Teachings of Christ Mind

Good afternoon. And as always welcome to those who are joining us on the internet.

Jumping right in, and I am reading from the transcript as prepared by Bill Thetford.

Ideas do not leave the Mind which thought them. Your individuality is an Idea in the Mind of God, and the Idea is the Idea of God. In other words, the Idea is All That God Is.

Now, you’re familiar with the statement, “Ideas leave not their Source.” That means it is absolutely impossible for you to leave your Source or to modify in any way what you are. So you are not able to leave the Mind which thought you to have a separate being or existence. And I’m going to say nor do individual thoughts conflict with one another in space because they, meaning you, do not occupy space at all. Again, you are Conscious Awareness, Mind, in which the experience of time and space is occurring, in which all of Creation is occurring.

Continuing …

And when we’re speaking of levels here, we could relate them to the two different operating systems that we were talking about.

And this is a very important statement.

Let me ask you this. If you have turned your back to the Altar, if you have said I would rather look at Creation, I would rather look at the Kingdom of Heaven by myself and determine for myself what it all is, as I’ve said before, that constitutes a withdrawal of your acknowledgement of your Source, which causes you to experience being Sourceless, and therefore having no identity because your Identity as a Son or a Daughter is derived from the fact that you have a Father Who Is Your Source. And in this imaginative, independent position, you have no alternative but to experience a state of conflict which first shows itself as the experience of fear.

Now, if it is impossible to share opposing thoughts, and if while you are separated from your Father you are in a state of conflict, it means that you’re not in a position to share anything at all. Which means you are not and have not been sharing anything at all. So what is it that has substituted for sharing? What has substituted for sharing, which can appropriately be identified as communion, has been communication. Communion is an Inner Awareness of Unity with all Things. And communion is not a matter of communication. It’s a matter of Knowing, Universal Knowing.

Having separated yourself, however, the fact that you’re all one has to show up some way because you can’t alter the Divine Facts. And so, as a substitute for communion, you developed communication. And now you are able to talk to each other and express ideas that you’ve all made-up. And as we’ve talked about, existence becomes a constant manipulation of each other so that your definitions of everything are mutually-agreed-upon. Because if they are not agreed-upon, you cannot work together.

Your mutually-agreed-upon definitions constitute a common language, you might say, that allows you to communicate with each other and thus cooperate with each other. Now, the interesting thing is that in the State of Communion, the Conscious Experience of Being is Universal. It’s Eternal, and therefore time is not a part of It and space is not a part of It. But when you turn your back on the clear, uninterrupted, pure Awareness of the Kingdom of Heaven, then it becomes necessary to have time and space in order to appear to cooperate.

If you care to have a business meeting, let us say, you have to say in order to appear to end up having communication, you have to say, “I will meet you at the corner of Hollywood and Vine at 10:00 AM on Thursday morning, January 21st.” In this way you can manage to be at the same place at the same time and conduct your manipulative process of feeding your greed. And you do this. This is life.

And you say, “Oh, let’s meet for lunch on Wednesday at such-and-such a place and just chat.” And you get together and you just chat, and you feel like there is communication and sharing. You bring each other up to date on the latest news and you think there has been sharing.

But it says here …

And so all the time that you think you have been sharing, you have really been maintaining and reinforcing the idea that you can look things, you can look at the Kingdom of Heaven independently of God and function and bring into play all the aspects of being, including sharing. But I’m going to be very frank with you here. Unless you’re coming from that Place of Excellence in You which is You in your Right Mind, you’re not communicating. And everything you’re doing is constantly calculated in order to have an end result that meets your needs.

You get together. You chat. And what do you do? You get the lay of the land as perceived by the other person. You get the lay of the land as to where that other person is coming from and where the people they know that you know are coming from. Why? “Oh, to be sociable.” No. At the bottom line you get the information so that you know what areas you need to reinforce your vulnerability in.

But you’re all really slick at it. And you manage to pull it off with an apparently genuine friendliness to it. In fact you found that the more friendliness you bring into the process, the more harmony there is, the more pleasure there is.

But what I want you to understand is that sharing as it’s spoken of in the Course here is not what I’ve just described. The closest thing to being in a State of Sharing that you could say you’ve had, in other words, the way Being is experienced when you’re in your Right Mind, is one in which cooperation and coordination do not occur. And you do not have space/time coordinates that you use in order to be in communion with your Brothers and Sisters and in order for the Beauty, the Harmony, and the Joy of Being to be manifest.

Now the closest experience you have to this is when you start out in your day and you have a general plan, but you’re not fixed on it. And as the day unfolds, you find yourself in places you hadn’t expected to be because you weren’t governing everything absolutely. And in the process of flowing with what’s happening, you find yourself running into someone you haven’t seen for years, or someone you hadn’t planned on meeting, and you have an encounter together in which information becomes available to you that meets your need.

Being, with a capital “B”, is a Movement. It’s a Movement orchestrated by the Mind of God. It’s the Movement of Creation. And All of Creation, like a Broadway musical, All of Creation appears to move and dance and sing, we’ll say, and appears to be coordinated exquisitely. And yet each part of Creation is not being where it is by design, by prior agreement, by the use of will. Creation is an exquisite Movement of the Divine Mind and what you would call the Universe.

Everything is where it is because it allowed the Father’s Impulse to cause it to be where it was. And when you stand and observe it all, the exquisiteness and perfection of the detail of the Movement is awesome, and yet not a bit of coordination amongst the participants has occurred. In effect, each part of Creation just happens to end up where it is. It just happens to end up where it is. It awesomely ends up being where it is.

Sometimes the Movement of Being occurs even when you are specifically trying to be in charge. You know that you are going to meet so-and-so, and if you don’t meet them on time, you’ll miss them because they have to catch a plane, and blah, blah, blah. And so you get up in the morning and you conscientiously do everything you can to be at the meeting place at the appointed time, and everything goes wrong. And you end up getting there 25 minutes late. And you walk in the door and bump into the other person you’re supposed to meet who just happened to get there 25 minutes late. And you have the opportunity to marvel at the fact that everything was in perfect order in spite of what you thought the order had to be.

I’m bringing this out because this is the Nature of Being. And this is the way sharing happens. Sharing is you being where the Father would have you be, without plans, without conscious control over the situation and the circumstances, without depending upon space and time coordinates in order to have connection. Sharing is communion, not communication, and therefore sharing is never a matter of wheedling another person into cooperation, wheedling another person into yielding to your best judgment as to what is right, or coercing everyone around you into abiding by the mutually-agreed-upon definitions that have been developed in place of sharing, in place of communion.

It’s a very full sentence.

Continuing …

What does that mean? If the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your Right Mind, how does your Right Mind not let you forsake your Brothers? Well, let me put it this way. When you’re coming from an independent stance and you’re going through all this process that I’ve just described of using time/space coordinates in order to communicate, nothing Real is happening. You cannot actually accomplish the unaccomplishable. You cannot actually accomplish being independent from the Father.

… all the stuff you made-up, all of the distorted perceptions of Reality that you have created.

… the Holy Spirit …

So you see, Reality doesn’t allow unreality to actually happen.

… the definitions, the concepts you have made-up about the Kingdom of Heaven.

He lets you give them away. That’s because you’re not blocking the fruitage of your Right Mind with your own concepts, and so the Truth you Know, the Love you Experience Being, ends up being given away, shared, because at that point you’re coming from that Place of Excellence in You, and not from the other operating system–the ego’s operating system.

Your intent to share from your Right Mind is what ends up purifying, getting rid of the false from the concepts you have created about everything and about everyone. And in the absence of the impurity of your distortions that you’ve introduced, the True Knowing about your Brother, the True Knowing about Every Aspect of Creation flows from you because that is the only thing there is for you to share. That’s the only thing that can be shared.

Again, if you have an IBM®, a PC computer, and you have an Apple® computer, it is impossible to share data between the two because they’re in two different languages. And so, sharing doesn’t occur.

Now, in what way could this be useful knowledge? How can it be other than depressing to believe what I’ve just said, that knowing that you’re not awake at the moment, everything you’re doing amounts to nothing? Well, here’s the way it can be helpful. No matter how independent you believe you have become, you haven’t stopped being the Christ. And you only have One Mind and that is the Mind of Christ, that is the Mind of God expressed right where you are.

And as I’ve said before, you’re using this omnipotent Divine Mind in a distorted way. And in the process, you are creating distorted perceptions of Reality or the Kingdom of Heaven. Your exploration of a distorted state of mind has created what you might call a carbon copy, a virtual copy, let us say, of Reality. The only thing is that everything is 180 degrees out of sync. This means that because you haven’t stopped being the Christ and you only have Reality to work with, you have been working with Reality in an oppositional way–in a way that denies What It Really Is but affirms that it’s something else.

If you realize that this is true, then it becomes obvious to you that everything that you are doing that is the reverse of Reality isn’t accomplishing anything, but it doesn’t leave you out in the void. Because whether You, the Christ, the Divine Mind that is God Manifest right where you are, is creating a distorted perception of Reality or not, you’re still Real and Reality is still Real. And Reality, because It’s the thing you’re manipulating, will be there as it truly is the moment you decide to abandon the manipulation of It.

This means that when I tell you and encourage you to abandon your attempts to be in charge of everything autonomously, when I encourage you to abandon that, it will not leave you in a vulnerable position. The only thing it will do will be to constantly bring you into a more and more invulnerable Conscious Experience of Being, even though it requires you to abandon the very thing that you think has brought you a sense of safety, and that is the attempt to be in control privately and personally yourself.

The old operating system says to you, “If you abandon me, all order will go out of the picture. Your sense of identity, your personal sense of yourself will evaporate.” But what I’m telling you is that when it evaporates, your True Identity is right there behind it. And there is no loss whatsoever. But it requires you to take the risk, to make the investment into a Right Mind that I’m telling you that you have, that you don’t have much experience of yet.

Now there’s no way you can make this switch of operating systems all by yourself. And there’s no way for you to do it instantaneously. And that’s why there is the Holy Spirit. That’s why there is me. That is why there is all of the Brotherhood who are awake standing available to you to help reinterpret what you’re looking at, to help bring you back into a Conscious Experience of Its Divinity rather than its materiality, so that you can make this adjustment gradually and with a feeling of safety.

I must tell you that everything you currently think you’re doing, you’re not doing at all. And everything you think you’re accomplishing, you’re not accomplishing at all. I must tell you that so that you’re no longer totally fooled and so that you will call into question the operating system you’re using. And call it into question so that you can make a choice for the other Operating System which at the bottom line is the Real You hiding behind, or hidden behind, the concept of yourselves that you’ve developed and substantiated for yourself, period.

I must tell you this and you must be willing to acknowledge it so that you will have an intelligent, logical reason for exploring something you’re not naturally inclined to explore. A place in which you cannot be in charge like you think you have to be in order to survive. A place where you yield into the already existing Movement of God which is being you perfectly and wholly and flawlessly. And that the Experience of the Harmony and Awesome Beauty of Being in the Flow of What God Is Being awaits you so that you’ll have the courage to abandon bit by bit the operating system that you’re currently using. And dare to entrust yourself to a God you’re not even sure is there. And I’m telling you that what you’re doing is entrusting yourself into a capital “S” Self that you don’t believe is really there. To abandon yourself to Who You Really Are.

So that’s why this horrible news can be such good news and why I have to tell you the Truth.

Continuing …

The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind. Not power over anything, but the power that recognizes what is True and what isn’t True and is not offended by or affected by what is untrue. A healed mind knows the Truth and knows it is the Truth and anything else that’s presented is meaningless to it. So it does not become offended, and it does not become defensive. That is its power, its unmovable clarity that supercedes confusion and illusion without a fight.

Continuing …

… which would be those who have or are practicing yielding to the Place of Excellence in Them.

Or you might say give it to have it.

Healing. How do you give healing? The Clarity of What Truth Is–that means you are utterly unmoved by the presentation of what Truth isn’t–is a gift of healing. It is something you can share with another because it is coming from your Right Mind, your experience of being in your Right Mind.

“Oh!” But you say, you’re likely to say, “Well, I’ve experienced healing. What’s next? What’s next?” Like having gone on one ride at Disneyland and you get off, you say, “What’s next? What’s next?” What’s next is that you give what you’ve received. You give what you know in order to embody it fully. You might say in order to make it yours. The absolute necessity is for you to give what you have been given to your Brothers and Sisters before you speed on to some new exhilarating realization.

And I will tell you that the next step automatically shows up right in the middle of your extending, sharing the Truth that you find yourself Knowing and the Love that you find yourself Being with your Brothers and Sisters.

Continuing …

What it boils down to is if you have experienced revelation, if you have had a God experience and you want more of it, you’ve got to pass it on to your Brothers. It’s that simple. In this way, you could say, you join, or begin to join, the ranks of those who are already awake. And in that increased Unity of the Brotherhood as a Conscious Experience of Being, it lays the groundwork for others to join in the Awakening easier and with less resistance. So if you want to move forward, you’ve got to turn around and take your Brother’s hand.

Now, what do you do if you turn around to take your Brother’s hand and he says, “Leave me alone! Don’t give me any of your lovey-dovey stuff!” Well, as I said last week, when you’re presented with the response, “Catch me if you can,” don’t take the bait. Turn to another Brother who will take your hand and help that one. Those who have a willingness to receive what is being shared increase the Unity of the Brotherhood that is awake, and weakens the apparent strength of the other operating system, making it easier for those still dreaming to wake up.

You must learn to be very wise. You cannot force anyone to wake up. And when you are met with resistance that is unyielding, let them be, and turn around to find one who is eager to abandon his or her suffering. And do not be offended by the one who refuses what you have to share. Your sharing, whether it was received or not, means that you have embodied for yourself the gift more completely. And the simple fact is that if another is committed to the ego’s operating system, they cannot hear what you have to share.

So go where you can be heard. That doesn’t mean go where you can be a great teacher. It means go where there is less defense. Go where Brotherhood is possible as an experience. Go where communion to whatever degree can occur. Go where there is willingness.

All that your experience of insight and revelation can prepare you to do is to be an effective presence, an agent for change where there is willingness for change. It will not give you the power to force change. If you understand that, you will not subject yourself to a false sense of guilt because in your sharing of what you know was an utterly beautiful, pure, healing Presence of Love, you ought to have been able to make change happen. You won’t play into that. And you will let the one who is adamantly resisting be, without guilt. This is very important.

Continuing …

It doesn’t mean, “How can you suffer as you’re actually doing?” It means, “How can you who are so holy think that suffering is an experience available to you?”

You see, in other words, in all of the time that you thought you were doing something, in all the years or perhaps lifetimes that you thought you were sharing something, there were times when you were coming from a Place of Love. There were times when you were inspired, and you shared the inspiration and sharing or communion occurred. When you weren’t inspired, nothing was happening, and so therefore all that you thought happened is gone, and all that was coming from Inspiration and Love is left, is still there.

In other words, the Real things that you did are still there. And the things you never did never were there, and now they don’t even seem to be there, like ghosts of the past.

… depart in peace: It means that you can be with your fellowman. You can leave today. You can at other times talk to me privately and then leave the conversation and go and deal with your Brother.

Do you get that? In order to have, you must give. So you give to have.

You go with my blessing to share it with others, and you go for my blessing because in the giving of it you receive it and embody it and confirm it for yourself and thus grow, change.

… my blessing …

… not just yours but …

And you need to know that. You need to know that your heart is big enough to bear the Love that you are willing to share and that your hands are strong to give it, because as you begin to do this, you feel weak and you feel unsure because this is new territory for you.

I assure you …

In a way, it’s not that big a deal. We can’t lose because only What Is True is True. And there is no other choice, so all we can end up with is the Fact that True Is True, that the Truth Is True, and that there’s only one Operating System.

This is a benediction.

And it’s a benediction that you can extend to your Brothers and Sisters no matter how they are behaving. And even when a Brother is obtuse and aggressive and hateful and says, “no thanks,” to your sharing, you must be willing to within yourself extend this benediction, extend the continued Awareness of the Truth you Know about him, and not move into the state of reaction that he would have you move into as a result of his obtuse behavior. You, nevertheless, walk away and find someone who is embodying willingness. You must see to it that as you walk away, it is with no harbored resentment but a simple awareness that two different operating systems cannot communicate. Conflicted ideas cannot be shared. I say this so you will understand how it works, and so that you will not be sucked into believing that you are guilty of not having done enough just because someone has refused to stand in receipt of what you truly and genuinely shared from that Place of Excellence in You.

When someone has abandoned the Father in order to have the exhilarating, false experience of autonomy and independence, they do not want to hear of God, they do not want to hear of Truth, and when it is shared with them they will resist it with all their might. And then they will blame you for disturbing them. Understand that that is simply how it will work. Notice it, recognize “oh, it’s following the normal pattern,” and turn toward someone who is embodying willingness. I have tried to be utterly clear here.

The one who resisted you because they are conflicted is likely, when you have turned your back toward one who is willing, to say, “You’re abandoning me!” No. That one has abandoned the Father. That one has abandoned his own Right Mind, or her own Right Mind, and is insisting upon being totally unconscious of it. And when their abandonment of their own Sanity gets turned toward you as a claim that you are abandoning them, you must understand that it is nothing but a ploy to instill guilt in you, which would mean that fear would have to come back into your conscious experience which would require you to leave or abandon your Right Mind, and you had better be too smart to be fooled into doing it.

You see, I’m not going to leave you today with a curse saying you have abandoned me or you have some reason to feel guilty. I’ve explained to you that for perhaps centuries you’ve been accomplishing absolutely nothing. But I’m not judging you, because having done absolutely nothing means absolutely nothing has happened that you can be guilty for. And everything that is Real about you has been held in trust. The Real You has continued to be present and has continued to Function over in the other Operating System, as it were. And I’m acknowledging that in you right now and pointing you in the direction of opening up to it now. And so my telling you the Truth doesn’t convict you, but it does provide you with the basis for becoming released from an illegitimate imprisonment in a state of nothingness.

And I say you go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it that it may always be ours. I place the Peace of God in your heart. Everything that I’ve been saying is for the purpose of bringing you to a place of peace in yourself where guilt isn’t overriding and fear isn’t overriding, so that you might dare to risk the chance that there is a God, and that there’s a Real You and that there is a Real Operating System and It’s your Real Self. And you can lean into It and let It catch you.

I place the Peace of God in your heart and in your hands to hold and share. The heart, your heart, is pure to hold It, and your hands are strong to give It. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the Wisdom of God in Whose Heart and Hands we, all of us here, have our Being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The thoughts of God are with you.

I love you. And I look forward to being with you next week.