that being is was extended into who you are.

^40.4 Although this is a difficult concept to get across with the words that are available, I would like you to understand that when I am love being, I am being without attributes—love being in union and relationship. I am the anchor that holds all that has taken on attributes within the embrace of the attributelessness of love. This is why my being has been capable of accepting your projections—because I am attributeless being. I am love, being.

^40.5 I did not make you in my image. I created you in love because it is the nature of a being of love to extend. Realize that it is only when being is added to love—only when love is in relationship with being—that love is given its nature. Realize that it is only when love is in relationship with being that it attains this quality that we are calling extension.

^40.6 Love of itself has no nature. It does not do anything. It just is, and its isness is what I hold, or anchor within myself, and that which Christ bridges through relationship. Your attributes are the attributes of being in relationship. You came into the world, into form, as a being in relationship. The application of your being to relationship, like the application of being to love, gives relationships their nature, including your relationship with yourself.

^40.7 Through the application of your being to relationship you have taken on distinguishers through which you became a different or distinct being, a being different or distinct from who I am, and who others are. These are the attributes of your being, what you might call your personality or even who you are. As has been said before, you saw these attributes of being as making you separate rather than distinct from who I am being and who others are being. Your attempt at individuation and extension, an attempt consistent with the nature of your being, failed only because you experienced separation rather than differentiation, and fear rather than love.

^40.8 When I created, I extended my being, a being of love, into form. Through that extension, I became I Am. I became instantly because there was no opposing tension—only love and an idea that entered love, of love’s extension. As soon as I became I Am there also became all I am not, the Christ connection between all I Am and all I am not, and an I Am, called the son, who could become who I Am and continue to extend who I Am.

^40.9 When you create, you create as my relation. You extend your being into form. That form then becomes. It becomes who you are. Both beings and thus both extensions are the same. The differences have arisen through becoming. For with the birth of I Am came the birth of all I am not and the need to differentiate. In separation you have striven against the “opposing” force of union in order to become separate. In seeing the self as separate you have known fear and have been forced to reconcile fear with love. Now, in coming back to relationship and union with me you have realized that you are not separate and now have striven against the “opposing” force of separation. With the acceptance of the Christ in you, you are returned to relationship and need no longer strive against the “opposing” force of separation, for you no longer know it. The creative tension that now remains in our relationship is the tension of individuation or the individuation and differentiation process.

^40.10 This tension, or process, is not bad. There is nothing wrong with this individuation process or the creative tension that has been in existence since the beginning of time. It is creation in the making. What will be created now, and the individuation that will occur now, will hold all the power of your experience as well as all the power of your longing for return. This will be a great power that you carry within you as you return to love and to level ground as who I Am being.

^40.11 Lest you do not fully understand, this might be more easily grasped if we talk for just a moment of specifics, such as art or music or literature, religion or politics or science. Jesus or Martin Luther or Muhammad may have been said to have created religions, but these creations, in their becoming took on attributes, as all creations do once they are extended into form and time. This is the nature of creation. Creation is about giving attributes to the attributeless. Giving form to the formless. An artist might be moved to her art by a feeling of love so intense she could never put words, music, or paint together in such a way as to express it—she knows as she begins that she but tries to bring form to the formless. Why? Because the nature of a being of love is to extend. The nature of a being of love is to bring form to the formless—to bring love into form.

^40.12 Love has no attributes, no form, no conditions, no nature. It simply is. It was said earlier that being is as Love is. This was a reference to my being, to my being love. I have reconfirmed this statement and said I am the anchor that holds all that has taken on attributes within the embrace of the attributelessness of love. This is why my being has been capable of accepting your projections—because I am attributeless being. I am love, being. But in being God, as in being human, being takes on attributes. As was said earlier, this was meant to provide for the individuation process rather than the process of separation. In being God, I Am. In being love there is no I Am, but only love being.

^40.13 Does this help you understand? Help you understand that you are being, and that you are also being some one? You have been being separate—a separate being with attributes. Now you are being in union and relationship—an individuated being with attributes. As a separate being, your attributes were based on fear. As a being in union and relationship, your attributes are based on love.

^40.14 Recall what was said earlier: Christ-consciousness is the awareness of existence through relationship. It is not God. It is not man. It is the relationship that allows the awareness that God is everything. It has been called wisdom, Sophia, spirit. It is that without which God would not know God. It is that which differentiates All from nothing. Because it is that which differentiates, it is that which has taken form as well as that from which form arose. It is the expression of oneness in relationship with Its Self.

^40.15 The difference between you and me is that I am being God and also love, being. This is why I am all and nothing, the attribute-laden God and the attributeless love. This is why it can be rightly said that God is Love and Love is God. But I am also an extension of love, just as you are. This is all I Am means. There is no I Am except through love’s extension. How does love extend? Through relationship.

^40.16 Only in my relationship to you am I God. Only in your relationship to me are you who you are in truth.

^40.17 Just as you have had many “separate” relationships that in their totality would define your life, so have I, as God, had many “separate” relationships with you and your brothers and sisters, relationships that define who you have thought me to be. Because these relationships are so different, many of you have gone on quests to find the “one, true, God.” Do you not see that this would be like going on a quest to find the “one, true, relationship” in your own life? As if you could only be mother or father, daughter or son, husband or wife, sister or brother, friend or foe? You are who you are in relationship. I Am who I Am in relationship as well.

^40.18 You would perhaps beg to differ now, and ask of me, “Are you not who you are ‘separately’ from relationship?” Separately from relationship, there is no I Am, but only love, being.

^40.19 You would perhaps beg to differ here, and say that regardless of what I say, you are who you are outside of your relationships. You are not just the relationships that you hold. You are more than a mother, daughter, sister, friend. You are an “I” that stands separate from these relationships.

^40.20 This is true. You know this “I” because you have a relationship with yourself. If you did not have a Self to have a relationship with, you would not know that you have an identity apart from the separate identities of your separate relationships.

^40.21 This Self with whom you have a relationship is love’s extension. It is the Self you long to be as well as the Self you are. This paradox has kept you as intrigued with the idea of self as with the idea of God. You have searched for a “one, true, self” as you have searched for a “one, true, God.” This search only makes sense to the separated self, who believes all things are separate and thus believes that its self, as well as its God, must be separate from what it is being. It doesn’t understand, until joining with the Christ Self, before becoming one with holy relationship itself, that relationship is an identity.

^40.22 God is a relationship with love. This relationship with love is all that provides for the I Am of God.

^40.23 As a separate being, you have been in a relationship with fear. This relationship with fear is all that has provided the “I” of the separated self. But because you exist as an extension of love, you have always held within you the Christ, who is the relationship with love. This is why individuation has become the conflict between, or the tension of, opposites. Because you have relationship with both fear and love.

^40.24 Now, as you recognize, acknowledge, and accept the Christ as the Self you have been in relationship with, you are returned to relationship with me and with love. You end your separated state and become for the final time. You “become” being in union and relationship.

^40.25 But what does this mean?

^40.26 How often have you said or felt, when confronted with some insensitivity toward yourself, especially that of being “left out,” unrecognized, or unwelcome: “Don’t you know that I am an individual? That I have feelings?” Are you saying this now, as you contemplate leaving behind who you have been for being who you are to me?

^40.27 Perhaps you have noticed that in yesterday’s discussion of who I Am to you and today’s discussion of who you are to me, that one has not been discussed without the other. This would be impossible. Because we are who we are in relationship to one another.

^40.28 Is this really so difficult, so improbable, so discomfiting to accept? Does it become less difficult if you remember who I Am? That I Am everything being love? This is not the same as saying you are who you are in relationship to your mother, and your mother who she is in relationship to you. This is saying that you are who you are in relationship to all that is love. This is saying that this is who you are and that this is who I Am.

^40.29 Further, this is saying that who you are being in relationship to all that is love is up to you. That through the application of your thinking, feeling, creating, and knowing being to all that you are in relationship with, you extend who you are. This is saying that through the application of your being to all that you are in relationship with you create. You give attributes and you take on attributes. You individuate your being in union and relationship. And in union and relationship, you create only from love.

^40.30 Who you are being in union and relationship with me, is me, as well as you. This is the power of differentiation in union and relationship, the demonstration of oneness that was heralded in the time of Jesus Christ.

^40.31 With this ability to individuate in unity and relationship comes the greatest gift of all. It is the end of becoming and the beginning of being who you are. With this gift comes the ability to be known and to know. Can you give up the ideal of your separated self in order to be known? In order to know?

^40.32 What has been the strongest feeling that you have had as you have read this Course and the related materials? Has it not been a feeling of being known? Has this Course not addressed the questions, the longing, the doubts that you would have, before now, called uniquely yours? Has it not spoken to you as if it knows the secrets of your heart? As if it were written just for you? So it was.

^40.33 You are my beloved. We have just shared a dialogue. Your heart has spoken to me, and I have responded. Love has responded. How, now, will you respond to love?

^40.34 When you turn the last page, will you cry tears of sadness that our dialogue is complete, that you will hear my voice no more? Or will you brave your own relationship with me? Will you turn to your brother and hear my voice in him? Will you be my voice as you turn to your sister? Will you carry the fullness of our relationship within you? Will you be one with me, and in being one with me never feel alone again? Will you let the emptiness of separation leave you once and for all?

^40.35 Will you continue this dialogue with me and with each other? Will you carry it with you to level ground—to the place of completion and demonstration of who you are being?

^40.36 Will you be the relationship that returns love to all who share this world with you?