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Raj: I think you are beginning to see, Paul, that all of this that we have been engaged in for the past, almost nine years, has been relative to you—much of it an indirect education, an indirect movement of you into the real elements of your Being while distracting you from the fact that it was specifically changing you by means of doing the conversations with others.5 Now it is indeed time for it to be brought home to you that I am, and have been, engaged in promoting your Awakening, your healing, as it were, of a false sense of self.
As I said earlier, our dialoguing like this does constitute your connection with Reality, with Sanity, and you are now beginning to grasp why it is that the one who is dreaming must reach out, and why one’s Guide cannot enforce his or her presence upon the one guided. The one being guided has been engaging in the denial of Reality, the effective blocking of It, and that resistance cannot be penetrated. It isn’t actually a shell, but an insistence upon ignoring. And no one can penetrate an act of ignoring—you could say, an act of ignorance.
This does, indeed, cause it to seem to be entirely up to you, which, of course, does not compute with the ego’s suggestion that That which is divine has ultimate power to penetrate illusion, and therefore if one’s Guide is not penetrating illusion, then we must not be Who we say we are. That is simply another part of the defense, another part of the justification for ignore-ance.
Therefore, the more consistently you dialogue with me, the more consistently you are letting in the possibility of an experience of Reality different from what you have decided reality is going to be for you. And that is the beginning of Sanity, of waking up! Your practice of Listening is your practice of coming out from seclusion in your own private, tiny sense of self and world.
What is significant here, and what has been significant about the past nine years is that you have engaged in Listening. You have not engaged in as much dialoguing as would have been helpful, but by virtue of your willingness to allow me to address others, you have put yourself in the position of relating to “the Real world,” to Reality. You are now able to consider looking at the fact that Reality is where you Are, and that you are different from the perceptions you have held so dear about yourself called the ego, the sidekick, “bumbling Paul,”—a personal, private sense of self that has very little to do with Reality. You are able to embrace that concept, which is actually the Fact, without significant fear—reluctance maybe, resistance, yes, but with little fear, and now with some active curiosity.
I will tell you that it will be important for you not to think too much, because your thinking is habitual. I mean by that, it is unoriginal. It is caught in the past. It substantiates old concepts and fears, which, because of their great familiarity, can distract you for a time, and thus delay your coming into your right Mind.
The experience of personality is, indeed, the effective block to the experience of Individuality, of Identity. Again—and this is imperative now—if you are not “channeling” me, then be in touch with me constantly. I will not be imposed upon by your constantly dialoguing with me, even in the midst of your relating to others and engaging in daily activities.
I would encourage you to be like a little child, unfamiliar with its new surroundings, who is constantly saying, “What is this?” “What is that?” “What is this?” “What is that?” For the most part, it does not bug the parents, because they know they are there to help convey the meaning as it is understood. And likewise, I am here in the position of being able to respond to your questions, “What is this?” “What is that?” “What does this really mean?” “What does that really mean?” “What is going on here?”
These questions are not an imposition upon me. Indeed, they provide the connection and the means by which you relinquish the great affection you have for your ego, and reclaim your conscious experience of your Identity—and, of course, ultimately, our ability to related to each other as Who we Are and always have been, without your interposing either a complete act of ignoring that causes me to seem to be nonexistent in your life, or a half-hearted ignoring which is constituted of biasing my meaning so as to cause it to appear to be what you need it to be in order to remain secure in your ignorance.
As I have said before, the only thing going on is Reality, and the only thing confronting you is Reality, and everything that you experience has Meaning in terms of what it Really is. But the definitions you give to it in order to secure your ignorance of its Real meaning causes it to appear to be unlike Reality. And, likewise, it causes your unreal perception of it to seem to be real, and worthy of your continued honoring.
Now, I am not giving you a teaching here for you to grasp and understand and employ! I am giving you an experience which you are giving yourself permission to have by virtue of not blocking me so significantly that you cannot hear me. And the experience is one that is not occurring from within the ignorance. It is not originating within the false sense of Paul—the sidekick, if you will—but is arising out of the little bit of you that is in your right Mind, and therefore is experiencing a little bit of what is Really going on.
It is the experience of being Who you Are that I am promoting, and not an “intellectual knowledge.” Indeed, to quote Susan, if I were to sit here and say “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and you did not miss one moment of the “blahs,” but were attentive to them, the essential dynamics of Awakening would be present, because you could not hear the “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” from within your defenses. Thus the experience of being in your right Mind, even though it would not be complete, would be Actual, and that is the way the weight gets shifted from the unreal sidekick that seems real to the real Friend that seems unreal, and the real You that has seemed nonexistent.
Bring me with you wherever you go. Remain actively in touch with me at all times, whether you are relaying what I am saying or just silently speaking with me. Use me to reflect back to you the Reality that you are in the middle of, and Which it is your Birthright to be experiencing truly without my help.
I do not mind if you say, “Are you there?” I will say, “Yes.” And, if over the course of a half an hour you ask me that thirty times, it is all right, because if you are asking me if I am there and I say, “Yes,” you are having the conscious experience of being there also, even though the fullness of it may not be registering with you.
Again I am going to reiterate: Avoid thinking! If you want to have the stimulation of insight, don’t think. Listen! And listen to me. Then the amplifications which you expect to arrive at through thinking, but will not, will be present in the nature of the dialogue, the connection. Then the specifics that you would hope to arrive at through thinking will come as Knowing, and further substantiate the shift of weight of emphasis of attention to you, and thus disengage you further from the distorted self-perception that you have thought was really you.
Again: If you want to understand, don’t think. Listen. Dialogue. Actively speak with me. Actively be with me. This is another way of saying, actively let me in, because to the degree that you let me in, you let yourself into your right Mind, and your full Sanity, and your full embrace of what is Really going on—Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Movement of Creation, the experience of unity, integrity.
Assume nothing—just as you asked me whether it was appropriate to keep Michael’s appointment, even though your conditioning said, “Of course, it is appropriate. The time was set. I have to be there. I should be there. It is appropriate for me to be there.” Well, you didn’t Know whether it was appropriate for you to be there. It was a concept that you ought to be there, and that concept was based upon education and training which embodied certain protocols. There are no protocols in Being. There is, however, the integrated orderliness of being absolutely appropriate, and that means being unquestioningly congruent with the Movement of God. That means that you may or may not do what you said you were going to do, because your allegiance is to congruence rather than cooperation.
You are right. You are still not getting it. But, I will tell you something: What you mean is, you are not getting an intellectual grasp of it. But, to the degree that you continue to talk [with me], whether you are intellectually getting it or not, you again are being the willingness and the invitation to experiencing yourself in your right Mind by operating, even in this limited fashion, as you in your right Mind. You, as your ego, cannot talk to me at all. It is You, in your real Being, who is talking with me and hearing me. And so you are substantiating your Sanity, your Wholeness, the Reality of You, whether you are “getting it” or not, whether you are allowing a Conversation with Raj to occur or not.
Now, it is not necessary to be in a meditative state. At this point, it is helpful to meditate when the line of communication seems to be filled with static. It is the means of clearing the “sound” of resistance from the line of communication. Our connection is, indeed, definite, and you can hear me whether your ego is erupting or not.
Remember—and this is the key of our conversation today—it is the act of being in dialogue, it is the event of being connected, and not what happens during the connection, which constitutes the bridge that allows you to move from the ego sense of self to the Conscious experience of Who You Are. Indeed, you can ask me to simply say, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” when you are afraid of the content of what you might hear, because it isn’t the content but the connection that constitutes the bridge.
You see, from the three-dimensional-only frame of reference, from the ego’s vantage point, all you ever experience is a sense of what is going on, and that is a far cry from the experience of what is going on. A sense of what is going on is a conceptualization, rather than a direct experience. If that conceptualization is believed to be an experience, then misunderstanding is the result. But it is always a misunderstanding of something Real, as I have said before. I have also said before that you will not understand your way into the Kingdom of Heaven, because the fantasy partner, since it has no actual existence, has no means of understanding the Reality which it is the active denial of.
You are intelligence, and I am intelligence, and our experience of each other will be one of intelligence and Meaning. But that does not mean that it will be one of understanding, as you conceive that word to be. It will be an experience of Knowing, which you are already familiar with.
When we are conversing, when we are connecting, the experience will be ultimately intelligent. But just because it is intelligent doesn’t mean you need to engage the attempt to understand it, because, Paul, you are not going to use it—the understanding—for the purpose of improving your ability to deny Reality. In other words, you will not be using it to improve the capacities of the sidekick, the fantasy partner, that you have thought was you. This is a fine point of distinction, here, but it is one that you are grasping experientially, which allows you to more easily give permission to indulge in letting yourself into an experience which your personal sense of self can only conceive of as fantasy.
So, you see, it could seem as though I am giving you something to think about. Just abide with it. Just be with it, without thinking. But do not be with it to the exclusion of continuing to dialogue with me.
Now, as long as you are listening, I am going to ask you to do something. I am going to make a request of you. I would like to make a demand of you. I will put it more softly, though. Will you stay in touch with me? Will you constantly at least say, “Hello,” so that I may say, “Hello” back? Will you allow me to be the presence of friendship? Will you care enough to want a friend—enough to reach out to see if your friend is, indeed, still present? Because, you see, I love you. And I want to speak to you with you Knowing that you are You.
Paul: I am surprised at the reluctance, the feeling that I will not be able to do it consistently. But, I will say, yes.
It is amazing to me that it does not seem more important to me than it does.
Raj: Paul, do not be too amazed. That is a wonderful distraction.
Don’t think about this. Will you do it? Without thinking about your answer, will you make a point of connecting with me at all times?
Paul: Yes.
Raj: I want you to make a sticker and put it on the face of your computer monitor. The words on it are to say, “Do you want a friend?” Do you want a friend?
How self-sufficient are you that you don’t need a friend? Not a fantasy friend. A real friend. Don’t think about that question, just feel it, and put that sticker on your monitor.
Paul: I will.
Raj: Now, we are back to the feeling of the need for relief, aren’t we, Paul? Which simply means you feel a need to withdraw. We may stop talking in this fashion, but you don’t have to stop checking to see if I am here, and listening for my response. Just notice the feeling of the need for withdrawal into privateness—without judgment. But be aware of it. I will tell you that you can tolerate the active connection longer, and I want you to remember that the reason we are talking is because of your choice. It is not because I am forcing myself upon you. You do not need to withdraw from me. That is the excuse, but the excuse can only make sense if you can be distracted from the fact that you reached out for the connection.
You are not, in fact, withdrawing from my embrace of you. You are withdrawing into privateness that does not allow you to experience the fact that you are embracing always! The suggestion is that you are shutting me out. But know that you are shutting yourself in—self-protective withdrawal into isolation for security that doesn’t constitute security, but which constitutes incarceration.
We will end here. I am not going to argue.
You see, I know that you will be checking in. I am actively, presently, constantly here. And, no, I am not a 24-hour round-the-clock psychiatric nurse! I am your brother.
