Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’ve been talking for the last few weeks about the two operating systems, the one being the ego’s operating system and the other being the Holy Spirit’s Operating System, and that waking up is a matter of shifting from the ego’s operating system to the Holy Spirit’s Operating System. Remembering that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your Right Mind.

Because of the general familiarity with computers and computer systems and the fact that they’re called operating systems, it’s possible for you to think that the two operating systems are like two different objects. And I want to make a subtle distinction here. The ego’s operating system, in replacing the Holy Spirit’s Operating System, did not constitute the Holy Spirit’s Operating System to be removed from you, or to be like removed from the computer. The ego’s operating system is overlaid upon the Holy Spirit’s Operating System. It’s rather like you’re putting on a pair of colored glasses which, let us say, they’re red colored glasses. It causes an overlay of red to be placed between you and everything you’re observing, so that everything you see is colored red. It didn’t make everything you see change, but it made the way you perceive it change.

The ego’s operating system is a way of thinking which you have overlaid over the direct, clear experience of Reality. Now, in shifting from one operating system to the Other, you abandon the ego’s operating system so that the overlay fades, allowing the Eternal Operating System, that which is nothing more than your Right Mind, to be experienced by you without any distractions. And the new Operating System becomes obviously yours, instead of something that has been obscured and put into the background by an overlay of thoughts, ideas, mutually-agreed-upon definitions that are at odds with Reality. This is important.

Now, the paramount subject at the moment happens to be guilt. And we’ve discussed the fact that you use guilt not only to distract yourself from the Other Operating System, the New Operating System, the only Real Operating System, but you use it to keep your Brothers and Sisters unconscious of it as well. And you use it by continually finding ways to make your Brother say “ouch.” And in the process of making your Brother say “ouch,” you suggest that it is your Brother’s perception that needs to be changed. So not only have you implied guilt, you have implied that the guilt has been brought into play entirely by the one you made feel guilty. And thus your part in the introduction of guilt becomes overlooked.

Now there are many ways you do this to each other. And one of the most subtle, and therefore most-difficult-to-address forms of it is criticism.

How many of you have noticed someone of the female persuasion who has started going through menopause and apparently become cranky and critical. And you say, you notice it, of course, and you say, “Well, she’s going through menopause.” And what you’re saying is, in effect, I don’t have to honor the criticism. I don’t have to take it personally. I understand it because quote ‘‘it’s a stage she’s going through’’ unquote. And in actuality that is a kindness. But you recognize there . . . you recognize there the fact that the criticism is not appropriate. And that’s the key point.

In other cases you may notice that somebody is apparently getting older, and in their old age they’re becoming critical, and you recognize that it’s not appropriate. You don’t like it, but you say, “Well, that’s old age for you.”

What I’m trying to point out is that when you see it in others, you recognize that it is inappropriate, but when you engage in it, you seldom notice that you’re doing it. And yet, little criticisms constitute niggling cuts, if you will, against the Integrity of the person being criticized. And you need to become alert to when you’re practicing criticism, even in the guise of jokes. You need to become alert because you are allowing yourself to practice hate, because the act of criticism is undercutting and undermining of another’s peace. You need to recognize when you’re doing it so that you can bite your tongue and not embody hate, not give it voice in the world, and then correct yourself, make another choice, so that what comes out of your mouth expresses Love and support and encouragement and that which substantiates the Excellence in your Brother.

Why? Because when you are in the act of instilling guilt, you are distancing yourself from that Place of Excellence in You, and you are causing the one being made to feel guilty to automatically become defensive and retaliatory, and thus teach the necessity of not being unconditional, the necessity of not being trusting, the necessity of not being open and undefended against the influx of God’s Point of View so that It might be expressed and embodied in the world.

Love one another.

See to it that in everything you do, it causes your Brother to feel safe, or your Sister, to feel safe enough to let down his or her defenses so that the overlay of the ego’s operating system may fade, and in its absence disclose the underlying Eternal Operating System of the Holy Spirit which is the Presence of God in each one of you.

I encourage you during this coming week and beyond that, but I encourage you during this, all of you, during this coming week to monitor your thoughts and your expressions to see whether or not what you’re saying, or what you’re about to say, is going to be an invitation to your Brother or Sister to feel guilty and to feel the need for defense, so that you don’t become the focal point for more firmly establishing the ego’s operating system.

Okay. Reading …

And I’m adding: and therefore the obscurers of Eternity.

… guilt feelings …

You see, guilt feelings bring your imagination into play because the future can only be imagined. And so, when you attempt to cause another to feel guilty, you cause the imagination of another to come into play. And you know they’re going to do this, which is why you employ guilt, because you want them to become fearful of what you will do as a consequence of their not buckling under to your wish to have them see things your way and not abandon the mutually-agreed-upon definitions.

Continuing …

… meaning the ensuring that the future will remain like the past

… you …

In exchange for what? In exchange for the abandonment of guilt, but more basically in exchange for your abandoning the ego’s operating system and choosing instead, in all cases, to come from the Place of Excellence in You, which is the Holy Spirit.

Continuing …

You see, when you’re in the ego operating system, you are conditioned, you’re nothing but a bunch of conditioned responses. You are conditioned to keep everybody else conditioned, and you are also conditioned to keep yourself conditioned.

“Oh! When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my mother instilled in me conscience, and I learned it, and I know better than to go against what I was taught. It has become my code of conduct. And because she used guilt and shame as the justification for my adopting it so sincerely, I must do the same with everyone else because that’s the way it works.” And so, if you, through truly Divine Inspiration find yourself led to behave in a way that occurs outside of your conditioned conscience, you feel guilty and you stop yourself immediately.

And so, guilt keeps you in line. And you use guilt to keep everyone else in line. And everyone else uses guilt to keep you in line. And it’s a continuing downward spiral of ignorance. And you need to realize that this is happening so that you can make a different choice. And so that you can find the use of guilt to be repulsive, something you do not want to utilize or engage in or be controlled by.

Because as long as you, with your mind, keep yourself bound to ignorance, and as long as you use that to keep others bound to ignorance, and as long as everyone else is using it to keep you bound to ignorance, well, it’s obvious that you’re like a butterfly caught and pinned in a display case absolutely kept from expressing your Function of Freedom and Beauty and Life.

Continuing …

… you could say do not forget there’s another Operating System. Remember that the only thing you are confronted by is Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven.

Continuing …

… your right Mind …

… God’s …

You see there’s that process again. You must invite the consciousness of Love in so that it can be extended to your Brother so that you may have it for yourself because you have embodied it.

Again …

That’s because it’s a defense system. And it’s always going to present the defense against the clear perception of Truth before you have the chance to express the Truth, because it must defend its existence.

Now let’s go back because this is important. What you do not understand is that the two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing. I’ve said, over and over again that the only thing you’re confronted by is Reality. At this very moment as you sit in your homes, or as each of you sits here in this room with all of the objects in the room, the only thing confronting you and looking like objects is the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s only the Kingdom of Heaven that the ego can have an interpretation of. It’s only the Kingdom of Heaven that you can have mutually-agreed-upon definitions about. There’s nothing else available for you to have a single thought about. So the ego and the Holy Spirit speak of the same thing. The only thing is that the Holy Spirit speaks of it truly and reveals it truly. And the ego definitions lie about it, and then, you become engaged in a lifelong goal of trying to confirm the lie as the Truth. And the strife between you and your Brother and Sister is made up of nothing more than the constant battle of trying to establish the lie as Truth.

Continuing …

Why was speaking unnecessary? Because you all Knew the Truth. And you all Knew that each other Knew It as a direct unrestricted Experience Of What Each Other Was Knowing. And that’s what awaits you at this moment as you abandon the overlay of the ego’s operating system.

Continuing …

… judgment … I’m interjecting this here. Judgment spoken is always a form of criticism, and is therefore always an attempt to instill guilt so as to cause defense which constitutes a tightening up which causes your body to become more dense, your Body of Light, and therefore dark. And as a result, the Illumination of Your Being is no longer seen, and it’s easy to forget that You Are The Light, that You Are The Light Of Living Love, that You Are Radiant Being. And then it’s very easy for you to say that everything is matter, because you cannot see the Light of it in it.

(PAUL: Just a moment.)

Continuing …

… let’s just be with that for a moment.

And the reason is that the ego’s purpose is to provide a definition different from the Father’s Meaning. Why? So that it can get the hit of being an original thinker, an authoritative presence in its own right.

Continuing …

… the ego’s …

Well, I am aware that many of you are afraid of God. And when I speak of coming Home, you are afraid that that will mean that you will be punished for everything you did that was unloving, for everything that you did while you were denying God. But the simple fact is that quote “the ego’s decisions are always wrong because they are based on a complete fallacy.” Therefore, everything you think you have done that the Father would punish you for, is based on a thought that has as its foundation a fallacy. Which means that all of the conclusions that you have come to about your guilt are false. Which means that the Father looks at you and sees that while you are having your own little private personal fantasy and you are believing the awfulness of the ideas you are choosing to think with, absolutely nothing is happening. And therefore, there is nothing that God would judge you for. There is nothing that God can find you guilty of. And therefore, you will be embraced as What You Truly Are.

And I will tell you this. The Father will rejoice in seeing you not laboring under fear and guilt for things that never happened. The Father will rejoice that you are no longer experiencing a form of insanity. The Father will rejoice that you are recognizing Him and embodying Him and fulfilling your Function, and, we will say, becoming co-creators with Him. You will be received with welcome. You are embraced with welcome right now.

Continuing …

… of the Bible …

Now here’s a particularly important point.

Now, I have in the past described the ego as structures of thought that have formed a bubble in the middle of the Infinitude of You. And now, with that boundary there, you say, “This, all that is included within the boundary, is me,” even though the air inside the bubble is the same air that’s on the outside of the bubble. What you are calling the ego, your ego-self, is just a confined, small part of the Infinitude of You, of You in your Wholeness. What is inside the bubble is as absolutely Divine as what is outside of the bubble. And it’s only the false ideas, the ego infrastructure, the mutually-agreed-upon definitions, that constitute this flimsy, delicate boundary that seems to say there’s an inside and an outside to you, which further says the inside is you and the outside is not you. You see?

The ego, you as an ego, are an illusion, because there is no way a flimsy, fragile surface that has no structural integrity, or strength, can define you, can define the interior of the bubble as all there is of you. And so that sense of yourself that you entertain that is gathered from only the interior of the bubble is a false perception of yourself when All Of You is present inside and outside the bubble. So the ego is not going to be gotten rid of. The volume of air inside the bubble is not going to disappear. It’s only this artificial, false, flimsy boundary that’s going to disappear.

I have just reinterpreted it for you intellectually, but it is going to be reinterpreted for you experientially.

But the only way this flimsy bubble is going to pop is when you stop re-enforcing it through the use of guilt, through the use of fear, on yourself and others. Now you know how flimsy a soap bubble is? That’s as flimsy as the ego structures are that keep you bound. So you’re not up against an overwhelming task. The bubble has only the strength that the Divine One That You Are inside the bubble brings to bear upon your own thoughts to strengthen your own thoughts as opposed to the Father’s Thoughts. When you invite God in, you have to be inviting Something from outside the circumference of the sphere of the bubble of ego structures. And that desire that reaches beyond the boundary of the ego structures weakens the bubble.

The key fact is that not only does the circumference of this bubble seem to separate you from God, it seems to separate you from your Brothers. And your natural Unity is lost to you as an experience.

So, if you reach out to God, that weakens the bubble. If from the Place of Excellence in you, you reach out to your Brother, that weakens the bubble. If from the Excellence in you, you reach out to the Excellence that you know has to be there in your Brother, that weakens the bubble. But you’ve got to break the isolation, the apparent isolation, that this flimsy bubble creates the illusion of.

Reaching our from the Excellence in You to the Excellence in your Brother, whether it’s apparent or not in your Brother, weakens the bubble. But, also, even if you’re not reaching out to the Excellence in your Brother, if you get into the habit of catching yourself when you, out of habit, spontaneously engage in criticism of your Brother, that may not weaken the bubble but it impedes the substantiation of the bubble, both yours and your Brother’s or Sister’s bubble. So the very act of being kind enough to bite your tongue and not express criticism contributes… contributes substantially to the mental environment that allows your bubble to weaken, and your Brother’s or Sister’s as well.

So again, surprising news.

… meaning the part that’s inside the bubble …

In other words, all of you that’s outside the bubble will be reunited with the little bit of you that’s on the inside of the bubble, and your experience of Conscious Awareness, of being Mind, will be whole.

Continuing …

You tell me how the part of you that’s inside the bubble becoming undefended against the rest of You, the Infinite rest of You outside of the bubble, can be interpreted as anything other than a rejoining of That Which Has Always Been One. And how can that be interpreted as potential for judgment and penalty upon you? It becomes easier to see that as long as you have held yourself to be tiny and to only be that which you perceive from within the bubble, has constituted imprisonment, and for lack of better words, punishment, suffering, because you cannot be comfortable when you’re not in your Right Mind. And you can’t be comfortable when you’re not in your Right Mind because there’s no way for you to escape your fundamental Sanity. No matter how hard you’ve been trying, you have not been able to deny What You Are because It is Eternal, It is unchanging, It is unalterable, It is omnipotent, It is omnipresent.

And so, every time you try to deny yourself, you get the feedback that says, “You can’t do this.” Except that it’s an absolute “No,” an absolutely unyielding “No.” And it’s your very Being that is saying “No.” And the part of you that wants to be at odds, or thinks it wants to be at odds, doesn’t like to hear the word “No.” And so it makes that which is saying “No,” quote “the enemy” unquote, and takes on what would have to be an eternal battle, because it is an attempt to do something which it was told it couldn’t do from the beginning.

You know what? All I’m saying to any of you is, you can’t do what you can’t do. Stop trying. All of your problems that you’re experiencing is because you’re trying to do what you can’t do, and getting the absolute, universal “No!” that has to accompany it.

Continuing …

[laughing] I certainly didn’t come to shine the Light on you and illuminate your awfulness to you and everyone else.

I surely came to share the Light with you. Share the Light with you.

Continuing …

… everything you believe …

And what is God’s Higher Court? The Holy Spirit. And what is the Holy Spirit? Nothing more than your Right Mind. It’s the very Presence of What You Divinely Are standing ready to reinterpret the ego, and to uncover the meaninglessness, the uselessness, the purely illusory nature of all the imaginations that you have governed yourselves by, punished yourselves with, that were based upon a fundamental fallacy; that fundamental fallacy being that you could have an original thought of your own, on your own, and that you could make-up the world yourself. Everything that followed it never happened. Everything that followed it was pure illusion.

And since at the moment you don’t know which of your thoughts reflect the Truth, and which of the thoughts are affirming and reaffirming and attempting to establish illusion, since you don’t know then, reading again:

… the Holy Spirit. your right Mind …

Again, the Voice for God is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your Right Mind. Your Right Mind will not hear the case at all, because it can only witness truly.

… Its verdict …

The Holy Spirit is there to remind you of What You Truly Are. Why? Because It is You in your Truth. And the only thing it can do is penetrate the bubble and register with the little part of you that you’re identifying with inside the bubble, to remind you of your Wholeness by letting there be even a miniscule connection with It through a little pinprick of a hole, if you will, or a little weakness in the bubble where the connection with your Wholeness can occur.

Continuing …

Your willingness to withdraw from spontaneous criticism constitutes being patient with each other, constitutes the withdrawing of that which reinforces bubbles and promotes ongoing conflict so that there have to be ongoing negotiations for the purpose of what? Of reestablishing or even redefining mutually-agreed-upon definitions, which if they are engaged in, constitute your continuing to be unconscious of What You Divinely Are and unconscious of Reality, and even possibly being able to be convinced that there is nothing else to life but this ongoing state of disruptive tension that it is your sole purpose to learn to minimize, but not get rid of, and live with.

… here we are talking about involvement again, not isolation.

I could get dramatic. “I have shown you infinite patience!” No.

What’s “infinite patience”? Well, the only thing that would make infinite patience untenable is because you think criticism works so much faster, and is so much more effective, and that guilt gets things done. And you like the hit of the sense of power that the exercise of criticism and guilt produces. But it just keeps those bubbles going. And it just keeps the hurting going. And it just keeps the Joy of Being out of sight.

And remember I said last week that time and Eternity are one and that one is Eternity, meaning that you’re always looking at, you are always experiencing Eternity.

If you have chosen to define it as time and created an infrastructure of beliefs around what time is and what its effect are, and so on, then you are caught in an ignorance. An ignorance that you could call blindness to Eternity, even though you are looking at Eternity, or experiencing Eternity, and applying to it an overlay of a different definition which you’re giving preference to, but it is… it is a preferential, distorted perception of the Only Thing There Is to have a perception about and that is Eternity. Therefore, time and Eternity are one, and that one is Eternity.

Well, if that one is Eternity, then be willing to abandon the definitions that are causing you to experience it as time. That’s what it means.

Again …

And I’ve said earlier in our talks that any choice you make to have a perception of something different from What It Really Is causes What That Thing Divinely Is to be a Source of Discovery for you, a Source of rediscovery of What It Truly Is, and so it becomes a learning device, only because you have engaged in a perception of it that is false and must therefore be unlearned.

And so What The Thing Really Is sits there communicating to you What It Really Is because that’s Its Function, to glorify God, and so it sits there communicating to you What It Is. And you seeing It, because there’s nothing else to see, you seeing It but looking at It through a biased perception, see something unclearly, and that thing that you’re seeing unclearly becomes a learning device for you. It becomes the means of helping you unlearn, devalue, and abandon the distortion you have applied to it.

You see? Isn’t that wonderful?

Continuing …

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

… that which is nothing more than your Right Mind has the special Function to return you, the infinite One That You Are, who sees himself or herself circumscribed by a bubble, to return you to your Wholeness minus the bubble.

Every passing moment of time becomes a learning device, because every moment of time is just a little slice of Eternity that you’ve chosen to look at instead of embracing the Whole. But it’s all of Eternity there, even though you’ve decided to slice it up and see it a slice at a time. And so that little slice of Eternity that you’re calling time sits there as a learning device to bring to your remembrance Eternity and to undo, or cause an unlearning of, the illusion that you have taught yourself.

Again …

… every …

… there …

Okay. If you must give Him as you have received Him, this explains this principle. When you are willing to abandon your isolation, when you are willing to abandon your independence, and you invite something else in, well the only… the only other thing there is, is what’s outside the surface of the bubble. And so you invite in the only Thing there is which is the Rest Of You. And you, in your Wholeness, are What God Is Being in His Wholeness. And so you receive the inspiration, you receive the influx of clarity.

But in order for … it’s as though in order for the bubble to pop, you have to give away what’s been given to you. And so you have to turn to your Brother and Sister. And that’s why this paragraph is in here, this paragraph before the last one we read, that begins:

That’s not just a nice thing to say, and it’s not just a nice thing to be. It’s an essential thing to be, because if you do not engage in having an object of your affection, if you do not extend to your Brother because of Love felt in you, the Love that the Father is extending to you, it doesn’t become embodied in you as you and break the bubble.

By golly. I think you’re getting it. [a little audience laugh]

I know that at times all of you can see how utterly simple this is. And ten minutes later the ego introduces the conditioned thinking, [the conditioned thinking] returns, and you say, “It can’t be that simple. This is a really difficult thing to grasp!”—even though you got it and it wasn’t difficult to grasp. Your conditioned responses are deeply ingrained habits. So don’t be surprised that they return. But also, at moments like these, I want you to remember how utterly simple the Truth is, and therefore how utterly simple your release is, so that when you lose the experience that you’re having of the simplicity of it, you don’t begin to bear down on yourself, and you don’t begin to bear down on your Brothers and Sisters through the use of criticism and guilt to try to get things to improve by means of the old familiar operating system. You have got to stay light with yourselves.

You see, the suggestion is that either everything isn’t as simple as the clarity that has come to you today, that either everything isn’t as simple as that, and therefore you really do have to work hard at it. Or the flip side of it is that what I’m saying is nonsense. That I really don’t have [laughing] any grasp on Reality at all, and therefore don’t pay any attention to what Raj is saying. Well, you all, at moments today, have felt the simplicity of it. You’ve had an experience of the simplicity of it. That was Real. It is the Truth.

And rather than climbing on your own backs and each other’s backs in order to work on making this the Truth, keep a light touch. Go lightly on yourselves and persist gently and thoughtfully and kindly as you move to the next time the simplicity of it registers with you clearly, because there will be increasing episodes, we’ll say, of bursts of clarity that you will experience, and those will become the foundation for your capacity to trust the Truth of those experiences. And if you will be kind to yourself in the interim, between these episodes, and if you will be kind with each other in the interim, then it won’t seem as though there’s such a contrast between the points of clarity and your everyday life.

If you like a green lawn, water it. If you like friends, treat them well. If you want to wake up, Love your Brother. Be involved, minus the use of criticism and guilt. Bite your tongue if you have to. It’s better for your tongue to bleed than for your Brother to suffer uselessly. And to suffer from guilt is a useless suffering. Don’t employ it any more.

If you bite your tongue, and you’re having to bite it so often that it begins to bleed, you know what? You’ll stop. [a little audience laugh] And it won’t have anything to do with anyone else or the way they’re behaving, because you know what? You’re not really stupid enough to bite your own tongue to the point it bleeds and suffer that. But you are dumb enough to employ criticism and guilt and let someone else hurt.

So bite your tongue, so that it will put the focus where it needs to be, that brings you to a point of ceasing to do something that hurts you. And in the process, your world will be blessed and you will start being on a new basis. And you being on a new basis is you embodying the Excellence in You in the world, and thus making the Truth yours, thus making Love yours.

Don’t worry. I won’t let you forget for long the simplicity of it all.

I look forward to being with you next week.