Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’re in the midst of clarifying the meaning of the crucifixion, finding its meaning by not looking at it through the lens of your sense of yourself being separated from the Father. If you are looking at the crucifixion, or any aspect of your lives, from an independent vantage point, you’re going to see everything you’re looking at in a conflicted manner. You’re going to see everything as polarized, including God. And every single Divine Event that is happening, and I will tell you there is nothing that is not a Divine Event happening, every Divine Event that is happening will be seen as both good and bad, beneficial and threatening, depending upon your mood, but nevertheless, everything that you see will be composed of opposing dynamics. Not because they’re there, but because you are choosing to look at them while utilizing what we’re going to call a split mind.

A split mind in this sense: When you choose to conceive of yourself as being an independent being, an independent entity, you are leaving the Holy Spirit out. And what is the Holy Spirit? Nothing more than your Right Mind. Nothing more than your Right Mind.

The Holy Spirit you do not see as your Self. And that’s because you disowned It, if I may put it that way, when you said, “But, Father, I’d rather see it my way.” And you adopted an independent stance all by yourself on your own for the purpose of trying to create a certain sense of independent authority, because you wanted to see what that felt like, because you thought it might be interesting.

When you did that, you separated off a small part of what you are and said, “This is me,” and you rejected the rest. And so now the Holy Spirit is the Altar in the middle of you that you’re too busy to pay any attention to. Too busy doing what? Defending your existence. [laughing] Defending this private sense of existence that seems so important to you to maintain.

After having gotten this bill of divorcement from the Father and thereby splitting your mind, then God, the Indivisible Moving Presence of capital “B” Being became your enemy because, of course, God, being your Source, would uncover the falsity, the illusionary nature of the sense of yourself that you are intent upon manifesting and confirming and somehow making real. And so that which can uncover the falsity of your position becomes your enemy, while at the same time being something which, if you are a good boy or a good girl and you plead with Him, because He is Love, He will be your Helper. So, you create this conflicted sense of your God—part of which is true and part of which is false.

Going to the book.

… God’s …

Now it would have been impossible to conceive of God as wrathful and having a retaliatory weapon if one wasn’t feeling guilty, if one wasn’t looking through a lens of conflict.

Continuing …

You know what? All of you have a predisposition to anger, because anger is just about the only effective means you have for making change and for enforcing conditions that won’t be further threatening to your already false sense or definition of yourself that you are trying to impress everyone else with as being the truth. And so part of your being on guard to defend this imaginary position that you want to think is real is to be ready to express anger to bring your fellowman into line, to bring him back into agreement with a mutually-agreed-upon definition of yourself that you are trying to teach and force others to believe.

Continuing …

What is the Atonement prayer? Teach only Love for that is What You Are.

Continuing …

You see, you can’t teach what you don’t believe. You can’t teach what you don’t believe, and what you believe you teach.

Continuing …

The lesson of the crucifixion was to convey to you the value of not taking the bait that causes you to respond from your imaginary sense of yourself. Not to take the bait that causes you to forget Who You Are. Not to take the bait that causes you to feel that there is justification for abandoning your Right Mind, for abandoning the Father, for abandoning the Clear, Infinite Direct Experience of What You Are in favor of a definition you made-up that you thereafter have to defend and which forever after causes everything you see to be polarized, worthy of your defense, and therefore a reason not to remember Home.

Continuing …

Follow me. To follow me all of the way at the time.

You see, if you look at what I’m teaching and if you look in the direction that I am guiding you, and you look in that direction from your own conflicted sense of yourself, you will be bound to assume that the road will be a hard one, a struggle, that the road will be fraught with opposition from your Brothers and Sisters because it’s going to be so radically different.

And that can be justification for walking slowly or turning and running. But I must remind you that what we’re talking about is learning how to be the clearer and clearer Presence of Love. And you know what? Everyone recognizes Love, and does not find the Presence of Love frightening, objectionable or otherworldly. You may have forgotten how to Love, but none of you has forgotten what the Experience of Love feels like. And so you must know that what I’m uncovering in you is your ever-increasing capacity to be the Presence of Love which will be recognizable as Love and will not create for you dynamics of conflict, struggle, or martyrdom. This is very important.

Those being the Presence of Love are welcomed and embraced by those around them. This is the truth. You may say, “Well I’ve been the Presence of Love and indeed, I’ve had people get very angry with me.” Well I promise you that if that was the case, you were working at being the Presence of Love and you were feeling that the only way to convey being the Presence of Love was through the same use of willfulness and coercion that you brought into play when you were trying to enforce the mutually-agreed-upon definitions. And it was that willful intent to coerce by means of Love the experience of Love in others that others responded to negatively.

What we’re discussing is not a way to teach Love but a way to be Love. And there’s a big difference.

Continuing …

All behavior teaches the beliefs which motivate it. You’re teaching all the time, even when you’re not saying a word. Psychologists refer to some aspects of it as body language. But your behavior always is reflecting what you believe. If you through body language communicate defense, you are teaching that you feel threatened. You are thereby teaching that you have taken the bait and forgotten Who You Are, and that the only correction for defense against threat, perceived threat, is to back up prior to the point where you saw yourself as separate, divorced from your Father, and therefore divorced from your Brothers and Sisters because as an orphan you don’t have any Brothers or Sisters, without a Father you don’t have any Brothers or Sisters.

Continuing …

Mind you, it said the ego and the Son of God. It didn’t say Judas. It didn’t say Pilate. It didn’t say the crowd yelling, “Crucify him. Crucify him.” Remember not to personalize the ego.

Again …

That’s another way of saying, if you cannot Love your Brother whom you have seen, how can you Love God whom you have not seen?

And you all know this. When you are afraid of something, when you’re engulfed in fear, it’s almost impossible to feel gratitude. And because you are constantly defending, reinforcing, supporting your false sense of yourself, and therefore a false sense of what you’re called upon to be every day, you seldom find occasion for expressing gratitude, and it has become a somewhat foreign activity to you.

Now, a short while ago, I suggested to everyone that during the holiday period here, that you when you encounter someone who is providing you with a service, that when they’re finished you look them squarely in the eye and say, “Thank you for being here for me.” Or “Thank you for doing what you do.”

Ah! A little bit of expression of gratitude. Many of you have found this difficult to do. That it’s much easier just to say, “Thank you very much.” But to say, “Thank you for being here for me,” or “Thank you for doing what you do,” is more difficult because it’s more intimate. Intimacy breaks isolation. And those of you who have attempted to put into practice my suggestion have found out just exactly how much you defend yourself against abandoning your isolation. It shows you how deeply ingrained your habit of separation goes. And all of it comes out in a very simple opportunity to do something very simple, to say a few words. “Thank you for being here for me.” “Thank you for doing what you do.” I encourage you to engage in this practice indefinitely.

You know you need to experience gratitude expressed toward you. Well, so does everyone else. And gratitude can only be extended from a heart that cares. So, does that tell you something? If you’re reluctant to express gratitude, it means you are reluctant to express the fact that you care. It demonstrates how defended you are against caring, how foreign it has become to you. And yet I tell you that when you become completely undefended, when you yield into the Brotherhood, as it were, and you find yourself at one with everyone, you will find that caring, that being the Presence of Love as a direct, not communication, but as a direct communion, it will be the most joyful thing you have experienced. But it’s got to start right now in the middle of your reluctance to express it, because it seems to have become foreign to you, in order for it to grow into a fuller and fuller expression.

Now, you know what? When you let appreciation come forth from you, it can’t come forth as any means of control over another. It will be a gift. And it will create ripples and it will spread.

And not only will it become less and less foreign to extend appreciation and to break down the isolation, it will also become easier and easier for you and everyone else to stand in receipt of appreciation without minimizing it, or apologizing for it, or talking it away. “Thank you for being here for me.” “Oh, oh, that’s okay! It’s nothing!” You see? “You look especially lovely today.” “Oh, well. Well, the dress I’m wearing was only $5.95 at the store.” You know, instead of saying “thank you” and letting it in and letting it register with you as nothing more or less than appreciation, Love extended.

It not only is difficult for you to express a simple intimacy of appreciation, it’s hard for you to let appreciation or Love in and register with you without messing with it, at least a little bit to keep it from being clearly what it is. Because if you let it be clearly what it is, it will mean that you have lowered your defenses which you are hesitant to do, because your sense of yourself, your definition of yourself causes you to experience everything as duplicitous.

As a result, you must be suspicious of everything. And even an expression of simple appreciation, intimacy, will be interpreted at times to be a means that your Brother or Sister has to try to get something from you, that there’s some other reason for their behavior than real appreciation.

This is very important. Your conflicted way of looking at everything causes you to be sure that everything has two sides, and that therefore everything is untrustworthy until you have put everything to the test. And even then, you are not so sure.

Now, find ways to express appreciation. Why? Not because your Brother needs it, even though your Brother does, but because you need to break the habit of maintaining your isolation.

Again …

And so, at this Christmas season when singing praises to God are… the words singing praises to God are heard in your Christmas carols, know that it’s not that God needs your praise, but that it is a reminder that you need to engage in the act of praise extended to God and extended to each other.

Continuing …

Whenever you are afraid of what you are, you do not appreciate it. Let’s be clear here. I’m not talking about when you are afraid of what you think you are. I’m talking about when you are afraid of What You Are. When you are afraid to acknowledge the Holy Spirit in you, with the awareness that acknowledging It means acknowledging that which is nothing more than your Right Mind. You’re afraid of doing this, and quote:

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is not amenable to your projection on It. And because It is you, It cannot abandon you, and so It remains you in your Truth, you in your Reality, busy, forever busy insinuating Itself into your awareness, attracting you to let It in. Which means attracting you to a forever better experience of What You Truly Are.

Continuing …

Right now you’re using that for the purpose of reaffirming, re-establishing, and confirming separation. And it’s called war. And it’s called not saying, “Thank you for being here for me.”

Continuing …

And, again, this is the lesson of the crucifixion.

“Father, I’d rather see it my way. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.” Rejection of your Father, rejection of your Source, and ultimately, rejection of your Identity.

Continuing …

Or conversely, as long as you believe it, you still teach it, because you teach what you believe. Your behavior expresses what you believe.

Continuing …

Mmmm. If you are to know Him again. You know what? There’s something in it for you. Knowing Him again is inseparable from a Gift that you will experience and that Gift is remembering your Identity. So, it’s not about puny little you acknowledging God, appreciating God, while you remain puny little you. It’s not about puny little you engaging in adoration. It’s about you reuniting with your Source so that the full Conscious Experience of What You Are comes back into your mind as realization, enhancing everything about you so that your full potential can come forth.

You must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again, and if you want to know your Self again. There must be a reconciliation that undoes the bill of divorcement. And when that bill of divorcement is annulled, you come into the full use of your Right Mind and wake up. And dreams and illusions cease.

This sounds pretty magnificent and impressive and major, if you will. But you know what? You don’t have to somehow do this all at once. You can start out with two simple things. Say to others, “Thank you! Thank you for being here for me. Thank you for doing what you do.” Remember, look them in the eye when you say it. Look them in the eye when you say it. And don’t demean it by saying it in an offhanded way.

Teach only Love for that is What You Are. Don’t take the bait that causes you to forget What You Are and causes you to react from a habituated place of automatic responses which are all defensive.

And I want to point out something else to you. When others engage in projection or when you engage in projection, but I’m primarily going to put it this way, when others engage in projection and project upon you the fact that they’ve forgotten Who They Are, and therefore can’t see you except in a conflicted way, they will always call your ego into question. They will always make some remark that will twist what may have been a perfectly clear expression of Love into an opportunity to suggest that you’re not the Presence of Love and that you are nothing but a collection of psychological responses which are less than the best. And they will suggest that your behavior occurred for some unsavory reason. And that’s the invitation to take the bait and forget yourself that what you were expressing was Love and respond in like manner to their behavior.

So when you find someone minimizing you, misinterpreting you, and addressing you on the basis of the way they’re seeing you in a reactive and uncomplimentary way, be very alert because they’re doing exactly the opposite of what is healing. What is healing is to impersonalize the ego, to impersonalize the suggestions that the ego makes. Conversely, the use of projection is to personalize your behavior and twist it into something that it is not.

And of course, that’s always experienced as insulting. “Oh!” Insulting to what? Insulting to nothing if you didn’t take the bait. But if you take the bait and forget What You Are and forget what you were meaning, you will identify with the definition of yourself, and you will immediately move into defensive mode, attack mode, retaliation mode, and now you’ve both fallen into the ditch. And you’re the blind leading the blind, which means that all that can follow is bumping into this, that, and the other thing, and skinning your shin, until someone remembers that they took the bait and then consciously steps back prior to that point remembering to join with the Holy Spirit in you so that everything that follows might be nothing less than the Expression of Love that can trigger your Brother’s release from his need to project by personalizing something you have done on you. This is very important.

The next section is entitled:

… an undivided mind, an unsplit mind…

… a bill of divorcement. “I choose no longer to be associated with you. I choose to imagine that I’m no longer associated with you. I choose to imagine that I can be, no longer be associated with you. And I choose to imagine that I am now no longer associated with you. See you later buddy. I’m on my way!”

Continuing …

If you have an inferiority complex, or if you just feel inferior without it being full-blown into a complex, that is the lens through which you will observe everything. And everything that happens, everything that others say will be reflected to you in light of your sense of your inferiority. As a result, you will assume that others see you as inferior and will treat you accordingly. Mind you, when you feel inferior, you generally don’t let yourself know that you’re feeling inferior. You don’t walk around saying, “I have an inferiority complex.” You have blocked it out of your awareness, but you project it on your Brothers and Sisters and you see reflected in their behavior your unconscious self-definition.

Again …

You’ve attacked yourself first. We’ve got to step all the way back to the first step away. You attacked yourself first by saying, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.” You attacked yourself first by enacting a bill of divorcement, not realizing that in so doing you would remove from your awareness your Identity. And the loss of your Identity is the result of your bill of divorcement, your attack on God that ended up being an attack on you because you immediately began to suffer amnesia, which you’re now in the process of emerging out of.

Continuing …

How many of you have had the experience of a Brother speaking to you as though they are better than you? And how does that feel? Insulting. Insulting because you know that they aren’t better than you. But you know what? You don’t carry it far enough. You know they aren’t better than you, but until you abandon the idea that they are worse than you because of this atrocious behavior that they’re engaging in, you are doing exactly the same thing, and there’s no opportunity for connection. And therefore, there’s no opportunity for healing of a separation that isn’t real. And this absolutely inhibits communion, Oneness with your Brother, Harmony.

Again, if they are projecting on you in this way, it doesn’t mean that you become oblivious to the projection. It just means that you address it from that which is nothing more than your Right Mind so that you respond to the call for Love with Love.

You need to learn to emphasize a different word in the phrase “a call for Love.” Right now you tend to emphasize the word “call,” and the word “call” represents inappropriate, unloving behavior, hateful behavior, that your brother is engaging in that is a call for Love. It’s like “Yeah, I see. I see what’s going on here. This terrible behavior they’re engaging in is a call for Love. Ooooh!” The word “Love” needs to be the thing emphasized. It’s a call for Love. This shifts the attention from the Brother who’s making the call to the Brother who should be responding with what is called for, Love. It shifts the attention to you and your capacity to respond with Love, to be the Presence of Love. Not a reactor to the one calling for Love in such an atrocious manner.

Again, this is difficult because it’s a call for intimacy. If it’s a call for you to be the Presence of Love, it’s a call for you to be intimate. And you already have thousands of reasons not to be intimate, much less intimate in the face for this call for Love. You see what I’m saying? The emphasis gets put on the wrong word and the emphasis gets put on whatever the awful elements are of the call, and you become distracted from the presented opportunity for you to be the Presence of Love, the opportunity for you not to take the bait and forget to be the Presence of Love. And then, care enough to hang in there with this Brother or Sister until his or her apparent need to project is reduced and healed.

Continuing …

I’ll tell you something else. Anger would be impossible if you had a sensationless body, just as fear would be impossible if you had a sensationless body. Both are supported and strengthened by your using your body to be the manifestation of emotion which you are introducing into the mix. It is not something that the call for Love ever introduces into the mix.

Your Brother’s poor behavior does not call for anger or fear. Your interpretation of your Brother’s protection and then your use of your body by creating sensations in it are what elicit anger, fear. It is what substantiates it. It’s what aggravates it. And it’s what moves you into a momentary focused insanity, loss of intelligence, which then you feel freely able to express and justified in expressing because of the way your decision and your creation of your body sensations has caused your Brother to appear to you as a threat to you.

And whether your Brother’s behavior does need correction or not, this drama that you have engaged yourself and your body in has nothing to do with the correction of it. It has no means of causing a miracle to occur, a sudden shift of perception. And, in fact, it blocks it, and it confirms for you and your Brother the ongoing need for even further projection.

This may seem complex, but I know that you each understand it enough at this point for that understanding to grow within you so that you might see the way you are handling things, as well as the fact that you handle things in that way because, first of all, you took the bait and found yourself justified in forgetting What You Are and Who You Are. Thus causing you to forget to reach out to that which is nothing more than your Right Mind, the Holy Spirit, so that you might break the isolation with your capital “S” Self first so that then in the Experience of Love that fills you, you might break the separation with your Brother by hanging in there with him with Love until the correction occurs.

Continuing …

How’s that? Well, projection hurts you because it’s the means by which you remain securely unconscious of the fact that you are suffering yourself from no longer knowing Who You Are.

Continuing …

It’s really an act of dishonesty. You are saying, “I refuse to take an honest look at what I am doing. I refuse to take an honest look at the fact that I am not independent.” It’s an unwillingness to say, and look at the fact, that you didn’t create yourself, and you cannot be separate from your Source.

Continuing …

And conversely, without projection, Peace is possible. Without projection, self-honesty is possible. Without projection, you’re in a position of being able to correct the mistake you’ve made, and turn to the Father and say, “Help.” Or turn to the Holy Spirit and say, “Help.” Or turn to your Brother and Sister and say, “Thank you for being here for me. Thank you for doing what you do.” And you might say putting a new Spirit in the air. The Spirit of Christmas, the Spirit of the Christ Mind, the Spirit of the Divine One That You Are that you no longer want to be unconscious of.

I love you all.

If you all want to be agents for change in the new year, then stay conscious and be alert for every time that you’re willing to take the bait and engage in the excitement of not totally destructive conflict with your Brother, the willingness to engage in the invigoration of a good tussle, even though hurt feelings will be the result. Certainly not clarification or healing.

So, I look forward to being with you, as the saying goes, next year. And in the meantime, please, do everything you can to alleviate yourself of the awkwardness and discomfort of saying, “Thank you for being here for me. Thank you for doing what you do.” And contribute to the reduced discomfort of it and awkwardness of it by doing it often.

Why? Because they need it? No, because you need it. And they do need it. But be aware that it’s a two-way street. You need to be the initiator of the Gift of Appreciation because your initiating it becomes your declaration, your behavioral declaration that you choose not to continue to contribute to yours and everyone else’s ongoing sense of isolation.

I will stop there.

Thank you for being here for me. Okay.