Teachings of Christ Mind

Good afternoon. And welcome to everyone who is joining us on the Internet.

All of you, each of you, whether you know it or not, or whether you believe it or not, each of you has been entrusted with something very Holy. In the past it is something that has been spoken of as being written in your hearts. This Something Holy that you have been entrusted with is the Presence of God, the Presence of God Being God right where you are. This Something Holy that you have been entrusted with to carry with you, to let no harm come to, to protect, is your Divinity.

Now it wasn’t given to you as though you at first did not have it and then it was given to you. In the beginning it was you, but when you decided to have a different slant on everything, a unique perspective on Reality, and you abandoned your Sonship or Daughtership and thus abandoned your Father and thereby lost your Identity, your Divinity became hidden by you because you gave preference to something else—a voyage, if you will, into fantasy.

And so you have been carrying this Holiness around with you and it’s time for you to uncover It. It’s time for you to stop suffering from the fantasies that you have developed. It’s time for you to stop keeping your Divinity so well hidden that no one, not even you, has the slightest idea that It exists.

We have been talking about the fact that this Holy Thing that you’ve been entrusted with is the Holy Spirit which is nothing more than your Right Mind. And we’ve referred to this as an operating system, a Divine Operating System, if you will, and the ego’s frame of reference and imaginative fantasies as the other operating system.

Now, I’m bringing this up for a specific reason. You all know I do not indulge in idle chitchat. This past week a judge in New York City has rendered the copyright to A Course In Miracles invalid. And this is creating quite a stir. For some it is a stir of joy; for others it is a stir of concern, even fear, et cetera.

The general consensus is that the Course is now free for anyone to speak about, to quote in any way, shape or form that he or she wishes. The Course is free—free from restrictions. But I want to keep a little well-grounded perspective here. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies of the Course that have been printed in the last 27 years in multiple languages. It isn’t the Course that needs to be free; it’s you, each one of you.

And if it’s now possible for anyone and his brother to publish the Course so that there are perhaps billions of copies available, if one of you doesn’t shift from one operating system to the other, the first domino will not have been pushed over that will start the chain reaction of awakening. It takes guts. It takes commitment. And at the bottom line it takes a real inner Experience of Love to dare to make the shift to what is nothing more than your Right Mind, and abandon the fascination with the ego’s frame of reference and its imaginative, fantastic, and totally illusory perceptions of the Kingdom of Heaven and of you.

The weight, you might say, [laughing] in the world of another billion copies of A Course In Miracles will not provide any one of you with the guts to make the shift, and their presence in themselves will promote nothing. All that the Course can do is to bring you to a point of a reasoned ability to make a commitment to What Is Real, a commitment to being the Presence of Love that is Love with a capital “L”, because it is gathering the Sense of Being, the Perspective of Being, the Truth of Being, directly from its… your Source—the Father.

More powerful than all the copies of A Course In Miracles in the world is just one of you making commitment to the shift and endeavoring throughout your day to come from that Place of Excellence in You that causes you to be this scary thing called Being The Christ.

What is the Christ? God embodied? Awesome? Foreign? Alien? That which will strike doom for those engaged in evil? [gently whispered] No. The Christ is the Presence of Love that meets its Brothers and Sisters with the clear recognition that they are the Christ as well, even if they don’t yet know it, and even if in not knowing it, they feel afraid and vulnerable. And the Christ is the simple Presence of kindness that meets them where they are without frightening them, without throwing a lot of religious verbiage at them, and says things that awaken in them their Love for the Truth and their desire to know more about it, and their willingness to be less defended against it in their life. You hear that? In their life! Not to be less afraid of it as it spews forth from your mouth.

The Christ knows what to say to help another not be as afraid, or how to be with them in a way that causes them to be less afraid. Because at the bottom line it’s fear and your preoccupation with it and the validation of threat that it seems to secure in your mind that keeps you in a state of defense which blocks you from knowing the Truth about yourself, about your Brother and Sister, about your world.

This book, A Course In Miracles, does nothing but point you toward the Holiness that you’ve been entrusted with which needs to be embodied; not hidden, not kept secret from the world and yourself.

And I promise you I will keep all of your noses pointed in the right direction so that you attend to, and are inspired to attend to not what will free the Course but what will free you and what will thereby free your Brother, because you can’t gain your freedom by yourself. Your freedom comes in your extension of freedom to your Brother. And because you haven’t the faintest idea to how to free your Brother, it means that you have to turn to God to be inspired. You have to be willing to turn to the Place of Excellence in you that I’ve assured you is there, already capable because of What It Divinely Is of knowing what to say and what to do. And when to be silent. And when to just hug. And when to just smile. And when say “No” with utter gentleness but absolute firmness.

You know what? You can say it’s time to change operating systems in at least 30 different languages. To be free to do it in even more languages won’t constitute the actual changing of operating systems, the actual getting up in the morning and approaching your day with innocent eyes and the willingness and a desire to see What God Is Being right where you thought just the world was, and What God Is Being right where puny little piss-ant you has been, and then to give voice or expression to the vision that opens up to you.

Okay, enough said about the copyright issue, as well as what the real issue is.

Going to the Text.

In other words, both operating systems have a purpose, have a structure which is aimed at a specific kind of operation.

Continuing …

How could the ego’s logic be as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit? How could it even be impeccable at all? The reason is that because a Christ, you, each one of you, with all of your Divinity cannot help but bring into play in whatever your mental endeavor is all of the nature and character of What You Divinely Are. And so, when you create an illusion for yourself, you create an impeccable illusion. The logic it uses to confirm and reinforce its fantasy is as impeccable as the logic, you could say, that God embodies in all of His Creation.

Again …

… Why?

… the Christ that you Are …

With What Is Real or with what is illusion as it elects.

… as an ego …

… your right Mind …

… in other words, anything that you have embodied that was an expression of what is Real about you, even though you may have done it for wrong reasons.

… to destruction …

… the foundational basis of the ego’s operating system …

And I’m adding: not of unification.

And remember when it says, “the power of the ego’s belief in it,” it means the power of the belief that the Christ That Is You is exercising in the establishment and reinforcement of a fantasy, an illusion.

Let’s sort of express it in more human terms. When you have said, “I want a divorce from you, Father,” and you think that you have managed to get a divorce from your Father, then, as I’ve said before, you cease to be a Son or a Daughter and you have lost your Identity. You are now an orphan, at least in the conviction of your belief. As an orphan you are alone with no ties, adrift. And because in order for you to be an orphan, you had to deny your Father, and it has caused you to lose your Identity, you know you must be guilty of something because there is an experience of fear that was never yours before you made this declaration of independence. To deny your Father and lose your Identity is what constitutes an attack on God.

Now the ultimate fact is that God can’t be attacked and you can’t stop being the Expression of God. And so you haven’t stopped being the direct Expression of God. You haven’t at this very moment stopped being God Embodied by God. So the guilt and the fear are illusions. But the Christ That You Are ignorantly created those illusions and made commitment to them with all the power of God, you might say. And so you feel the guilt and you feel the fear, and for all intents and purposes it is absolutely real to you, even though it is not real at all.

Continuing …

Believes in division.

Meaning God.

This means then that any time you are experiencing fear, you may know that you’re in a state of illusion. You may know that at that moment you are operating from an operating system which is invalid and that you have another choice available to you. And recognizing that, you will not labor under the fear, you will not wilt in front of it, collapse and succumb to it. You’ll make a different choice. You’ll choose for the Other Operating System.

And no matter how convinced you are that there is justification for the fear, you will put your weight on the side of the Real Operating System. You will put your weight on the side of what is nothing more than your Right Mind and that will be your escape from fear.

Continuing …

… a delusional operating system …

… You. That’s not in the Text.

By your bill of divorcement.

Freud didn’t say that the basic conflict was you and your bill of divorcement from your Source that caused you to lose your Sonship or Daughtership, and therefore your Identity.

Continuing …

… the ego operating system …

This mind that God created that is your mind is capable of creating Reality, not separate from God, with God.

Again, if you’ll just let that sink in, you will realize when you find yourself experiencing fear that you are experiencing something unnatural, not natural to you, not normal for you, not your Birthright, and therefore invalid.

None of you really is willing to be subject to an illusion. None of you would consciously choose to be deluded. And so when it does dawn on you that if you’re experiencing fear, you’re experiencing a delusion which it’s not your Birthright to be experiencing, you will consciously choose to find a way to abandon the delusion so that you won’t suffer from insanity, from something that isn’t real.

And that’s what allows you to turn to your Father and say, “Father, what does this mean? Is there justification for fear? What’s the Truth here that would uncover to me either the justification for fear, or its total illusory nature and the fact that I need not honor it in any way, shape or form. Father, help.”

And of course thereby you reestablish the connection, you undo the bill of divorcement, even though you might be doing it as a last resort in a state of panic without any intent whatsoever to continue the relationship indefinitely. But it doesn’t matter because if the opening is there, the connection is made. And whether you choose to abandon it or not later, the connection at that moment is not withheld from you.

The question is asked, “Is fear ever justified?” Absolutely not! One doesn’t have to be afraid in order not to stick his finger into an electrical socket. One can understand that it’s not an intelligent thing to do and decide not to do it. Fear is not essential to intelligent action ever. But one has to be leaning into a Source, you might say, of Intelligence, rather than a source of unintelligence, to have intelligence available that allows one to be without any occasion for fear. Do you see what I mean?

Continuing …

Oh, I know, you want to know why would I, why do I use words like “perverted thinking”? “Can’t you be a little kinder in your choice of words. I would get the message.” Well, if I thought you would get the message with a weaker word, so to speak, I would use a weaker word. But it’s important for you to know that a wrong thought is a wrong thought, is a wrong thought, is a wrong thought, is an untrue thought, is a thought that is not in harmony with God, is a thought that has perverted, converted for unloving purposes some aspect of the Awareness of the Kingdom of Heaven and it is perverted.

Does that make you perverted? No. It means that you are simply what you have always been, the Christ, the perfect Son or Daughter of God using your mind in a way that it can’t actually be used, and believing the use you are putting to it, and suffering from your belief without anything that’s Real having been altered at all.

So here you stand, or here you sit right now, listening to my words from a place of distorted perception. And yet that which is listening is the unalterable living Christ, the Son and Daughter of God, not affected in any way, shape, or form by a fantasy that never became true. And so you are not perverted, but your perception is altered. And the alteration needs to be corrected so that you’re not seeing Reality through a lens that causes it to appear to be to you something that it’s not. It’s that simple.

Continuing …

This is the definition of will, willfulness: the energy and the means of accomplishing the establishment of an illusion as Truth, and the coercion of your Brothers and Sisters into adopting the concept you’re embracing and making commitment to it so that in the joined strengths of what we could only call deluded Christs, you create for yourselves a state of mesmerism so total and so complete that it seems to you to be absolutely solid and real.

Continuing …

… not a positive act of assault …

Those last four words are the key words. As soon as you regard sin as a lack, you will automatically, it’s like naturally, spontaneously attempt to remedy the situation. Well, you’re all used to attempting to remedy things. It may or may not work. But the last four words let you know, “And you will succeed.” Why? Because in order to do it, you have had to move to the Other Operating System. And from the Other Operating System you are thinking with God.

Continuing …

That’s also important. You must learn to regard it as freedom. It will not seem like freedom to begin with because you think you are an ego. The ego is what you think you are. And so when it sees doom, you think you are seeing doom. And so you have to bring into play some self-discipline, so that when you feel the threat that accompanies a willingness to abandon sin, you can use reason and logic to remind yourself that the fear you are feeling is not legitimate, that the doom that you are feeling is not your doom but the sense of yourself that you’ve been entertaining that’s feeling the doom.

And that for you it means freedom. For you it means coming back into your Right Mind. For you it means having the Holy Spirit descend upon you and uncover Itself as You to you and be You without any resistance from you.

So be aware it’s going to take some self-discipline. You must learn to regard it as freedom and you must persist with the learning until the shift occurs. And you have, each one of you, ample opportunities all day long to practice this.

Continuing …

It doesn’t say that it, the guiltless mind, doesn’t suffer. It doesn’t say the guiltless mind only suffers very occasionally. It says:

Suffering finds no lodging place in the guiltless mind, this Place of Excellence in you. It’s already in you. Your Right Mind is already in you. Your Right Mind is already all there is to you. And It cannot suffer and It is not suffering. And that experience is available to you if you’ll simply wish to experience the Other Operating System.

Of course, in order to experience the Other Operating System, what are you going to have to do? You’re going to have to abandon your independence. And how are you going to do that? You’re going to say, “God, help!” You’re going to have to invite Something into your privacy. And you’re going to have to be willing to abandon your right, your supposed right to privacy, and you’re going to have to share your space with God, with the Holy Spirit.

“Well, I don’t know if I want to be transformed by the Presence of the Holy Spirit in my space. Who knows what that might mean?” Well, you know, a few months ago maybe you could have said that. But now you know that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your Right Mind. It’s You with a capital “Y”.

And so you can’t claim through ignorance that you have no idea what it will be like to let the Holy Spirit share your space. You know that at the bottom line it’s going to have to mean you experiencing the omnipotence of What God Is Being right where you are. You know that it’s going to have to mean experiencing the integrity of your union with all of your Brothers and Sisters. You know that it’s going to have to mean the experience of invulnerability in your world. Not because the world is hostile but it can’t reach you, but because You and the World are One, and it is therefore benign. And it is because it is benign and you are benign that everything is invulnerable, because there is nothing to be vulnerable against.

Continuing …

… the guiltless mind …

And I’m going to say it heals the world because it, the guiltless mind, your mind, having abandoned the sin of trying to be independent, has been healed. And the scales have fallen from your eyes. The division, which is the nature and character of the ego operating system, has dissolved in the face of preexisting, eternally preexisting Unity that was always available for you to experience.

Continuing …

And if it cannot … this is me, not the Text … and if it cannot conceive of attacking any one or any thing, it likewise cannot conceive of being attacked by any one or any thing.

The Conscious Experience of Unity right here and right now in what you call the world is available to you to experience because it is the unalterable Truth of Everything. And that’s why at the bottom line it’s worth your attention, your effort, your self-discipline, to look at everything with new eyes and with a willingness to abandon a defense system that is always on high alert.

Continuing …

Magical, fantastic, fantasy, a groundless idea or set of ideas, a baseless set of ideas treated as though it had substance to it and believed and acted upon.

Continuing …

Well, this is true, only total allegiance can be trusted. But you don’t have anything available to you to give total allegiance to except That Which Is Real. And giving total allegiance to a fantasy, to that which isn’t real, is a non-event, is a non-action.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that … it’s like self-flagellation and self-punishment is a way of saying to God, “I recognize my sins and I’m suffering for them, and therefore you don’t have to punish me.” But the one thing it doesn’t say is, “And I’m not going to indulge in my sins any more. I’m not going to indulge in the act of self-will that causes me to experience myself as separate from You, Father. I’m not going to engage in acts of self-will that constitute an ongoing act of divorcement.” You see, it doesn’t say that. So it says, “I will punish myself so that You don’t have to and so that I don’t have to abandon my independence which I value so highly, even though in order to maintain it I must constantly punish myself.”

Continuing …

You see? There it is again. That which is making the decision is the Christ That You Are, the Holy Son or Daughter of God That You Are, and you cannot make an ineffectual decision. The only thing you cannot do is cause a second creation separate and apart from God to arise into existence. You can believe that you have and you will suffer from the belief. Why? Because your decisions are not ineffectual for you.

Continuing …

… the effects of judgment …

… and this is all capitalized words …

Until the Christ That You Are makes a new choice and a new commitment, and therefore a new decision, because your decisions cannot be ineffectual because of What You Divinely Are, even though you sit in this room and for the most part are in a constant state of denying the possibility that You Are The Christ.

You don’t want to be the Christ. You might want to be the Christ if you could do it secretly and no one would know it. But the last thing you want to do is get up in the morning and face your world and have the world see you glowing, and have the world feel the Presence of God right where you are. Because you are afraid if you were that odd, you would be attacked. You would be ridiculed. You don’t want to be the Christ, at least not publicly. And yet, the call is for you to look into your Brother’s or Sister’s eyes and remember God while you’re looking them in the eye. There’s no way to do that privately!

But remember what I said. Being the Christ means being the Presence of Love, with a capital “L”. And being the Presence of Love means being the on-the-spot inspired Conscious Awareness that knows how to be in such utterly simple but effective ways with your Brother. And all you might do is put your arm around that one’s shoulder, or smile, or say, “You know, maybe, maybe you don’t need to be quite as afraid as you are and here’s why. Here’s the way it looks to me.” And just be the absence of fear with them. You don’t know how it’s going to come out. But by damn it dare to be from that Place of Excellence in You because it will be recognizable as Love to those to whom you are led to extend it.

The only ones to whom it will not appear as Love are those who are fascinated by and committed to what they see to be the pleasure of engaging in hate, who pleasure in it because it gives them a sense of identity that they don’t think they can achieve in any other way. And therefore the Presence Of Love That You Are would be a threat, an overt-aggressive threat to their fascination with sin. But your willingness to come from the Place of Excellence in You and to be inspired of the Father how to be in that moment, you’ll know whether to walk away or whether to persist in ways that you couldn’t imagine as being effective at all.

There are fewer people indulging in sin than those who are not. And as I said last week and the week before, if you are met by someone who refuses your gift and are committed to non-acceptance of it, then turn toward those who are reaching out.

Again …

… the effects of judgment …

You see? “Oh, but I’m learning it! I’m learning it!” But then when I say “Are you willing to get up in the morning and go out and be the Presence of the Christ publicly?”, you recognize that if there were a less public way to do it, you really would rather do it that way. And so you have not learned it yet.

Continuing …

… not to have learned it …

Can be unmade as well as made.

It’s one of the two operating systems. And which one you’re using is nothing more and nothing less than a decision you are making on the spot every single moment.

… the two operating systems …

… the Christ that you Are …

Again …

… this is what I was saying last week …

And here are the key words again.

You know the phrase, “Reach out and touch someone.” At various times in your lives, something has happened and the person you are with has been touched by something you said or did, because in that moment you happened to be defenseless enough to be inspired by the Father, to be the Presence of His Will and the Expression of the Place of Excellence in You. And you functioned from the Other Operating System. And the one you were with was literally touched and changed by the encounter. And then, all the rest of your life, nothing significant like that has ever happened.

What I want to say to you is notice that, because it constitutes a clear, distinguishable difference that allows you to see that occasionally something extremely valuable has happened. And all the rest of time, nothing of that sort has happened. Notice the difference so that you might stay connected with the desire to have that evidence of your being a transformational agent for change. That’s how you honor the Place of Excellence in You. And that’s how you invite God to be embodied more fully in you so that you in your Right Mind, you in the Conscious Experience of Sanity, can replace the fantasy experience of yourself that is to one degree or another an experience of misery, suffering, anxiety, tension, exhaustion, the absence of fun.

This section in the sparkly book is entitled, “The Two Decisions”—the decision for one or the other of the two operating systems.

Last week in the section we were discussing, we talked about the fact that you’re always teaching. Whichever operating system you’re coming from, you’re teaching and you’re embodying in the world. And one of them confirms and reestablishes misery, and the Other establishes release from that misery.

You can’t say, “Well, hey, what difference does it make if I don’t come from the Place of Excellence in me for a while? What difference does it make? Nobody else is either. You know, I know Armageddon isn’t coming. And hey, things aren’t that bad, you know. And so rather than get up on a bandbox and teach something and be a transformational Presence, I’d rather do nothing at all.”

Well, friends, you can’t do nothing at all! If you’re not doing that, you are on another bandbox and you’re teaching the other operating system. And to those who are using the same operating system you are, you are an effective presence on behalf of continued ignorance.

So don’t think that right now you’re doing nothing. And if you choose for the Other Operating System, you will be taking a stand for something. You’re taking a stand for something right this minute! And you cannot not be taking a stand for something. So take a look squarely at this. If you really thought for a moment that what you were contributing was that which caused ignorance and suffering to be extended, well, you would have no more truck with yourself than you have with so-and-so down the street that’s being awful. You see?

So, I’m going to say don’t get hung up on the fact that if you’re not coming from the Place of Excellence in You, that you are … you’re being … what was the word back here [turning pages] … a perverted presence in the world. In the world of the ego, you are being a perverted presence, but you’re not accomplishing anything by it and you’re not affecting Reality by it, but you are keeping yourself and others from experiencing Reality, Harmony, Unity.

Don’t get hung up on that. Just realize that you’re not really being the good boy or the good girl who’s not really doing bad things in the world, and therefore what difference does it make if you wait a little while to actually be the dynamic Presence of Love that is transformational for yourself and your Brother. Don’t think that it doesn’t make any difference if you wait a little while. Because either you’re teaching that, either you’re teaching what causes sudden shifts of perception to occur, healing, or you are doing what inhibits sudden shifts of perception, miracles. You’re doing one or the other absolutely. Own it.

Contemplate this one point for this coming week. You’re teaching one or the other fully. You are teaching one or the other with commitment. You are teaching one or the other aggressively. Knowing that will allow you to feel motivated to make a conscious choice, instead of an unconscious choice, for one or the other. And that’s the way movement begins. That’s the way the first domino begins to fall.

It won’t fall because a billion more copies of the Course can now be freely printed and distributed in the world. It will happen because you today, tomorrow, the next day, are realizing that you’re teaching all the time and you’re either teaching that which unifies or you are teaching that which divides. And you are teaching it with the Power of the Christ That You Are.

Well, this coming week I know it’s going to feel good to us to have more of you standing with us consciously. And to the degree that you make commitment to it, you will feel us standing with you and that will be a wonderful confirmation of the Truth of what I’ve been saying to you. And it will also be that which will add impetus, strength, if you will, to your willingness to make a commitment in a new direction.

I love you all and I look forward to seeing you next week.