Teachings of Christ Mind

^4.1 Creation is not an aspect of this world alone. Creation is an aspect of the whole, the all of all, the alpha and the omega, eternity and infinity. It is not only life as you know it now, but life in all its aspects. It is life beyond death as well as life before birth and life during your time here. It is all one because it is all from the same Source.

^4.2 You are not only part of creation, but as has been said many times, a creator, and as such a continuing act of creation. This does not mean that creation is acted out upon you but that you are acted out upon creation. The idea of creation as something static would be completely contrary to the meaning of creation. Yet you continue to think that you stand apart from it and affect it not. This is consistent to the thinking that would tell you that you are at the mercy of fate. Fate and creation are hardly the same thing. You are at the mercy only of your own ego and only until you willingly let it go.

^4.3 A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love work hand-in-hand because the change of thinking taught within A Course in Miracles was a change of thinking about yourself. It attempted to dislodge the ego-mind that has provided you with an identity that you but think you are. A Course of Love then followed in order to reveal to you who you truly are. While you continue to act within the world as who you think you are rather than as who you are, you have not integrated these two pieces of learning.

^4.4 This is the stage of learning that you are at and what this Treatise addresses. This Treatise is attempting to show you how to live as who you are, how to act within the world as the new Self you have identified. Just like learning how to swim, it is a new way of movement. Just as moving through water is a way of movement quite inconsistent with that of moving on land, so too is the new way of acting out or expressing who you are quite inconsistent with the way in which you have formerly acted out or expressed who you are. This is, of course, because you formerly acted out of a set of conditions that corresponded to who you think you are rather than who you truly are.

^4.5 You will almost literally continue to “bump into” who you think you are as you complete the process of unlearning. It might be best explained by continuing with the swimming metaphor. If acting in the world as who you truly are is like swimming, bumping in to who you think you are could be likened to trying to move within water as you would on land. Why, when moving freely through the water would you suddenly try to move as if on land? The explanation could be as simple as forgetting where you are, or as complex as a sudden panic or fear brought on by any number of factors. Either way, the result would always be the same; a sudden change from ease of movement to struggle, from going with the flow to resistance.

^4.6 A first step then in learning to recognize when you are acting upon notions of who you think you are rather than on who you truly are, is the appearance of struggle or resistance. As a swimmer quickly learns, the only way to return to ease of movement is to cease to struggle or resist. The ability to let go of struggle is a learned ability for the swimmer and is a learned ability for you now as you journey back to your real Self. It requires remembrance, trust, and a wholehearted approach that allows the body, mind and heart to act in unison. This wholehearted approach is the condition from which unity is recognized. The water is not taken for granted but always recognized as the condition of the swimmer’s environment. You are no longer confined to the conditions of separation, my dear brothers and sisters, and this is what it is time for you to learn.

^4.7 This applies directly to your reaction to all that occurs within your life. Let us look now at your reaction to the idea put forth earlier of having a calling.

^4.8 Despite whatever way you currently have of identifying calling as it relates to you there are few among you who have not reacted to the idea of calling with two sets of feelings and thoughts. One set of thoughts and feelings contain all that one might attribute to the glad acceptance of a gift of high value, or in other words, a treasure. One set of thoughts and feelings contain all that one might attribute to the somewhat onerous onset of yet another responsibility, another obligation. One set of thoughts recognizes that something has been given. The other set recognizes that something has been asked. The wholehearted response is one that recognizes that giving and receiving are the same in truth.

^4.9 While two sets of thoughts and feelings exist, the only way to come to peace with them is through an acceptance of ambiguity. While an acceptance of ambiguity might seem preferable to conflict, an acceptance of ambiguity is a rejection of your power. What is required to claim your power is the willingness to move through the conflict of two opposing sets of thoughts and feelings to the place of unity.

^4.10 Thus a first step in our work with regard to calling is recognizing the dualistic nature of your thoughts and feelings. A second step is willingness to move past both ambiguity and conflict to union.

^4.11 This requires an examination of your specific notions concerning calling as you apply them to yourself. Whether you feel that you have a specific calling, no calling, or many callings, matters not at this juncture. What matters is that you think it does. You think it matters because you compare and judge rather than accept.

^4.12 You who have so recently felt the peace of true acceptance are not asked to leave that peace to go in search of calling but are rather asked to listen from within that peace to what you feel called to do. This is not about the past and all those things that at one time or another you thought would bring you fulfillment. This is about recognizing who you are now. This is not a quick fix that calls you to what might have been and tells you that if you had but acted earlier you would have had the life you’ve dreamed of and maybe it is not too late. This is not about examining where the various calls you responded to previously have led you. All these notions are concerned with who you have thought yourself to be, not with who you are. They do not recognize the difference between thinking and knowing.

^4.13 Being who you are is what you are called to do. You are here asked to live a life as seamless as that of the birds of the air. You are asked to live a life where there is no division between who you are and what you do. This place of no division is the place of unity.

^4.14 Now you may feel as if this Treatise has led around in a circle, bringing you back only to contemplate again the acceptance of where you are now. However, to accept where you are is not the same as accepting who you are. Accepting where you are, as if it is a static place at which you have arrived, is not the goal that has been set. Accepting who you are includes acceptance of creation. The acceptance of creation is the acceptance of change and growth but neither of these are concepts that you understand truly. Change is not negative and growth does not imply lack.

^4.15 You must be beginning to see that your thought processes, the very thought processes that tell you hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute how to perceive of and live in your world, are still often based on old concepts. This does not mean you have not changed nor that you are in need of accomplishment rather than the already accomplished. What this means is that you are still in need of unlearning, of undoing old patterns of thought. This is atonement and it is continuous and ongoing until it is no longer needed. Anything continuous and ongoing is part of creation. Thus the very act of undoing old patterns is an act of creation. As the old is undone, a vacuum is not created. The new is created.

^4.16 You are in the process of unmaking what you have made. The old structure is coming down so that the new, what might be likened to a building with no frame, can rise.

^4.17 This process too is union for it is giving and receiving as one although you recognize it not as such. It is not a process of waiting until one thing is accomplished for another to begin. What is happening now is happening in unison. As the old goes, the new arrives. There is no time-lapse in this learning and so it is a condition of miracle readiness. The old is replaced by the new simultaneously.

^4.18 This is why you do not have to “wait” to hear your calling even though some of you may feel as if you are in a time of waiting for you hear no such call. The call is to be who you are and this is happening at lightning speed, a speed that cannot be measured because of its simultaneous nature. As was said within A Course of Love, time is but a measurement of the “time” it takes for learning to occur. As this notion of time dissolves, the state of miracle-readiness becomes your natural state.

^4.19 While this adjustment of your thinking may not seem to be the miracle that it truly is, as your awareness of it grows, it is going to raise it to a level you will come to think of as an ability. As your old way of responding to life causes you to struggle or resist and the new way of thinking replaces that old pattern with a new pattern of response, you will begin to see that each new response is the answer to a call that your heart alone can hear. As I have said, your heart has now become your eyes and ears. Your heart hears only one call, one voice, the language of one Source—that of unity.