Teachings of Christ Mind

Good evening.

I want you to notice your Mind and your Being at the moment. And I want you to pay attention to what you’ve done. You stepped out of your daily activity to come over here. In effect, you set aside the things you’re normally concerned with, involved with. And then you socialized for a bit. And then we began by having a quiet time. And during the quiet time you stepped out of the social realm and chose to become quiet—contemplative, in one form or another. And you did it with the intention of being ready to listen—give your attention to the contents of the Course and to me.

Again, I want you to just pay attention to the atmosphere within you at this moment—what is present and what’s absent that is normally present most of the rest of the time.

The reason I’m bringing this up is you can do all of this without coming over here. You can go into the bedroom or the bathroom or someplace where you know you won’t be interrupted for a few a minutes, and you can sit down, disengage from the current activities and the current concerns, and you can choose for those few minutes to become as quiet as possible with the intent to be ready to listen. And you can ask me anything you want and I will answer you—whether you hear it or not. I want you to know that I will answer you whether you have managed to be able to hear me yet or not—always I answer.

I encourage you to find it valuable at odd times, when you’re at home or at the office, wherever, to go through exactly the process you’ve gone through this evening, because it is the way you prepare yourself for being able to hear. You must, through whatever means you find helpful, become still. And then you must express a desire to know something, to have an answer, to have a clarity revealed. And then be still and listen.

It’s not any harder to do at home than it has been to do it here tonight. And it’s worth doing at least once a day, if you’re not already in touch with your guidance, just to get into the habit of being willing to set aside your conscious intent to attend to your concerns, and instead let your intent be to reach out, to invite and to let in whatever is needed. Don’t work at it any more than you worked at it tonight.

If you aren’t in touch with your guidance solidly, the frequent process that I have just described will enhance the quality of your attentiveness, the quality of your quietness and therefore your ability to hear. If you wish to connect with your Guide rather than me, by all means let that be where you give your attention, because your Guide is just as Awake as I am. And your Guide will answer you as I would answer you. We all have your best interest at heart. And our intent is to convey to you what the Father would have you know, not what we think you ought to know, but what the Father would have you know so that your connection with the Father may begin to be established as your conscious experience. And we all know how to do this equally well.

Okay. We will begin with Miracle Principle 42. And let us begin.

It’s inevitable when you experience the sudden shift of perception that you can’t account for, that you realize that if you can’t account for it and you didn’t provide it to yourself, it must have come from somewhere. And therefore, the event of the penetration of your awareness of something you are not accountable for is inescapable proof that you are not alone and that the one, or ones you are with relate to you in a way that is utterly beneficial, and therefore utterly trustworthy. Not trustworthy because I told you it’s trustworthy, but because the experience of it demonstrates itself to be trustworthy, so it breaks the isolation.

Continue…

Well, I’m going to ask a question. Who would like to describe to me something that is definitely not a state of miracle-readiness?

Pretty smart.

That’s the “right answer,” yes. But I want a personal… tell me a way that you… tell me something that you have done that constitutes a state of the absence of miracle-readiness.

Well, I think you used up all the reasons. [audience laughter, Raj laughing] You’re correct, indeed. A state of mind that is not miracle-ready is one that is confident that the worst will happen, or that something less than the best will happen, that the situation is hopeless and so on. Yes.

So a state of miracle-readiness would be?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Anyone else?

These are examples of a mind not miracle-ready.

Yes. Now what would be an example of miracle-readiness?

For the unexpected.

Yes, for the unexpected.

Yes. Another way of putting it is that a miracle-ready state of mind is one in which faithlessness is not being practiced. And I do want to point out that faith does not have to be practiced in order for one to be miracle-ready. One simply has to be neglecting to practice faithlessness. And faithlessness is when you say, “Everything is going wrong and it’s not going to change,” or “My situation is awful and I’m stuck.” You see?

That is correct. Anyone else?

Anyone else? Just a moment.

So you might say that a miracle-ready mind is one which is attentive, without designs in place. Attention is a form of curiosity. And when you know what you’re going to do, you’re not paying attention.

You thought I asked you…

That’s right.

[That’s] what you are taught. Yes.

The majority of the tension that everyone feels comes from that fact that they are behaving as though they know, when they don’t. And they know they don’t and so they…

That is correct. And the likelihood that your… the fact that you’re being a fake is likely to be discovered, that causes ongoing tension.

So why not accept what you’ve known all along? The one thing you’ve known is that you don’t know… trying to know. And you stop behaving as though you do know, and you find your peace with [sound cut off here]… What happens? That’s when you become attentive, because you abandoned your plans. You abandoned the techniques that you use to appear to know when you don’t know. And that’s when you become receptive. That’s when your mind is available for the penetration of truth to occur, for insight to occur, for a sudden shift of perception to occur.

But that’s the mutually-agreed-upon definitions. If you have mutually agreed to the definitions and meanings of things, then you must not break that contract, else you’ll be on the outside and everyone will let you know that you’re not in the group anymore and that you are not accepted. And that what you have become by virtue of not honoring the mutual agreement is unacceptable, despicable, insane,

… that you are no longer worthy of respect. And these are the ways that those who are abiding by the mutually-agreed-upon definitions try to cause you to feel shame in order to coerce you back into the group. But, mind you, as long as you’re in the group, as long as you’re committed to the mutually-agreed-upon definitions, you’re not paying attention.

It’s an essential practice.

Exactly. Yes.

So to not be miracle-ready would be to devote yourself to assumptions.

Exactly, exactly. To be miracle-ready then means to abandon all assumptions, to set all assumptions aside for a moment even and say, “Aside from all of my assumptions, Father, what is the truth here?” or, “Aside from all of my assumptions of what will work and what won’t work, what’s the appropriate next step for me?” You see? You must be willing for a moment to abandon your habitual assumptions, because, again, your assumptions are an active form of practicing faithlessness. Faithlessness isn’t just hopelessness. Faithlessness is aggressive. Faithlessness is assertive. There’s nothing passive about faithlessness. In other words, it’s willful.

Yes, it is. So to set aside faithlessness means to set aside willfulness, to set aside your confidences in good or bad. If you are confident as to how a healing is going to occur, your confidence may well blind you to the way the healing is really going to happen the way God is unfolding it. You see? So confidences, positive or negative, constitute a shield that protects you against the direct spontaneous experience of the experience of God, which is going to be utterly original—unexpected, but always not shocking. It will always be comprehensible to you. The influx of insight, the sudden shift of perception won’t be a shift into the unbelievable, it won’t be a shift into incomprehensible, that would be an experience of chaos for you. It will always be a shift into that which is so utterly comprehensible and so utterly simple that you will say, “Why didn’t I see that before?” You see what I’m saying?

Yes, indeed.

In quote “in real life” unquote.

Now, before having the dream, whenever you thought of this person, you thought of him the way he has always been.

Exactly.

And when you do that, you are practicing faithlessness. You are experiencing a spontaneous confidence in your perception of him, your current…

Right.

Yes.

I just want you to [understand whatever] perceptions are of another that are not being gathered on the spot, connection with that person constitutes a practiced resistance to seeing him with fresh eyes. And there’s no innocence in that. I do not mean that there is guilt in that, but there’s no innocence in it. In other words, when I speak of looking with innocent eyes, I mean to look with eyes that aren’t being colored by anything… your past experience of him, the fact that you happen to be thinking of him at “that time of the month” when everything looks bad, or whatever. You see what I mean?

Looking with innocence means being willing for a moment to look with curiosity to see the unexpected, to see what you haven’t been seeing, and specifically, to see what God would have you see. If you are not looking with curiosity, you are looking with some confidence at what you choose to see. And whatever it is you are choosing to see, whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant, does not constitute being attentive to the unknown, the unexpected. You see?

And this is the way you keep others bound to the mutually-agreed-upon definitions—not just you, every single one of you. Because you may all see yourselves as starting to crawl out of the crab barrel and, you know, abandon the status quo.

Yes. And yet as you climb out, you continue to see that guy as a bastard, or that woman as a whatever, and because she always has been and I… You see? And you continue to hold others to the rules of the mutually-agreed-upon.

That’s correct. So just be aware that, as the Bobos comic strip says, “I’ve seen the enemy and…”

If things need to change, instead of trying to change your mind, just start practicing curiosity. That in itself will be the change that breaks the habit. You break the habit by doing something new, not by working on the habit. You see what I’m saying?

Okay. Let’s continue.

It all depends on how honest the statement is. If it’s a truly honest statement, you say it and it’s not part of a ploy. It’s not part of a manipulation. It’s not a justification for being pissed off. It’s not a justification for being frustrated. It’s a simple honest acknowledgment of the truth that you are willing to abide with and be with without the acknowledgment being a step toward a goal you’re seeking.

Yes. But if you are in effect saying, “I’m at the bottom of the barrel. I’m acknowledging I’m at the bottom of the barrel. I don’t like being at the bottom of the barrel.” Even if you aren’t trying to get out of the… even if you have abandoned trying to get out of the barrel but are sitting in the bottom of the barrel grousing about it, you haven’t accepted being at the bottom of the barrel. When you accept being at the bottom of the barrel, that indeed you don’t know, and you stop fighting against it, and you let yourself be at peace in it, that’s when the bottom of the barrel drops out.

Insight occurs.

Yes. The other thing is that when… well, first of all, being at the bottom of the barrel is just a definition. Your bottom of the barrel is not someone else’s bottom of the barrel. And what makes it the bottom of the barrel for you is that you are in a [situation/circumstance] that you have done everything to avoid being in.

The bottom of the barrel is in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven. And when you stop resisting being in the bottom of the barrel, new definition can occur to you so that you can begin to see the God in the things that you had been avoiding, because you had been taught to avoid them. The bottom of the barrel is always your leading edge. What you have been taught constitutes success is everything that will keep you from the bottom of the barrel, and therefore will keep you from the threshold of enlightenment.

It all depends on how disgusting you have been taught that that place is.

Indeed.

Again, it depends on what the threshold of discovery is violating. And if a threshold of discovery is violating something that you have been severely taught is the road to hell, or the epitome of un-respectability, then that threshold will be uncomfortable. But once you move through it, you experience the freedom that you are asking about right now.

Well, let’s put it this way. Some thresholds are like your moving up here and having raccoons that were a pain in the “you-know-what.” They were a pain in the “you-know-what” because of the definitions and meanings you were giving the situation. And your being present where they were in your experience long enough, being present with them long enough, provided you with the opportunity, was another way to look at this. But until you looked at it differently, you were miserable, and they were pesky. And once you saw that there was another way to look at this, because you were around it long enough to have a slow shift of perception, rather than a sudden shift of perception, and you made the shift based off being pesky. They didn’t go away, but they stopped being pesky. So that was a gentle form of being at the bottom of the barrel.

There are other forms of being at the bottom of the barrel that are more dramatic and the “Aha!” is more abrupt, an [sound cut off here]… of perception. But understand that every crossing of a threshold is going to constitute a violation of a concept that you have been holding with commitment. How difficult that crossing of the threshold is for you depends upon how strenuously you resist moving over the threshold.

Miracle-readiness involves a willingness to look at the unlovable, the unforgivable, the disgusting, with a willingness to see with new eyes, a curiosity to see what on earth of the Kingdom of Heaven this particular thing is, instead of what you’ve been conditioned to believe it is. That’s miracle-readiness.

If there’s only one thing that confronts you because there’s only one thing going on and it’s the Kingdom of Heaven, or Reality, with a capital “R”, or Creation Itself, the Presence of God manifest, then there truly is nothing else for you to do than to look at it with a curiosity, positive curiosity, not fear, and an inquisitiveness to see just how on earth this could possibly be the Kingdom of Heaven, or some aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let there be a little genuine curiosity to hear an answer that violates whatever it is you’re so confident about that makes what you’re looking at appear to obviously not be the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s an example of miracle-readiness. You see?

So it’s a practice. You all practice not being miracle-ready by your commitment to how you think things are. And it’s, as I said, it’s very assertive and aggressive. Okay. Miracle-readiness is the abandoning of that, even momentarily. That’s why sudden shifts of consciousness or of perception occur. They occur many times because in a moment you were momentarily distracted from your commitments. You were for a moment inattentive to the reinforcement of your beliefs. And in that little moment, there was a chink in your armor, in your defense, and it could get through. That’s why I said you don’t have to practice faith-full-ness. All you have to do is for a moment stop practice faith-less-ness.

That doesn’t mean that the act of faithfulness that you described is not meaningful. But it must be understood that it’s not essential to the experience of the miracle. What the one thing that is essential is the momentary abandonment of the practice of faithlessness. That is essential. Okay.

Sure.

Indeed. Indeed that’s another way of describing exactly what we have been speaking about.

Well, another way of putting it is that the human condition is the result of trying to climb out of the barrel.

That’s the practicing of faithlessness. To allow oneself to be at the bottom of the barrel is the abandonment of the practice of faithlessness.

Well, but be careful that you are not providing the new definition.

Exactly, which happens spontaneously when you abandon attempting to get out of the barrel.

Yes. So indeed the faith-full-ness isn’t a form of confidence in something yet to happen, but is an expression of trust in allowing yourself to be fully present in the bottom of the barrel without any further attempt to get out. And without using the apparent awfulness of being at the bottom of the barrel as a way of pointing to someone else and saying, “See what you have made of me.” That is… in other words, you don’t use being at the bottom of the barrel for any purpose, else you’re still not paying attention, you’re busy carrying out some act of will for some self-seeking purpose.

So faithfulness involves allowing yourself to abide with peace in the bottom of the barrel. Abiding in peace at the bottom of the barrel constitutes the relinquishment of self-assertion or willfulness. In the absence of willfulness humility is the state of mind. In the state of mind of humility penetration of the Father’s Will can occur and transformation follows—the miracle occurs.

So I’m describing a fine point. Faithfulness does not mean faithfulness in something, in a goal or faithfulness in what God will be or faithfulness in what you have been told the nature of things is. It’s a faithfulness in the value of no longer asserting self-will.

This is very good. But, the miracle can occur whether that conscious acknowledgment occurs or not.

Yes. So I am not contradicting you, but I do want it to be clear that the person to whom it doesn’t occur to think that is not lost.

He doesn’t have to know that it’s the Nature of the Universe to have his best interest at heart. But in the fighting against being where he is and in the presence of humility, that realization can occur to him or the experience of the miracle can occur… that in itself reveals what you just said.

That is correct. That is correct.

And then what happens is that your thresholds… you move over your thresholds or through the bottoms of your barrels more gracefully.

You are welcome.

Okay. Number 44…

Now the question is does one have to have an inner awareness of Christ before he can experience the miracle? The answer is no.

But there is one essential thing. Whether one even knows of the existence of the Christ or not, if one is at the bottom of his barrel and gives up the attempt to get out of the barrel, and in the experience of his discomfort reaches out to the unknown, whether he calls it God or whether he just reaches out to a generalized point that in his mind he feels must have been responsible for the Creation of the Universe, the fact that he reaches outside of any supposed capacity he thinks he has to solve the problem does express an awareness of something to reach out to that’s bigger than him. And that is enough to do the trick. And when the experience comes of healing and regeneration and insight that allows his life to turn around, whether he yet knows that it’s the Christ that was responsible, and whether he yet knows that his improved sense of himself is an improved awareness of himself as the Christ, whether he’s aware of this or not, he’s aware perhaps wordlessly and without concepts of an essential divinity to everything that he was unaware of before.

Now the fact is that one domino had to fall before other dominoes could fall. And it is because I, while, we’ll say incarnated, while in the same experience you are in, chose consciously not to embellish the Presence of God that my Being is, by adding to it a lot of personality and adding to it a willingness to join in mutually-agreed-upon definitions. In my unwillingness, let’s put it this way, in my unwillingness to pretend that there was more present where I was—was being—while in the same experience that every one of you are in, that constituted the toppling of the first domino. And therefore, any other dominoes that fall—do not take this wrong—have me to thank. In other words, someone started the ball rolling. Someone started the dominoes falling.

And so the experience of the domino—that they are—falling is a demonstration of my connection with him or her. And it’s also a demonstration of the Atonement, whether that individual has any words or concepts of the sort that we’re talking about right now.

What you’ve got to understand is that we’re not learning about A Course in Miracles. What if you went somewhere in the Amazon where there were a tribe of Indians whom you couldn’t communicate with at all because you didn’t know their language, are you at a loss to be the Christ? Are you at a loss to be the presence that triggers illumination?

Again though, let’s say you go there and you do know the language and they know nothing of the principles of the Course, is it necessary for you to, first of all, teach them Christianity so that they might understand what the words in the Course are relating to or referring to before you can start teaching the words of the Course? And is that what it’s about? No.

What this is about, what we’re reading here is about learning to become miracle-ready, we’ll say. Which means learning with the least amount of folderol and language and concepts to accept a basic premise that you didn’t create yourself and Something did, and that you can’t be responsible for yourself and Something is. And to cause you to have enough curiosity to devalue what you think and believe and are committed to enough to be curious to know if there’s another point of view which you desire to know of from whatever this Is that is responsible for you so that you might stand at the threshold of the unknown and begin to have a actual relationship with God.

And if you are doing that, then you can relate wordlessly with your Brother or you can relate without the necessity of, well, let’s say, creating new mutually-agreed-upon definitions of what this book means before they can Wake up or be blessed by an immediate and intimate experience of God themselves, whatever that means to them. You see? Okay.

Let’s continue…

Yes. This really doesn’t need to be discussed. It simply says the Truth. That is a simple fact. I will say one thing: Even if you experience the miracle and three weeks later you have re-entrenched yourselves in the position you took before the miracle happened, the benefit to everyone is not undone. The realization, which you may have covered up once again nevertheless blessed everyone because minds are joined.

Okay…

Miracles are shifts of perception which I introduce when you [are] defenseless. Well, I very often introduce them when you are defensive, but when you are defensive they cannot penetrate. The introduction of miracles is forever constant, I will put it that way, but they promote shifts of consciousness. How shall I put it? They promote shifts of consciousness that are not greater than you can bear, that are not greater than you can stand in receipt of without having to change so radically that you wouldn’t recognize yourself anymore. They are not meant to Wake you up in one great miracle act. They honor you where you are by stretching you as much as you can bear to be stretched until you can bear to be stretched more. That is all I will say at the moment about this.

Yes, you may.

… medium…

Revelation comes directly from God.

Okay.

Not.

Yes, I do.

And you must remember that I have said the Holy Spirit is your very own divinity held in trust while you dally with the ego.

The communication of the Holy Spirit is the conveyance to you of the remembrance of who you Are. The miracle promotes shifts of perception that reveal to you the nature of Being and promote your defenseless involvement with your Brothers and Sisters so that you as the Expression of Love might find the willingness to abandon your stance as a defense mechanism against a hostile world and brothers who are out to get everything they can from you at your expense. As you make this shift from a defense mechanism to one who is willing to look with innocent eyes, and therefore, be Love embodied, you become defenseless against the remembrance of who you Are. And in that defenselessness, who you divinely Are—in other words, the Holy Spirit—can introduce the deep remembrance of who you Are so that that becomes embodied, re-embodied as your Identity.

No. It is gradual. But the more defenseless you become, the less of a defense mechanism you enact in your experience. The more innocent you become, the softer you become, the more receptive you become. And you could say, that this provides an ambiance in your Being that allows the Holy Spirit to illuminate to you what you divinely Are in a manner that you can reincorporate and own as You. And so less of what you divinely Are remains disowned. That is the simplest way I can put it at the moment.

Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. There is a point at which the rest of the journey is precipitated suddenly, but that comes as you have the repeated experience of miracles that cause there to be a little greater confidence in the fact that the Universe is intent upon blessing you, so that you move over your thresholds more gracefully.

I certainly hope so. I have the greatest confidence. And I am being facetious here. The fact is that the answer to your question is, yes.

Well, let’s put it this way. It’s the only time in history it’s going to happen.

The simple fact is that there is a precipitous movement already happening. Just don’t become preoccupied with it, because what will cause the precipitousness of it to accelerate is the actual practice of attentiveness that each of you brings into play today.

And you know what? Don’t any of you waste your time being attentive so that you can bring about the end of the illusion for all mankind, because then you will be busy on your commitment to your project. And the only thing that will do it is going to be a curiosity to know what God is being right where this petal on the rose is, right where the rose is, right where your Sister is next to you, right where your Brother is next to you, and abandoning your old habitual ways of dealing with each other in the here and now. You’re going to have to do the work. You see what I’m saying?

You’re going to have care enough to look with fresh eyes at everybody so that you are miracle-ready. Why? So that the end of the illusion can come for all of mankind? No. So that you might remember your divine function, so that you might no longer suffer from insanity, so that you might find every conscious moment a moment of joy and bliss because you deserve nothing less. And you will have nothing less when you stop presenting more than what God is being right where you are.

Yes, or believing what you are thinking about him.

That’s what I mean, and persisting no matter how much they might resist. And persisting no matter how hard it seems to you for you to overcome your commitment to seeing him as less than what God is being.

You would be amazed at how many people are upset because I said that Hitler is Awake. “Well, he can’t possibly have paid enough. He cannot possibly have suffered enough to atone for the awfulness of what he did.”

And each of you have people in your experience that you look at and say, “I will not be their friend because they did me dirt. And until I feel that they have paid enough for it, I refuse to love them.” In other words, I refuse to fulfill my function as the Presence of Love. And in that act, separate yourself from your full experience of your divinity and your inseparableness from God and your capacity to be Awake.

So all of you still hold someone responsible for something and you are demanding justice. And until justice is gotten, you will refuse to be the divine one that you Are and fulfill your function as Love. You will refuse to hang in with them insisting upon being willing to have the Father infuse you with the inspiration it takes to find your capacity to love them renewed, which would bless them and which would bless you, because you’re no longer standing on your jugular vein, if I may put it this way, through which your capacity to be the Son or Daughter of God flows. You get it?

You’re much better to keep it under control. Um hmm.

I understand.

I’m not minimizing it.

That’s why the shift of perception, even the sudden shift of perception, doesn’t take you further than you can bear. You are all conditioned to believe that control is needed or chaos will result. But what you don’t understand is that the state you’re in when you are keeping everything under control is what is called the human condition that you’re all suffering from. You’re all… you’re in the chaos.

So what happens is that the little punctures in the wall of the membrane that all of this Love is behind, occur so that you can be bathed in little bits of it that don’t overwhelm you and that convey to you experientially that the experience of this Love flowing is safe, is nurturing to you, is stabilizing to you and actually ends up blessing everyone so that you relax a little bit more and more punctures can occur.

But I promise you one thing. We can’t override your will. We can encourage you to lessen the intensity with which you exercise it. You will never be overwhelmed with your divinity. But, it’s absolutely essential that someone encourage you firmly and consistently and repetitively to dare to entrust yourself to the Love that’s behind the membrane. Else you would go on indefinitely keeping yourself protected against it, and therefore against your conscious experience of your wholeness and the harmony and the beauty and the bliss of the totality of Being, of all of Creation.

When that uncontrollable, humungous Presence of Love… it may come out in a gush, but the stream will slow down once it’s not having to move against the pressure of your resistance, and there will be such order and such harmony that it will be awesome or let’s put it this way, it would be awesome if it weren’t for the fact that in the experience of it, you’ll say, “Ah. Yeah. This is me. This is who I’ve always been. I’m at Home. I’m not at odds with myself anymore. I’m not at odds with my world anymore. Everywhere I look I see me. Everywhere I look I see my wholeness. My Brothers and my Sisters and all of God’s Creation really is some part of me. It’s the infinitude of the totality of what I Am because I am the totality of what God is, because in God expressing Himself He held nothing back. And so all of what God is, is what I Am.”

Well, it really isn’t chaos that you’re afraid of. It is really the fear of the loss of control. Because control is what the ego sense of self has used to ensure that its insane frame of mind cannot be violated.

So miracle-mindedness or miracle-readiness is a state in which you become curious about and you invite experiences that go beyond the boundaries that your ego has set. As I’ve said before, it’s asking for help. And you can ask for help in the midst of great distress or you can ask for help in the midst of peace while you’re sitting in the garden saying, “God, what must be the incredible beauty and divine Meaning of this ladybug I see crawling on the rosebush? What is it? What is the more that has to be infinitely more than I’m perceiving about this ladybug?”

Okay.

You might think we’re never going to get through these fifty miracle principles. [audience laughter] But we are going to call it a night for tonight. And we will continue next week—48, 49, 50—and we’ll see whether we can finish those up in one evening.

I love you.