Teachings of Christ Mind

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Library of Christ Mind Teachings
A Course Of Love

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11.1 The Christ in you is relationship. As you were told within the pages of A Course of Love, you are a being who exists in relationship. This is how you were created and how you remain. This is the truth of who you are and even, in your own terms, a fact of your existence. Earlier this was pointed out to you so that you would come to accept who you are and so that you would extend forgiveness to yourself and all you hold responsible for this truth. This forgiveness has now extended in two distinct ways. First in forgiving your Creator for creating you in such a way, and second in forgiving a world that has taught you to want to be other than who you are. Now our aim is to show you how to integrate the belief that you are a being who exists in relationship into the living of your life.

11.2 Even though you no longer want to be other than who you are, and even though you now have a much clearer understanding of who you are, you will find living as who you are in the world difficult as long as you perceive of others as living under the old rules, the laws of man rather than the laws of God or love. It will seem all but impossible to live in relationship when those around you are still convinced of their separation and still seeking to glorify it. You will still perceive of the world as operating under the laws of man and as long as you perceive of the world in such a way you will be forced to live by its laws. This will cause struggle and, as you now know that struggle of any kind alerts you to the presence of ego, you will continue to do battle with the ego rather than leaving it forever behind.

11.3 Doing battle with the ego has become the preoccupation of many gifted and learned people. This is the classic battle revealed in all myths and tales of war and strife. It is the battle that in your imaginings has extended even to the angels. The ego is the dragon that must be slain, the evil of the despot to be toppled, the one-on-one conflict of all heroes who would take sides and do battle.

11.4 You are called to peace, a peace that begins and ends with ceasing to do battle with the ego. As the ego has been the known identity of your existence until now, it will, in a sense, be forever with you, much as the body that is your form will remain with you until your death. But while your perception of your body as your identity and your home has given way to an idea of it as a form that can be of service to you and your expression, there is no service the ego can do you. The ego is the one untruth, given many names and many faces and the only thing given by you the power to do battle with the truth, or with God. Remember now and always that you and God are one and that when you invite to do battle with God you but battle yourself.

11.5 A God of love does not do battle, for truth needs no protection. The truth is not threatened by untruth. The truth simply exists as love exists and as you exist. When we say something is, this is what it is of which we speak. When we say all truth is generalizable, all needs are shared, all knowing is shared, this is of what it is we speak.

11.6 All cannot be threatened by nothing.

11.7 This is why we spent a fair amount of time addressing needs in a way we had not previously addressed them. For only with your understanding that all that is real is shared does the ego lose its power. The ego was made from the belief in separation and all that followed from it. Thus your true identity must be recreated from the belief in unity that is inherent in the acceptance that you are a being who exists in relationship. Separation is all that opposes relationship, and the ego is all that opposes your true identity.

11.8 Yet, as has already been said, the ego, having been with you from your earliest remembering, will continue to be with you, in the way that all learned behaviors and ideas are with you, until it is totally replaced by new learning. Learning thus must complement your new beliefs, the ultimate goal of this learning being the end of the need for beliefs at all.

11.9 This learning, then, must be seen for what it is. It is the holiest of work and the final evidence of means and end being the same. Your devotion to this learning must now be complete, your willingness total, your way of learning that of a mind and heart joined in wholeheartedness.

11.10 Realize that when you think that this total reversal of thought concerning yourself and your world will be difficult you are listening to your ego. The Christ in you knows not of difficulty.

11.11 How can it be that we speak both of the Christ in you and of Christ as being relationship itself? How can it be that we have spoken of Christ being both wholly human and wholly divine? These statements can only be true if there is no division between you and relationship, if there is no division between the human and the divine.

11.12 Separate things must still exist in relationship. This is the key to understanding the truth of these statements. For even while you have chosen separation, this choice did not preclude the existence of relationship and it is in relationship that union still exists. If you had been able to choose separation without relationship, then the image of yourself the ego has put forth would have been a true image. But as life cannot exist apart from relationship, this choice was not available and did not overturn the laws of God. The ego is but your belief that this has occurred; that what could never be true has become the truth.

11.13 So let us now, for the sake of continued learning, speak of separation in a new way. Let us speak of separation as a state that exists rather than as a state that does not exist. If you exist as a separate being but your being is contingent upon relationship for its existence, is this not the same thing as saying that you are a being who exists in relationship? Is this not similar to saying that a living human body does not exist without its heart? Is not what is essential to a living body a fact of that body’s existence? While this illustration is not attempting to say that life does not exist apart from the body, it is attempting to reveal, in an easily understandable way, that there is a condition under which you are here and able to experience life as a separate being. That condition is relationship and relationship is what keeps you forever one with your Creator.

11.14 Here that relationship is being called Christ in order to keep the holiness and importance of this relationship forever and foremost in your mind. Here, that relationship has been given a name, as we have given your relationship with your separate identity the name of ego. Here, we are asking you to choose the one real relationship and to vanquish the one unreal relationship.

11.15 It is from these two separate ideas of relationship that the concept of doing battle has emerged. This concept of doing battle can only remain if you remain convinced that the ego is real. As long as you believe that the ego is real, you will feel as if there are two identities that exist within you and you will see yourself as doing battle in countless ways and forms. There will never actually be a battle going on between Christ and the ego, but you will perceive that such battles exist. You will be prone to calling upon the Christ as your higher self to defend you against the ego-self. This is highly akin to your former notion of prayer and assumes that there is something real that you need defense against or saving from. This is how the notion of Christ as savior arose. This is the belief in a good self and a bad self with Christ acting as conscience and defender of good and the ego acting as devil and defender of evil. This is nonsense, or but a form of the insanity that is prevalent still, even in your thinking. You do not realize that this source of conflict is the source of all conflict that seems real to you within your world. This battle of good and evil, while you believe in it still, will be demonstrated before you just as it has been from time immemorial. Is this what you would have continue? Does this not but reveal to you a fraction of the power of your thinking and its ability to shape the world you see?

11.16 An alternative to this insanity exists. The alternative is removing all faith from your belief in the ego-self. The alternative is replacing belief in an ego-self with belief in a Christ-Self. Total replacement. As long as you hang on to both identities the world will not change and you will not know who you are. You may think you know, and you may waste much time in perceived battles, valiantly fighting for good to win out over evil. But this is not the new way and the lack of value from this type of effort can surely now be seen.

11.17 I have said that the ego will remain with you as the identity you have learned since birth until you replace it with new learning. While you have learned much here, you may be thinking that your ego is still very much with you, and wondering, if you have not yet replaced it, how this miracle will come about. This replacement is indeed a miracle and the very miracle you have been prepared for within this course of learning.



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