Teachings of Christ Mind

^10.1 A Course of Love talked much of remembering. Now we must talk about forgetting. While nothing need be given up to enter the House of Truth, or to encounter the truth, you must realize that while meaninglessness exists within your mind, you will be working still to replace it with meaning rather than allowing the meaning that exists in everything to be remembered or known. Thus are more practical lessons needed in regard to the life of the body that you now will let serve our cause of creating heaven on earth.

^10.2 The first lesson is offered as an exercise in forgetting. As often as is possible within your daily life, I ask you to forget as much of what you have learned as you are able.

^10.3 The first thing I ask you to forget is your need to find a place where blame can be placed. You who have been waiting to get to the “hard part” of this Course may find it here. The idea of blame is incongruous with the idea of a benevolent Creator and a benevolent creation and as such is the only blasphemy. To blame yourself is as senseless as blaming others and your inclination to place blame upon yourself must be given up as well. When it is said that you are the cause it is not meant that you are to blame for anything. Although many a child has been blamed for his or her failure to learn, blame of yourself is as uncalled for as is blaming a child for lessons yet to be learned.

^10.4 Taking away the idea of placing blame will change your thought processes beyond your wildest imagining. You will be surprised at how many times you recognize blame where before you saw it not, just as in the beginning you did not recognize all that you had feared. But just as you have, from recognizing what it is you fear, been able to bring those concerns to love, you can now do so with blame. All you need do is catch yourself in the act of placing blame and say to yourself, “I was placing blame again and I choose to do so no longer.” You need not spend any more time with blame than this and I offer you no word or sentiment to replace it. I ask you simply to take the thought of it from your mind as quickly as it enters.

^10.5 You would find this easier if a replacement were offered, for ridding your mind of blame will leave an empty space you will long to fill. This act of consciously choosing not to place blame will short-circuit the many thoughts that you would attach to this idea, thoughts that have formed a chain-reaction of situations and events, feelings and behaviors that you had no realization were birthed from the idea of blame. Although I offer it not as a replacement, what you will find will come in the place of blame is an idea of acceptance of what is, an idea that is needed now.

^10.6 Acceptance of what is, is acceptance that whatever is happening in the present moment is a gift and a lesson. What comes as a lesson may not seem like a gift, but all lessons are gifts. While some of these lessons may come in forms that make them seem like lessons of old, they will not be repeats of lessons that have come before. They will not be lessons that you find difficult or distressing if you accept them as lessons and realize that all lessons are gifts. What you have struggled to learn in the past you have struggled with only because you did not realize the nature of the situation as a lesson or recognize that all lessons are gifts.

^10.7 This relates to our exercise on forgetting for you must forget the ways in which you have formerly reacted to every situation. Not one situation coming to you now will be a repeat of the past. How can it be when the past was lived in the house of illusion and the present is lived in the House of Truth? Being cognizant of this is the only way that the simultaneous learning and unlearning that was spoken of earlier will be able to be realized. You have passed through your time of unlearning what the past but seemed to teach you. Now, while life may seem much unchanged in its outward appearance, it is up to you to become aware of the total change that has, in truth, taken place.

^10.8 Along with forgetting there is another practice that will help you to become aware of this change. While much the same as forgetting it will seem to have a different process in practice. This is the practice of ceasing to listen to the voice of the ego. While the ego is gone, many of its messages remain within your thoughts, like echoes of a former time. These thoughts are remembered messages and so must, like all the rest, be forgotten. The process of forgetting these thought patterns will be only slightly different from forgetting your former reactions to people and situations and much like forgetting to place blame.

^10.9 The first step in being able to forget such thoughts is in recognizing them as separate and distinct from the thoughts of your right mind or Christ-mind. This will be easy because the thoughts of the ego-mind were always harsh with you or with others. The Christ-mind and the thoughts that come from the voice of the Christ-mind will be gentle. The thoughts of the ego-mind will come as disguises to certainty. Given just a little practice, these disguises will be easily seen through and the uncertainty behind them revealed. Thoughts of the Christ-mind will hold a certainty that cannot be disguised. Remember that all doubt is doubt about yourself and that you are no longer called to doubt yourself. Your Self is now your Christ-Self.

^10.10 You will feel for a while as if constant certainty is impossible. This feeling will remain only as long as you remember your past uncertainty. Uncertainty, like all the rest of the ego’s thought system, was learned. Your true Self has no cause for uncertainty. Thus you are called, as well, to forget the uncertainty of the past.

^10.11 While these may seem like remedial lessons, they are not. You are no longer called to a time of uncertainty to learn through contrast the lessons of certainty. Realize that this is how you have learned in the past and that all that is from the past is what you are being called to forget. Thus when uncertainty arises, you need but remind yourself that the time for uncertainty is past. Uncertainty will not now come to teach you lessons you have already learned but will only visit you as an echo from the past. It is a habit, a pattern of the old thought system. All you must do is not listen to it. Its voice will not be gentle or full of love. Its voice will hold the unmistakable edge of fear.

^10.12 Remember that, while gentle, these are and will, be practical lessons that simply come to show you a new way of living, the way of living in the House of Truth. You will not need to learn a foreign language to dwell in this new house, but you will need to learn what will at first seem to you a foreign thought system. This thought system recognizes no fear or judgment, no uncertainty or doubt, no contrast and no division. It is the thought system of unity. It is your true thought system and will be easily remembered once you begin to let it automatically replace the old.

^10.13 Think of this, for a moment, as you would a learned language. If you learned Spanish as a child and then learned and spoke English for many years, you might believe your Spanish to be forgotten. However, if you were to return to a dwelling where those within it spoke only Spanish, soon your knowledge of Spanish would return. For a short while you would have two languages constantly running through your mind and you would be translating one into the other. But eventually, if this situation went on for many years, you might think you had forgotten your ability to understand English.

^10.14 What we are doing now is much like translating the learned thought system of the ego into the thought system of the Christ-Self that you but think you have forgotten. As you dwell in the House of Truth, if you do not resist unlearning the ego thought system, the thought system of your true Self will quite simply return to your memory. You will soon forget the thought system of the ego-self even though, when encountering those who still use that thought system, you will be able to communicate with them. Yet the ease with which you communicate with them will diminish over time. You will find yourself continuously teaching the language, if you will, of the new thought system, for you will have no desire to communicate with anything less.

^10.15 You will find that your new language will gather people to you in much the way people will gravitate toward beautiful music. Many will be eager to learn what you have remembered because they will realize that the memory of this language exists within them as well. It will come naturally to you to welcome these back to the common language of the mind and heart joined in unity. You will desire more than anything for everyone you encounter to share this remembered language. Some, however, will be resistant.

^10.16 This is why we have called these lessons in forgetting practical lessons for the life of the body. They are lessons that will soon be translated in another way. These lessons that will enter your mind and heart will, of necessity, need to be translated into the language of the body as well. While your human form remains, you will be dwelling among those in human form. While the house of illusion still exists, you will continue to encounter those who exist within it. While you continue to encounter those who exist in the house of illusion you will continue to encounter temptations of the human experience. These are what we will now address.