Teachings of Christ Mind

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

I want to backtrack a little bit. You’ve heard me say that, “You are not God, but God is all there is of you truly.” And as we have been moving through the Course, it’s become obvious that the first legitimate step one takes in the process of his awakening occurs when you arrive at an impasse and you don’t know what the heck to do, and yet there is a demand for something to be done. And all of the resources you thought you had are not answering the need. And you finally reach out beyond your memory, your past experiences, your best theories, and you say “Help.”

Now, in the terminology of the Course, this is a matter of turning toward the Altar which is right in the middle of you. It’s the way you let something else in. And I’ve identified the Altar as the Holy Spirit which we’ve learned is nothing more than your Right Mind. The Holy Spirit is your capacity to see things God’s Way. That’s the simplest way it can be put.

But remember that the action involved in turning to the Holy Spirit, turning to the Altar, is one of abandoning your best judgments, your best theories, your strongest beliefs, all the definitions you’ve given to everything. It is experienced as the abandonment of the “I” that you have thought you were, the self-sufficient “I” that you thought you were, or the self-sufficient “I” that you thought you ought to be able to be. It’s a matter of abandoning that and yielding to what you find yourself knowing when you’ve turned to the Holy Spirit, opened the door and invited It in. When you do this, you are abandoning the question, “What am I?” The concern you feel about needing to know what you are is left behind.

And if you persist in giving your attention to the Holy Spirit, that which is nothing more than your Right Mind, you will ultimately never return to that place of independence that you thought was your normal state. You will not turn to the Holy Spirit, learn of It, and then abandon It and come back and apply in your independent life, and as an independent entity, what you have learned. If you are persistent in yielding into the Holy Spirit, you might say that the Holy Spirit, your Right Mind, will subsume and consume you, and the experience of it will be the Experience of your Identity.

It’s very important to understand that you don’t lean into the Truth, you don’t lean into God’s Perspective, so that you might leave God’s Presence and practice God’s Perspective independently. This has nothing to do with learning how to be independent more effectively. It has to do with abandoning the imagined state of independence entirely.

I said, “You are not God, but God is all there is of you.” I could equally say, “You are not the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is all there is of you.” I use these words so that you might be very clear about the fact that waking up involves an actual shift of emphasis, an actual shift of focus that causes you to begin to be in what is to you an entirely new way of being.

The tendency, the slippery, confusing, unloving goal of the ego causes you to say, “Well, if God is all there is to me, I must be God.” But this “I” is still the same “I” that you’ve been defining yourself as up until this moment. And if you leave it at that, “Well, God is all there is of me, so therefore I am God,” you will simply attempt to be independent more powerfully, with more arrogance, and you’ll still be in the middle of your dream. You’ll define things more vehemently. You will determine how things are supposed to be with more force, and you will inflict your definitions on everyone else with a greater sense of authority. And you will have missed the point, and you will have missed the opportunity to make a shift. And God’s Perspective will still be unavailable to you.

You know what? The key words for you to use as the premise for every single moment of Conscious Experience you’re having are, “Thy Will be done.” If this doesn’t remain in the foreground of your awareness, you will easily slip back into the well-established habit of, “my will be done.” And this “me,” whose will is to be done, will be the same old you that you have been dallying with, we’ll say, forever, although that’s not absolutely true.

You want to get out of the rut! You want to skip the track! The point is to no longer have this repetitive experience, a struggle, a constantly reaching for fulfillment and never reaching it.

Every moment is your opportunity to say, “Father, what would You have me see instead of this? What would You have me see instead of what I’m seeing? What do You see here that it is my Birthright to be seeing and experiencing without any distortions, without any biases being applied to it? What is Your Perspective?”

Because God is all there is of you, it is your Birthright to be experiencing His Perspective. And so you must request It. You must ask for It to be given to you. And you must abandon your insistence upon seeing it your way. So I’m going to put it this way. For the next couple of hours, or for the next couple of weeks, or for the next couple of years, or I’m going to say, for the next couple of centuries or lifetimes, you cannot afford to think that you have any other option in front of you than yielding to the Father, constantly saying, “Not my will be done, but Thine be done. What is Your Will?” You’re not going to have to just do this for a couple of weeks and then you’ll get it, and then you’ll be able to take hold of things from a proper perspective. We’re talking about making a shift back into your Right Mind and staying there forever because that’s your Sanity.

Again, your Sanity isn’t something that once you’ve gotten it back, you can employ to be better in an independent mode, which is insanity.

The experience of joining with the Father by saying, “Thy Will, not mine, be done. I yield to Your Will. I yield to Your Perspective. And I yield to it unequivocally forever.”, that will move you into a brand new Conscious Experience of Being, a brand new Conscious Experience of Everything you’ve already been conscious of, plus infinitely more. And that experience will be the definition of you. You will Know What You Are. You will Know WHAT You Are. You will not Know What YOU are. Do you see what the difference in the emphasis is?

You will Know that You Are the Conscious Experience Of Creation,of All of Creation. You are the Conscious Experience of It, the recognizer of It, which is the recognizer of the Presence of God in every Infinite Aspect of His Being, meaning that All of Creation will be disclosed to you and embraced by you, including the Aspects of Creation that you’re experiencing right here and right now.

So this is not an escape from what you’re experiencing. It’s an escape from the lens through which you are looking at what you’re experiencing. The lens of isolated independence, isolated authoritative independence.

So to put it simply, at this point in your so-called journey of awakening, you must simply accept the fact that your task is to constantly yield to the Father’s Perspective, is to constantly reach into that Place of Excellence in You, and yield to It, which you will not experience as an experience of what you are. You will experience it as though you’re yielding into something you don’t recognize as you. What you’re doing is, you’re yielding into the Harmony of God’s Presence. God has to be more important to you than the question, “What am I?” So for all practical purposes, what I’m saying is, count on it that you will never have any other option available to you than yielding into that which you don’t recognize as you yet.

And do not assume that doing this will help you find out who you are and what you are as an independent entity who, because of the investigation of Truth, will be able to be independent more efficiently and more successfully. You will not be returning to the “I” that you think you are right now.

Whether you like what I’ve said or not, do you understand what I’ve said? Is anybody confused about it still? Okay.

What better thing do you have to do than explore the potential that I’ve described of leaning into God? Remember that you’ve been trying the alternative. You’ve imagined that you had an option, and you’ve been exercising that option, and the result has not been bliss. The result has not been uninterrupted harmony. The result has not been the permanent absence of suffering, of sickness, of death. So if what you have been doing has involved all of those things that I’ve just mentioned, why would you give preference to continuing what will continue that experience?

You do not have something better to do than to explore yielding into that Place of Excellence in You that I’ve told you that you have, and which I guarantee you that if you will lean into, you will find will illuminate you and illumine your mind, and provide you with clarity that allows you to behave in a new way, because the basis for your actionswill not be coming from your memory, your conditioned thinking, your habits, your ruts. You deserve more than you’re experiencing, because your Birthright is far greater than what you are experiencing. Because What You Are is far greater than the definition you’ve given yourselves. And anyone who will begin to explore this will find within themselves confirmation of the Truth of what I’m saying.

Okay. Let’s go to the book.

This next section is entitled:

In a way that’s what I’ve been describing so far today. It will be wise for you just to assume that the Holy Spirit will always know more than you, and therefore there will be no reason for you ever to stop learning from the Holy Spirit. There will be no reason for you to withdraw your attention from what the Holy Spirit has to share with you, or with what your Right Mind has to disclose to you about Who You Are.

As you persistently let the Holy Spirit define you by giving you the Experience of Truth, you will find the Holy Spirit occupying more and more of your Conscious Awareness until this puny little false sense of yourself that invited the Holy Spirit in becomes so much less predominant in the face of the increasing Presence of the Holy Spirit’s Perspective in You, that you begin to forget the question, “What am I as an independent entity?” It will diminish until you begin to forget to think that what you’re learning is something to bring back into the independent state you started out from so that you can be independent more effectively.

And when the last little bit of willfulness, the last little right to independence that you’ve been holding on to goes up in a wisp of smoke, all there will be to you is the Holy Spirit Whose Function is to serve God by glorifying God, by acknowledging God in every Aspect of the Experience of Being Conscious.

Again …

Now here’s an interesting question.

Again …

It’s sort of like God recognizing that you haven’t called Him for a while, so there’s no opportunity to chat, there’s no opportunity to be in communion. Why? Because you’re so preoccupied with this challenging and wonderful experience of being independent, and doing things your way, and defining things the way you want to define them, and enjoying the challenge of overcoming the difficulties you have in this state of mind, not realizing that you’re having the difficulties because [laugh] you are functioning at odds with your Being.

God’s Function is to impart His Joy. It’s actually to extend All Of What He Is and know that His Children are wholly joyous, are experiencing What He Is Extending fully. This is an ongoing process. It never ceases, not in time, but in Eternity.

In other words, HisCompleteness can’t be blocked, but the Extension outward, the Experience of His Extension outward is blocked when you, the Sonship,does not communicate with Him as One.

… God thought …

That’s the Function of the Holy Spirit. That’s the Function of your Right Mind. It is the Presence of Love. And so, as Love, it addresses you in your dream lovingly. Not in a way that causes more fear. Not in a way that causes you to feel more guilty. But in a gentle, inviting way, which by its very nature communicates the experience of safety, the experience of kindness that doesn’t have to be defended against. This is the Nature of your Being.

Continuing …

He does not emphasizewhat you must avoid to escape from harm, so much as what you need to learn to have joy. You see a different emphasis?

You see? If you’re giving directions, you don’t say, “Now, don’t go to the left, becauseif you go to the left, this will happen and that will happen and the other thing will happen, and you will be really sorry!” All you have to say is, “Go to the right.” You see?

And I will say: or Experience of What Is True.

Now what does this mean in practical terms? It means that when you turn to the Altar within you, and when you invite the Consciousness of Truth to be revealed to you by the Holy Spirit, the very manner in which that provision is made, the very tone of it not only illuminates Truth, but conveysto you the wisdom of your making the request, and the fact that in making the request and receiving the answer, it doesn’t punish you. It doesn’t uncover guilt in you. It is done in a way that is perfectly comfortable, kind. And this increases your confidence in reaching out to the Holy Spirit. Everything about the experience is confirming of the wisdom of what you’ve done and the safety you can count on in the process of the provision being made.

Continuing …

What does? The Holy Spirit, your right Mind, shining with the Light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever. You see?

Why would you not choose to yield into that forever, and never once think about gathering the Truth so that you might stop leaning into that, and come back and be a better, more effective, more successful, independent authoritative entity?

Continuing …

When your identification with body,and your identification with your ego, and your identification with your dreams are gone, you will know that You will last forever.

It’s part of the fantasy, part of the strange imaginings.

Continuing …

Remember what we were talking about last week. That this piece of paper [rustling it] that I can hear, and that I can feel, and that I can see, is not out somewhere in front of me in space, but space and paper and sound and feel and appearance are allmental experiences. They are all going on in Conscious Awareness as Ideas being Experienced.

Again …

And I will add that: Because You Are Life, then your body cannot live or die; it can only identify your Presence, just as All of Creation identifies the Presence of God.

Remember, “You are not God, but God is all there is of You.” The tree is not God, but God is all there is of the tree.

When you abandon your obsession with awareness of body, you will be able to … you will be available to the experience of yourself as Mind in which body … the experience of body is occurring. And then you will not be able to do anything to the body, and the body will not be able to do anything to you. You will simply be observing everything without an obsessive identification with any one thing you’re experiencing. When you’re obsessed with effect, your mind is not available to experience the Cause. But when your Mind is available to experience the Cause, Effect is seen in its proper perspective.

Continuing …

… you and I …

I must make this clear. God did not make the body as you are presently perceiving it, because the way you are presently perceiving it is as something destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body, in other words, the body we’re talking about here is the symbol of what you think you are. You see, throughout the Course, the distinction is consistently made clear. The body that is being talked about that God did not make is not the Visibility and Tangibility of an Idea of God; it is the symbol of what you think you are. And you think you’re independent. And you think you are an authorizer. And you think you are alone. And you think you are vulnerable. And you think that you have to … that engaging in life is engaging in defense.

And from this crazy perspective, you look at the Visibility and Tangibility of your Divine Individuality which is God Presencing Himself right where you are, and you define the body as a means of defense, as your shield, as the vessel which contains your will, and therefore gives this presence of an imagined identity substance and force, so that it becomes the means of inflicting your independent will upon your others and your world, so as to what? Secure your safety.

That is the symbol of what you think you are, and that’s the body that’s being discussed here as not having been made by God because it’s destructible.

… this symbol of what you think you are called the body.

This concept of body, thissymbol of what you think you are, does not exist any more than the identity that you have defined for yourself separate and apart from What God Has Expressed of Himself right where you are that constitutes You which is Eternal.

Continuing …

… this symbol of what you think you are …

I want you to remember that I said before that when you take any part of Creation, any part of God’s Omnipresencing of Himself, of rendering Himself experienceable, when you take any part of it and apply a definition to it, and commit yourself to your definition of it, you block the Experience of What That Thing Really Is. And What That Thing Really Is, because it will not function according to the definitions you gave it, will cause you to have experiences that challenge your definition of it. And therefore, the definition of it that you’re looking at becomes a learning tool, or we could say, What It Really Is becomes a learning device for you to bring you back into the Conscious Awareness of What It Truly Is. What It Truly Is will not conform to your definition, and therefore will be eternally, or at least for as long as you’re trying to hold on to the definition, a trigger to a revised and more correct perception.

Whatever of God you are denying will become for you a learning tool. Not because that’s What It Is, but because that’s what you’re denial of it causes it to be experienced as by you.

Again …

… takes what you have made-up …

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

And we could say, the impulse for miracles.

… the Holy Spirit …

… the symbol of what you think you are …

I want you to realize that when you identify yourself as a body, when you apply this strange definition to the Visibility and Tangibility of your Individuality, you find accompanying that definition a plethora of sub-concepts, an unending list of justifications for the definition. And so as you apprehend, perceive, this body that is the symbol of what you think you are, your mind is far from single. It’s full of clutter. It is not pure, without anything extraneous to it. It is infinitely populated with justifications for defense, justification for the way you see things, justification for exercising authority, and on and on and on.

What you find when you turn toward the Altar and you invite the Holy Spirit in, is that the clutter dissolves and you become Single of Mind. And when you become Single of Mind, you experience Clarity. And you want to know something? You … this Clarity is Infinite. It seems to you that when you meditate and your mind becomes still, that your attention has been narrowed down to nothing. Right? Nothing is occupying your mind. But in valuing the silence and being willing to abide in the silence, you find Knowing beginning to be felt. Not thought, but felt. And you have the opportunity to find that this silence is Peace that is humungous, that is Infinite.

And if you will continue to insist upon abiding in that Peace, you will find that Peace to be the context for the Infinite Experience of Creation in which none of Creation is outside of you. And it will alter your direct experience of everything that is immediately in front of you. The petal on the flower. The branch on the tree. The glass on the table.

It is as though it’s a paradox. When you abandon the clutter of the ego, and it seems as though your attention has become very narrow and focused on nothing, you are standing at the Threshold ofthe Conscious Experience of Peace that is the Context of the Infinite Experience of Creation Itself, the Infinite Self-Expression of God. That is what Singleness of Mind means.

Continuing …

What crucial concept? That there is no order of difficulty in miracles.

Continuing …

Full appreciation is appreciation without anything extraneous to it present. It’s indivisible appreciation. It is singleness of mind, singleness of intent.

Well, the only way you could have a range from difficult to easy, the only way you could have a range of anything to extend to your Brother is if you introduce something more than Peace into the picture. You see? It’s only if you find a way to add something more than Indivisible Unity to the picture. Well, that’s the problem of being you’re already experiencing, right? [laughing]

Continuing …

… your right Mind who what?

Communication seems to be made of up many things. Being is Pure, Single. Perception is made up of many perceptions, but it gets translatedinto Knowledge, or what I’ve referred to as Knowing with a capital “K”. And that’s Single, uncluttered with anything extraneous to the Conscious Experience of What God Is Being.

Continuing …

Again, a Singleness. A Oneness.

It does sound reasonable, doesn’t it?

… and here’s the point.

… mutually-agreed-upon definitions …

The Holy Spirit teaches only that which embodies Unity.

Continuing …

Who’s this “He”? The Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? Nothing more than your right Mind. Why would your right Mind want you to keep what It has to give? Because it’s your Birthright. Because it is something that you must be experiencing. Because that’s the Experience that God impulsed into Manifestation of Himself right where you are.

… the Holy Spirit’s teaching …

“Ohh! But if you don’t have all, how can you give all to all?” Remember, all has nothing to do with quantity. All has to do with Indivisibility.

The moment you manage to silence the thinking in your mind, and it seems to you as though your awareness has been narrowed down to not being conscious of anything, you have moved into a Singular Experience, the Singular Experience of Peace. And until you’ve done that for the very first time, you’re unaware that your Peace is available to you without your having to govern your environment and get everyone around you to behave in a non-threatening way.

Up until that moment, you have believed that the only way you can get Peace is if you can control your environment, and those around you, into behaving in a way that is non-threatening so you can dare to relax. And your Peace has depended on not only what everyone else is doing, but your capacity to control them.

But the first time you meditate and you experience the absence of thoughts, and you experience the absence of fear, and you experience Peace that has nothing to do with anything other than where you have brought your attention to, you have taken the first step out of the need for defense. You have taken the first step out of a conviction that you have lived with that you must control everything. Why? Because you have brought your mind into a singular experience … no … you have brought your attention into a singular experience, and this singular experience of Peace is the ground of Conscious Awareness—Mind.

How do you give All to All? By giving a Singular Gift. Because in the Singularity of It, in the Purity of It, All awaits you and everyone else. The All that you can give away, the All that you are able to extend is that which has nothing extraneous to it in it. Peace is not the only Singular Experience. Joy emerges out of Peace. Love emerges out of Peace. Love is a Singularity. Joy is a Singularity.

So, the Holy Spirit’s teaching begins with the lesson: To have, give All to All. Value the Singular Experience enough to have it. And then be with everyone and everything else from there so that everything you do embodies that Singularity. That’s the first lesson of the Holy Spirit.

And then,[whispered] be careful, because you don’t want to say, like Joan of Arcadia, [very amused voice] “I’m getting it! I’m getting it!Now I know how to do it without having to listen again.” You see?

Being is Beautiful. Everything about Existence is Pure Artistry. Everything about the process of awakening, of you coming back into your Right Mind, is exquisitely orchestrated, if I may put it that way. And every step of the way is a step to enjoy because of the manner in which it uncovers your innate Integrity, replacing the sense of yourself that feels that it doesn’t have any integrity and that it must create it. And it must create it by fooling everyone around it into believing that it has integrity, and getting their confirmation to confirm it, and on and on and on.

There is only ugliness in the ignorance of Truth. But the emergence from Truth is as exquisitely Beautiful and Artistic as Creation Itself. Open your eyes.

I love you all. And I look forward to being with you next week. And again, I want you to look forward to my being with you all week. I hope you will be asking of Me, or the Holy Spirit, “What is the Father’s Perspective here?”

Remember, my Function is the same as the Holy Spirit’s. Each of your Guides has the same Function I have, and that the Holy Spirit has to gently, lovingly, and supportively nudge you with an experience of safety into a more Singular Awareness, one uncluttered by irrelevant static and crap.

Okay.