Table of Contents
Good evening. And as always I welcome everyone who is also joining us on the internet.
The statement “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord” is a misperception by which one assigns his own “evil” past to God. The “evil” past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it and He does not maintain it. God does not believe in retribution. His Mind does not create that way. He does not hold your “evil” deeds against you. Is it likely that He would hold them against me? Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumption is, and how entirely it arises from projection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related errors, including the belief that God rejected Adam and forced him out of the Garden of Eden.1
You see the idea that God penalizes you for something you are entirely incapable of actually doing can cause one to come to this ridiculous conclusion that God rejected Adam, and therefore you as well. And so you presently are cast out. You’re in this dream of existence because of what Adam did. It’s a tricky ploy of the ego because it distracts you from the easy capacity to realize that you’re quote “on the outside” unquote because of a choice you are currently making and not because of anything God has done.
Let me ask you this. If you are doing a mathematical equation and you introduce an incorrect element into the equation, you come up with the wrong answer.
Now, if this equation is related to an experiment in chemistry, your incorrect answer could result in, let us say, an explosion occurring. And you could come to the insane conclusion that the explosion was your punishment for introducing an incorrect element into the equation as though the principle of mathematics was just waiting to nail you, when it has nothing to do with judgment placed upon you. When you introduce an incorrect element into an equation, you naturally come up with an incorrect answer. It’s not a punishment. It’s just evidence that you have made a mistake.
If you aren’t experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven right now as the Kingdom of Heaven, and you are instead thinking it’s the world and universe, it’s not because God kicked you out by virtue of kicking Adam out of the Garden of Eden, the Kingdom of Heaven, but because at this moment you’re introducing a mutually-agreed-upon definition that is at odds with Reality that you’re committed to. That’s all. It causes you to see in a flawed manner. No one has laid that on you but yourself. And the simple fact is that your commitment to a mutually-agreed-upon definition that is flawed isn’t changing the Kingdom of Heaven at all. So, you haven’t accomplished the impossible which would be to actually change the Kingdom of Heaven by introducing a flawed perception. You see?
So in the Old Testament it talks about the God of Abraham being a jealous and a wrathful and a vengeful God. He also instructs the Israelites to go out and slay the Canaanites so He can … they can take over their land, etc. And so the general theme of the Old Testament, if I recall it correctly, is based …
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Exactly. Exactly. So, two questions are: Did the Old Testament serve a purpose in its time and then it was replaced by the Gospel of Love? Or was it erroneous from the beginning and should be negated entirely?
I have said before that rules are for those who have forgotten how to Love. The ten commandments were rules. And they were, if I may put it this way, the best rules that could be embraced by the mindset at that time that would provide longevity to the individuals who needed to arrive at a point of remembering Love. So they were absolutely and completely valuable at the time. Does that answer your question?
Yes, it does. Thank you.
For those who still do not remember how to Love, those rules called the ten commandments are still valuable in helping you to, I’m going to say, mechanically by virtue of rules achieving a certain semblance of peace and harmony so that in the absence of living out of pure survival, there is the opportunity, the space, if you will, the relative safety that allows you to go within, to become still, to become unprotected, undefended, so that you can turn toward the Altar.
Now, again so we don’t become ungrounded. If you have introduced a flawed perception into your experience of the Kingdom of Heaven that isn’t actually changing the Kingdom of Heaven in any way, but is most definitely altering your experience of it, you cannot say that the result of the flawed perception doesn’t matter because it hasn’t actually changed anything about the Kingdom of Heaven, it hasn’t altered God or His Creation in any way, therefore, you are not guilty of anything that God would punish you for, and therefore, everything is all right.
If there’s a flawed perception in the equation, correction of it needs to occur. Why? So that you are no longer misperceiving the Kingdom of Heaven and behaving as though you are and can be the Christ unconsciously. It’s a matter of coming back into your own Sanity. Also, it’s a matter of knowing the Truth so that there is no sense of suffering that you or anyone else seems to be experiencing. Correction of the misperception must occur, else you’re not awake yet.
So again I want to bring home the point that until correction has occurred, you are not in a position to say, “None of this is real. None of the misperceptions that I have had have actually changed God or Reality in any way, and therefore, I am not subject to punishment from God because I haven’t actually succeeded in doing anything wrong, and therefore, I need do nothing. I can just continue introducing the misperception into my life, and it’s okay.” You cannot do that. If you could, there would be no Course In Miracles. If you could, there would have been no need for me to show up two thousand years ago. The whole point of this is that correction needs to be made and it’s time to get about the task of making the correction.
If correction didn’t need to be made, then tell me what benefit it would be to look at somebody who’s acting hatefully and say, “Well, that’s a call for Love. I recognize it. That’s a call for Love,” and then you go on about your business. “I mean who needs to do anything about it? Yeah, it’s a call for Love. But you know, he’s not really hurting anything in his misbehaving. Yeah. Yeah. I got this. A lot of calls for Love showing up all over the place. Isn’t that fascinating? Mmmm.” And you pick up your cup of tea and have another sip and notice how beautiful the day is and what a nice breeze there is and a … You see what I’m saying? A call for Love calls for Love to be embodied, so that what was inhibiting the one calling for Love from expressing and embodying Love himself can dissolve and free that one up to embody Love, instead of a call for Love, instead of needing Love to be able to extend Love.
So let’s be very clear. It’s all about correction occurring. And until correction has occurred, you’re still in the dream. And if you don’t even think correction is called for, you’re stuck in the dream. And your stuckness contributes to the stuckness of your Brothers and Sisters as well because you don’t do any of this by yourself.
Yes?
There has been a question regarding what the embodiment of the Love should or should not look like. Could you please elaborate on that?
Should or shouldn’t. Here we get into rules and the effects of rules known ahead of time before the Act of Love occurs. The Atonement is an Act of Love, right? And the Atonement is an Act of Love that not one of you will know anything about until you let yourself into that place where God infills you with the inspiration that overflows from you and spontaneously blesses your Brother. Afterwards, you can say, “This is what it looked like.” But you cannot say beforehand what it should look like. And I will make this very clear. You better be ready and willing for what it does look like to be a surprise to you, and perhaps be completely unlike anything you expected. Do you know why? Because if that’s not the way you approach it, you are going to have some bias as to what it will look like and that it really won’t be at all surprising to you because you’re so full of love already that you know that it’s not going to look certain ways. And right there you have twisted or biased your listening, your attentiveness, and whatever does come through will have to twist itself way through your bias. And if it doesn’t fit your bias, you won’t recognize it and your opportunity to engage in an Act of Love, the Atonement, simply won’t happen.
Now, I said in the Course, you are the salvation of the world and I’m going to ask you, how well have you done this past week being the salvation of the world? I’m not going to ask for an answer. [audience laughter] But I ask the question because the majority of you forgot to think about that. I’m not saying that you forgot to think about turning toward the Altar, but I am saying that you didn’t remember the fullness of what it means to turn toward the Altar. What it means is that you become the salvation of the world.
Fear in you might say, “Well that’s a pretty tall order.” But in the absence of fear, it’s seen as Fulfillment of Purpose. It’s seen as the greatness of your Essential Being, the maximal fullness of the gift you have to bring. You are the salvation of the world. At the least you can see that your willingness to abandon your well-established definitions of everything puts you in a position of your seeing your world with less bias. And if you were able to be completely free of your agreed-upon-definitions and biases, you would be able to see the world and universe as the Kingdom of Heaven that it actually is. You would be able to see totally clearly. So in that sense you can grasp just how completely you govern what you’re experiencing. In that sense you can see that you are the salvation of the world you’re seeing. Do you see that?
So, what you could miss out on is the fact that when you are seeing the world through the eyes of salvation, perfectly in other words, you have withdrawn from the mutually-agreed-upon definitions that constitute the joining that is mutual dreaming and you have lessened the dream. And you also have become I’m going to call it a maximal agent for change because everything that comes from you is pure Love that answers the call for Love from others with Love, which lays the groundwork for everyone that you’re in touch with to have an experience of more safety that allows them to trust more and for everyone in the Brotherhood who is still dreaming dreams that you are not in one-on-one contact that you know of. Everyone is blessed as well. And so your simple clarity in which the world you see is saved, is seen without bias, demonstrates the fact that you are the salvation of the world, and it blesses everyone else as well. So it’s more than just you having a clearer picture of everything.
Okay, let’s continue …
It is also why you may believe from time to time that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but it is always possible to twist symbols around if you wish.
Ain’t that the truth! I want you to realize that it’s your habit, every single one of you, it’s your habit to twist symbols around because that’s how you maintain the mutually-agreed-upon definitions.
So it’s not only always possible to twist symbols around if you wish, you wish to do it all the time. And what I’m engaged in with you and what the Course is engaged in with you is to inspire you to try abandoning twisting the symbols around, and daring to look at things with fresh eyes, even if it’s just for a moment, even if it’s just a momentary wish not to twist the symbols. Okay?
I just want you to understand that it’s not only always possible to twist symbols around if you wish, at the present time you wish to twist them all the time. You’re breaking that habit, but don’t believe that you’ve left the habit behind yet. This is part of the correction that’s needed of being in a new way, which means perceiving in a new way and behaving on the basis of the new perception in a new way. Not by design. “Oh, we ought to be like this. We should be like that.” But whatever way it is, when you’re filled with the inspiration of Clarity and Truth and Love that infills you when you turn toward the Altar, and embodying that, whatever it is, whether it’s a surprise to you or not.
Okay …
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear, and frightened people can be vicious. Sacrificing in any way is a violation of my injunction that you should be merciful even as your Father in Heaven is merciful. It has been hard for many Christians to realize that this applies to themselves. Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. The result is learning failure.
Is anyone unclear about that? God doesn’t terrorize you. I don’t terrorize you. And here we’re specifically talking about terrorizing with the threat of sacrifice. Remember that we’re talking about one of the last fears that will present itself to you, that being that God is a whimsical, flip-flop God who can be loving and hateful, who can provide relief as well as suffering for your own good, for your own growth. The suggestion that you will have to sacrifice is a form of terrorizing. God’s Law for you is Fulfillment, not sacrifice. God’s Law for you is Fulfillment, not sacrifice. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom, the whole ball of wax. All that He is being He gives to you as You.
That’s like the laws of mathematics. They’re not there so that if you break them, you will be penalized. It’s just the way things work—the perfect way things work. It’s God’s Law that Fulfillment is your Birthright. If God is going to enforce anything, it’s going to be the Experience of that Fulfillment. So you could say God is on your side, so much on your side that you can’t really succeed at getting on another side yourself where you’re on your own deciding what things will be and what they won’t be, what they are and what they aren’t, and making up your own rules.
Continue …
I have been correctly referred to as “the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world,” but those who represent the lamb as blood-stained do not understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood, it is a very simple symbol that speaks of my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together symbolize that strength and innocence are not in conflict, but naturally live in peace.
Okay. I am the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. Sounds pretty special. Wow! Or the ego could make it sound pretty special. But you know what? It’s more a State of Being than an individuality with a role. When you choose for your peace and you go within and you find that your peace is available to you, you find freedom from fear. And freedom from fear is a direct experience of your innocence, your purity. It is your experience of being the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world by virtue of your not magnifying the sins of the world, but rather having turned from your own private, distorted perceptions which have scared you to death, and turning toward God by choosing for peace when your ego has said there’s no justification for it and it’s unavailable to you.
The next sentence says:
The lion and the lamb lying down together symbolize that strength and innocence are not in conflict, but naturally live in peace.
When you choose for your peace and you move into it, you find that you are at once strong and innocent. The experience of innocence and therefore guiltlessness means that you are undivided and indivisible. And that which is indivisible has no weaknesses. It has pure integrity, and pure integrity is like, for lack of better words, structural strength. It’s like a very well-built car that has structural integrity that doesn’t rattle or shake or shimmy, and you feel its integrity when you drive it.
So, please, don’t attribute great significance to me being the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. You each hold within you the capacity and the obligation to be the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world you’re seeing, so that you are the salvation of the world you’re seeing, and thereby an agent for change that transforms anyone else who is still dreaming dreams.
Continue …
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” is another way of saying the same thing. A pure mind knows the truth and this is its strength. It does not confuse destruction with innocence because it associates innocence with strength, not with weakness.
And you know what? It associates it not through a process of thinking but as a direct, inner experience. Why do I say this? Because I want to keep you focused on the experience of turning toward the Altar, the experience of hearing the Voice for Truth, the Presence of God infilling you so that your behavior is a spontaneous outcome of that influx, rather than a result of a consciously directed, thought-out choice.
Okay.
So the behavior then can take on a number of different forms and be appropriate if we have turned towards the Altar first and we’re inspired.
Absolutely. Are your fingerprints identical to anyone else in the world? No.
No.
That’s how original the Expression of God is.
That could be a mistake to look at a form and say that was not an inspired Act of God because it should not look like such-and-such.
That is quite correct because you know what? You could just happen to be the one that someone else looks at and says, “That is not a legitimate form there.” Absolutely.
No one else can make your gift. No one else can make the Gift of the Presence Of God That God Is Being right there where you are. Therefore, your Presence has to be unique. God never stops to repeat Himself. “Behold, I make all things new.”
How do you recognize a call for Love? I mean what comes to me when I say that is you can’t recognize a call for Love by looking out there and seeing a certain form. How I would recognize a call for Love is again to turn towards the Altar and ask and feel whether that is a call for Love. Is that correct?
No. That is a careless abandonment of common sense. All of you know what a call for Love is because it hurts. Because you don’t feel good when it’s happening. It’s real simple. And sometimes some of you try to gloss it over, talk it away. But you need to learn to trust your innate capacity to recognize a call for Love because it doesn’t feel good.
Makes a lot of sense.
Indeed. You see, God hasn’t made it difficult to wake up. It’s natural to be awake. And everything about waking up is as simple as what I just said.
Okay. Continue …
Innocence is incapable of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind has everything and strives only to protect its wholeness.
Now, let me just interrupt. How does it protect its wholeness? By not being tempted to entertain any other experience than the experience of wholeness. It protects its wholeness by giving its full attention to its wholeness in the same way that one protects Truth. One protects Truth not by defending it against something else, but by loving it wholly. By loving it and giving your attention to it more than you’re willing to give it to anything else. You protect Truth, you protect innocence by being totally committed to it. You see?
Continue …
It cannot project. It can only honor other minds, because honor is the natural greeting of the truly loved to others who are like them. The lamb “taketh away the sins of the world” in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The Atonement is entirely unambiguous.
And it’s unambiguous because it’s so utterly simple. Love is Love. Love felt is Love that can’t help but illuminate you and thus illuminate the world.
Continue …
It is perfectly clear because it exists in light. Only the attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to those who do not choose to see.
Continue …
The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and sheds only blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, and evil does not exist. It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true. The resurrection demonstrated that nothing can destroy truth. Good can withstand any form of evil, as light abolishes forms of darkness. The Atonement is therefore the perfect lesson.
Yes. Say that again.
The Atonement is therefore the perfect lesson.
And it’s utterly simple. The Atonement is, I’m going to say, the inspired Act of Love. How much simpler could you get? That’s all it takes to wake up. The willingness to engage in, to be the channel for the inspired Act of Love emanating from the Father—the forever commitment to that. That’s all the more complicated it is. I want you to keep this in mind. It’s the perfect lesson, because it’s the lesson that undoes all illusion. And it’s the perfect lesson because it’s so utterly simple.
Continue …
It is the final demonstration that all the other lessons I taught are true. If you can accept this one generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons. You are released from all errors if you believe this.
Indeed. Continue …
You have a question?
I had a discussion with a gentleman today and he was very depressed. And the reason was is he sees the environment being compromised by the withdrawal from conservation measures. He sees peace being compromised because of war. He sees the Vice President of the United States being awarded huge sums of money …
I’m going to say something.
Yep.
This is part of the misperception. He sees peace being compromised because of war.
Yes.
What he sees is peace being called for and resisted. It is not peace being compromised. Peace called for and not responded to would be peace compromised. Continue with the question.
Okay. Generally, I guess, if you look at the condition of the world as it is today it looks a lot worse than it did yesterday or the day before.
Transformation always looks like that because it upsets the status quo while transformation occurs.
Okay. But relatively speaking, to this gentleman as well as many others, the world looks like it’s in the state of degeneration with global warming, etc., etc. And every time you pick up the newspaper, there’s another incredible affront to what many people would call good common sense, and, you know, righteousness, et cetera. So the question is how does one, short of burying your head in the sand, keep lighthearted or have a positive attitude when there are so many things that seem to be challenging goodness?
By getting off the fence. By becoming involved. By beginning to actively embody all the Truth you’ve been so wonderfully studying and feeling such uplift from when there didn’t seem to be a call for you to consciously and specifically embody it.
It’s one thing to easily and merrily go along your way and say, “God is Love. And God loves me and God loves the whole world. All is well. All is well.” It’s one thing to do that when there aren’t challenges. But when there are challenges, it becomes a requirement to do it, not as a nice idea, but because in the presence of the invitation to abandon your peace and engage in fear, you must not allow yourself to forget your Function. You don’t maintain your peace in airy-fairy platitudes. You accept the call for Love. You accept the call for Love because it calls to you, and you get to work, and you find it important enough to be that Place where God can be embodied. You could look at it this way. You could look at as though you have all been healers held in trust for the occasion where healing was called for.
Now, if I said to you that you were all ordained by God to be healers, your egos would like that, and you at a deeper level might find that inspiring. But remember you are the salvation of the world. That’s your Function. And so the call for Love is calling for you to fulfill your Function. And you’ve got to abandon the desire to have a dreamy state in which to be the Presence of Love, an idyllic state in which to be the Presence of Love. Because the Presence of Love is called for where Love seems to have been lost and people are behaving as though they are not loved and Love is not available to them and it’s your Function to show them otherwise. So, what can I say? It’s time … it’s time to roll up your sleeves and answer the call and stop wishing for some better circumstance in which to be the Presence of Love. Once you begin to feel your Function as the Presence of Love embodying in the world, the stresses of the call for Love will stop distracting you from the pleasure of being the place where Love is embodied and where those calling for Love can find safety and security so that they can dare to feel Love and be able to extend it.
Hey, if you want to be able to be the Presence of Love in the middle of peace, come on Home to the Kingdom of Heaven. Come on Home and be with Us who are awake, because there you can have the pleasant experience of being the Presence of Love.
Where the Presence of Love is needed is where the call for Love is being made. And that’s where all of you are standing in receipt of the call for Love. Having been called out of inactive duty as healers to be in active duty. “Whoa! That looks like it might be a little bit… require a little bit of effort. That’s going to change my routine, I’ll tell you.” But, you know what? The routine you’ve been in is the one that has promoted the dream.
And the effort you’re going to have to put forth is one which if you put it forth, will disclose to you a capacity and a strength to be the Presence of Love that you didn’t realize that you had, and you will find it to be effortless, not more effort. And that’s the way a new habit will emerge, a new way of being all the time because it’s not only your Birthright, it’s your Function and it’s your Joy. At the bottom line, it is your Joy. You don’t see it yet, but it’s awaiting you. But it’s going to take conscious, conscientious attention. You see? And that won’t be a wonderful dreamy experience. It’ll be a vital, fulfilling experience. Not ego-fulfilling, but fulfilling because for you it will be the Experience of the Presence of God in You that shines away any ego satisfaction that you might have thought you would have from such an experience. One which lets God stand forth and demonstrates to you What You Are as What God Is Choosing For You To Be, which is where your full satisfaction and full joy of being lies.
Can I bring this … perhaps it would be easier for us to understand if I brought it to an actual situation. A lot of people have gone out and demonstrated for peace. And a lot of people have gone out and demonstrated for war. So let’s take one side. Okay, a lot of people go out and demonstrate for peace, and the newspaper reporters ask President Bush, what does he think about all the people all over the world demonstrating for peace? And his response was, “Well, I think it’s great that people have the ability or the freedom to go out and demonstrate. But actually I really don’t care, because I’m going to do what I’m going to do.” And for those people who are out demonstrating for peace, they can look at that and become tremendously exasperated as him not being representative of their … of the majority or whatever. So, the answer then is to replace the exasperation with, “I really love George Bush but he’s just got a little bit of a misperception right now and I’m going to love him through it.” Is that what you’re saying?
Well, that statement is something that did not come from having turned toward the Altar and listened for What To Be relative to the question, relative to the distress.
What? You mean the last statement I made about loving George Bush?
That I love George Bush, but blah, blah, blah. Yes. You can’t know ahead of time what you’ll be saying.
Right. But I mean when you’re exasperated, it’s a difficult …
You’ve lost your peace.
Yes. And it’s a difficult thing to turn to the Altar and hear anything except …
Only because you value your aggravation more than the great benefit…
Right.
… of your peace.
So let me rephrase it then. How do you get past that? How do you get past the exasperation [audience laughter] so you can hear what the appropriate response to George Bush, or to his statement, or to the environmental problems, or all the myriad of problems that we’re faced with now at this point in time, this interesting time that we live in?
Well therein lies the work.
So it’s just a matter of being still until it passes?
No! You become still … you become still until you know the answer.
That’s what I’m saying, until the exasperation passes so you can get clear enough to be able to hear.
Yes.
I didn’t mean until the world passes away and we’re in the Kingdom. [more audience amusement]
That is correct.
Well thank you.
You are welcome.
Raj, in response to Michael’s question, it occurred to me today I kind of had a revelation that, and in accordance to what you’re saying tonight, in order to be the Presence of Love, we have to first of all, when the call for Love presents itself recognize it’s coming from misperceptions. These are definitions we’ve given everything. So the definitions have to be addressed. I mean, for example, today I realized we’re not at war, we’re at transformation, and that the answer is moving because the Movement of God is the only thing going on. So war is a definition that the media has given to describe the corrective action that is being taken. Now, that gave me a whole different feeling, that realization.
Indeed.
And so, my point being is we’ve got to address these definitions. When we’re in conversation with people and they are upset because they’re drowning in definitions of what they think they’re seeing, we have … that’s our opportunity to clarify what it … was really going on, to be helpful in clarifying what is really going on.
Yes. However, having had this realization today and the capacity to restate it in those words doesn’t mean that that will be sufficient to the day tomorrow. So don’t expect that now you’ll have a wonderfully concise way of expressing it that you will be able to use indefinitely, that will naturally be beneficial to everyone who hears it. What I want you to do is to continue to stand at the threshold of clarification so that tomorrow you have whatever is given to you to know to share.
What is marvelous about what you have just shared is not what you have shared, but the freshness of it. Theillumination of you having experienced a light bulb going on.
Yeah. That’s … what the … but the message was …
Today’s light bulb will not illuminate tomorrow. That’s what I want to … that’s what I want you …
Okay. So, in other words, we have … we can’t drag the previous definition of the illumination into tomorrow’s experience, or the next moment’s experience. It has to be illumination, illumination, illumination.
Exactly! Experience, experience, experience. Not idea, idea, idea.
Okay. I got it.
Okay.
Thank you.
You see, the marvelousness of our being together is not what I’m saying but the freshness of the Gift that Paul is making by standing at the threshold. And next week, if we were to talk about these very pages we’ve been reading from tonight, I would not repeat myself.
The Gift lies in the spontaneity and the freshness of the Presence of Truth and Clarity in each and every moment that comes forth when one is not in one’s head and when one’s thinking is not generating one’s words. That’s the Act of Love.
I am amazed sometimes when I look back at what I said because I wasn’t thinking about it when it was said.
Indeed.
I mean it just kind of rolls. If I start to think, then I get all … then I go into reaction.
Everyone does. Indeed.
I think I …
So when you look back and experience amazement, what you’re really being amazed at is the fact that there really is a God.
Yeah.
And it was your Experience of Being at that moment, and therefore ultimately it was you being more truly What You Are than you can possibly be when you’re thinking.
What I also experience when those moments, thank God, are happening for me, is that I feel so grounded. It’s like I am … nothing can shake me.
That is the strength of innocence. But it’s not an authority or power over anything.
No, it’s just …
It’s just the utter immovability of everything that’s true about you. The utter unchangeability of everything that’s true about you. And every time you experience that, you make that Gift because your behavior with your Brothers at that moment is entirely different from the way it is when you’re behaving as a result of thinking.
Concepts.
Exactly.
I just have a comment.
Indeed.
When you’re talking about how we benefit from the joy, I know that’s true. I’ve experienced that. And what I’m finding is that whenever I approach someone, I really love that person and that’s what I see, and because of that, that’s like the basis of it. That’s how I get more joy and it grows stronger and it … I guess most of what I say is that it’s that approach of loving somebody that I see first, and if I get upset, I quickly remind myself, “Wrong. Love that person.” And just loving a person always brings you right back. That’s the goal. That’s our job. Just love each other.
Okay. Now this is sort of like the ten commandments. Love each other and remind yourself to love each other. And of course, the patterned behavior you’re describing “to remember to do this, remember to do this,” is great for those who have forgotten how to Love. It isn’t really love yet. It’s a good, intelligent practice.
It’s developing a habit.
Yes. But what I want you to develop the habit of is, I’m going to say, in addition to remembering to love your neighbor, to find even more value in turning toward the Altar so that God might give you the Vision of your Brother that is a Vision of Love that will spontaneously result in behavior that will identify God’s Vision and Purpose, rather than a practical and intelligent and humanly beneficial practice.
I understand. And when I do, do that, I don’t ever feel alone. I feel God’s right with me.
Indeed.
I don’t like going without God.
And that’s really where the Joy, that’s where the real Joy is. You get good feelings from remembering to Love your Brother and doing it and seeing that it has a better result than misbehaving with your Brother. But the Joy comes from the undeniable Experience of God’s Presence in the whole thing. That’s what I’m homing in on here is the experience. And I’m homing in on your rolling up your sleeves and engaging in the work of answering the call for Love where the call for Love is being made, rather than saying, “Well there must be something wrong because everything seems so much more stressful. I really would like to be the Presence of Love under less … when the call for Love is less strenuous.” But you know what? Where the call is most strenuous is the place where it is most needed and it is the place where when the Love is gifted, the most transformation can occur.
I find it extremely easy, well not extremely. I find it very easy here in the northwest to see people under stress and yet it’s so easy for me to look beyond that, because when you’re in stress you have a tendency to lash out at people and not really be at your best. But for some reason, up here, it’s just so much easier for me to see right through that, to see the person is hurting.
Your stress level is lower. They’re not different, but you are. And that’s what’s making it easier. You’re experiencing less stress, therefore automatic defense is not coming into play, and with less defense you are available for the Father’s Perspective to register with you.
That’s good.
Yes.
Okay, so, next week, I will probably ask you again, “You are the salvation of the world. How did you do this last week?” I probably won’t make you answer, but don’t depend upon it. The point is I just want to set your mind in an attitude that includes your Function so that you might bring it into conscious play every day.
We have nothing else to do.
Nothing real, anyway. [audience laughter] Indeed.
I love you all.
Thank you, Raj.
And I hope you all have a better week. Not one in which there are fewer calls for Love, or less strenuous calls for Love, but one in which you willingly face the calls for Love with the willingness to let the answer to the calls for Love come through you because you really do want to fulfill your Function as the savior of the world, saviors of the world. Because you really do want to be healers. I use that word because almost every one of you likes that idea. And so you can transfer it to the words I’ve used which are, “you are the saviors of the world.” You don’t like that one as much because it seems to involve some great responsibility. Well, it’s not ego-type greatness, but it is great because whether you see the Integrity and the Presence of the Kingdom of Heaven, or not, is up to you. And it will be a profound experience for all of you to be experiencing the world and universe as the Kingdom of Heaven.
So you have not a daunting task in front of you, but a wonderful task that it’s your Birthright to experience and which you have the innate capacity to embody. But we’re down to the embodiment time. We’re out of the head trip time. We’re out of the wonderful ideas in A Course in Miracles and into the practical transformational experiential meaning of those words.
I will look forward to being with you next week.
T3.I Atonement without Sacrifice ↩
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