Teachings of Christ Mind

Good afternoon. It’s wonderful to have all of you here. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.

Last week I invited you to consider the fact that you all say you want Peace and that you don’t want to have conflict, but if you pay attention to what you are giving your attention to, you will find that you are lying to yourselves because conflict gets your attention much more easily than Peace. And yet, you might say that Peace is the threshold of the Kingdom of Heaven. Peace is the threshold of the Experience of Unity, unconflictedness. Peace is the necessary experience to waking up.

We’ve also talked about the fact that Peace is an Experience of Singularity. It’s absolutely indivisible. Because it’s indivisible, and therefore undivided, your choice to experience it and your persistence in getting to the experience of it by choosing to become still and setting aside your thoughts, brings your mind into perfect alignment with the fundamental nature of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now the Course says that you can’t take the last step into the Kingdom of Heaven by yourself; the Father does that for you. But the one essential thing in order for the Father to be able to do that for you is for you by your choice to have brought your mind into perfect alignment with the fundamental Nature of Reality, of the Kingdom of Heaven. You must bring your mind into an attitude that parallels Reality instead of going off at right angles opposing Reality.

Now, I understand that bringing your mind to this point of Peace is very difficult to do because your habit of seeking out conflict, you believe, is for the sake of self-preservation. And you feel as though if you stop seeking out where conflict is going on, you will become vulnerable and in danger. And because of the deep conditioning, every fiber of your being, you might say, which really means every fiber of your ego, avoids at all cost doing whatever will put you in a position of vulnerability and threat.

I understand that it’s not easy. You must understand that it’s not easy. You must also understand that the fact that it isn’t easy doesn’t mean don’t do it. The fact that it isn’t easy is not justification for continuing to suffer from not being in harmony with the Kingdom of Heaven, and thereby not being in the Kingdom of Heaven consciously. You must be willing to do the work. You must be willing to practice the discipline that goes against the deep grain of your conditioning.

Now, I’ve said it very, very clearly, and very, very simply. Don’t let it get more complicated than that.

When you are in your right Mind, the concept of fear and the concept, the idea, of conflict doesn’t even occur for you. It’s impossible for an experience of conflictedness to exist in any way, shape or form in the middle of Singularity, in the middle of that which is absolutely unconflicted.

If you are feeling threat, if you are wary of that which is threatening, if you are constantly on guard, it’s not because there truly is something threatening for you to be watching for. The experience and the justification for being on guard arises from the fact that you’re looking at everything alone, from your own so-called private mind, puny little separate private mind. Something that you have imagined you can experience because you got this bill of divorcement from the Father and said, “I’m not interested in the way You’re seeing things, Father. I want to have the experience of seeing it on my own. And I want to have the experience of giving it my own definitions.”

And the moment you got that divorce, the moment you stopped including the Father, you were instantaneously in a state of fear. This is very important to understand. And you must understand that when you turn to the Altar within you, when you turn to the Holy Spirit which is the Altar and which is nothing more than your right Mind, you are choosing to abandon your isolation. And in the successful abandoning of it by joining with the Father, Peace becomes your experience while your intent is firm. And when you do that and you are willing to be in the world, you might say, from that Peace, you will find the movement of transformation occurring. You will find the movement of healing occurring. You will find reconfiguration occurring that more closely approximates Reality.

And so the simplicity of it lies in your realizing that if you’re experiencing conflict, you are looking at everything alone. And that the answer to it, the resolution to the conflict and the justification for fear comes not from becoming a better defender of yourself against the world, but it’s a matter of abandoning the independence and going within and joining with the Holy Spirit, with your Guide, with Me, or even reaching out to the Father. Understand also that when you do this, you’re not going to get Guidance, you are not going to be infilled with illumination that will allow you to defend yourself better. This isn’t about turning to God in order to be able to gather information that will allow you to be more successful as an independent, separate entity. It’s about learning what the Father’s Perspective is so that you can abandon the independent stance that you have taken, and by abandoning it, removing yourself from the state of fear that’s inseparable from being separated, and being in a new way, being from a new place.

You could call the new experience a religious experience, but that might add some time to your process of awakening, because what it’s all about really is learning to come from that Place of Excellence in you, learning to be from that place of indivisible Singularity right in the middle of your daily, secular activities so that ultimately being out from your Peace and being in the world joined with the Father, with the Holy Spirit, with your Guide, or with Me, becomes the definition of secular activity, becomes the meaning of your daily interactions with each other in the here and now of what you’ve been calling the human experience.

And you know what will happen? Because you’re always teaching and you’ve moved into a Singularity, the Singularity of Peace, and you’re embracing it, your behavior towards each other will become more humane. You will find yourself confronted by attack less and less. And you will also find yourself neglecting to hold harsh and critical thoughts about others in your experience. The subtle forms of attack that everyone engages in are constituted of having assessments about each other that haven’t come at all from an attitude of love or embrace, but have come out of the fear that causes you to feel that defense is always called for, and that being on guard against your dastardly brothers and sisters is called for.

I cannot emphasize enough that waking up is not a way of rising above the world, or flashing out of the world, of letting it be so beneath you that it doesn’t bother you. That is not what it’s about! It’s about being willing to be fully present with your Brothers and Sisters right here, right now. Why? Because underneath each of your self-definitions that are based on a sense of personal independence, you are all the Christ right here, right now, right today. And you need to start behaving like What You Are so that you might see everyone else as identically the same thing so that you’re coming from Love and so that no matter what they are doing, you can see that Love is what is called for, and as a result the way all of you be together globally will begin to reflect Love rather than defense. That’s what it’s about.

It’s about What Is Divinely True About You becoming the nature and the feeling of and the way you be in the secular world, in the world you’re in. You know what? It’s really not about becoming holy. It’s really about becoming loving. Holy is spiritual, other-worldly. That’s the definition that’s given to it, and so it’s transcendent. It’s not related to your everyday world. Well, that’s a sad definition. Holy means Whole. Ah! Whole. Indivisible. What is Whole is undivided. What is Whole is a Singularity. You see? And what is needed is for everyone to be from the Singularity of Peace right where you are. [a minute of silence]

Okay. To the book …

When you move into your Peace, your very presence, your very being, teaches Peace. When you move into the Singularity of Love, your very being becomes that which teaches Love. Extends it, in other words. And there is always a recognizable evidence of the shift in where you’re coming from. In other words, you could say, it is its measurable result.

Remember there will always be recognizable evidence of your standpoint. If you are conflicted, if you are claiming independence and you are being out of the inevitable state of fear that cannot be separated from an independence that cannot truly exist, you will have evidence of conflict—immediate, simultaneous. When you choose for the Singularity of Peace or Love, you will have simultaneous evidence of it in the form of healing, in the form of harmony, in the form of the absence of the seductive invitation of threat and the call for fear.

Continuing …

Now this is very important.

Now what on earth does that mean?

I’ve said before that you must have an object of your affection. You must have an unselfish reason for going within to the Altar. And so, when you recognize a call for Love from a Brother that looks like an expression of hate or an expression of lovelessness, instead of choosing to respond to it from your fearful, separated, defensive sense of yourself, you must choose for your Peace so that you might move into a Singularity and out of conflictedness. You must go into the silence, into your Peace, because you recognize the bad behavior, we can put it that way, as a call for Love rather than a call for defense. And then you must care enough to extend Love by first getting into your Peace, out of which arises Love.

What we’re at a point of discussing on this page in the Course is the fact that you must have a specific object of your affection to be the justification for your wanting to know the Truth, because this further breaks your sense of isolation, not just from God, but also from your Brothers and Sisters.

Now if what we’re going to discuss doesn’t become clear to you, it does become possible for you to think that you by having chosen to have a specific object of your affection for whom you want healing, for whom you want beneficence, is something special you are doing for this one special problem in your life. If you get stuck there, your awakening will be delayed.

There are no private thoughts. We’ve discussed this over and over. There are no private thoughts. You are always teaching, and whatever you teach, you are learning.

So, you have an object of your affection and you’re having no private thoughts by getting into your Peace. You are freeing yourself of conflict and you are extending that Peace because you are teaching it, and as you teach, you learn it. You are blessed further by it.

If you think that your blessing is going only to this one that you have used as an object of your affection, then you will think that you are special because of what you are doing for this one, single, poor bastard and so your Love is exclusive. It’s inclusive of that one, but it’s exclusively to that one.

But there are no private thoughts. And you know what? The Brotherhood is humungous, and whatever you teach, you teach to the whole Brotherhood.

Let’s continue. I’m going to start at the beginning of the paragraph again for continuity.

… your learning …

It’s really rather logical. It’s hard for you to find justification or understanding of what it means to Love the whole Brotherhood. At the moment, you’re not even aware of the Brotherhood’s Presence in Its Totality and so you must have, for lack of better words, something practical, something tangible, something that’s in your face and in your experience to justify breaking your isolation and to be inclusive of and joined with. And so, you have your Brothers and Sisters, you have each other. You can find justification for this, sometimes without suffering involved.

But it becomes totally obvious to you that you must do something when suffering between you and your Brother occurs. And so you take advantage of that. You break the isolation. You break your commitment to separateness on behalf of your Brother so that you might actually take the steps that bring you into your Experience of Peace which is a Singularity and which is the threshold for inspiration and clarity and guidance to be provided to you.

You know, I spoke last week about the necessity of realizing that if while you’re grocery shopping, or you are cleaning the house, or whatever, if you are doing it and having no sense whatsoever that anyone is with you, being conscious of it all with you, that you are companioned with in an active way, then you may know that you are asleep. You may know that you are unconscious. And that as long as you are, you’re stuck.

Now you all find it difficult enough to just connect with the Holy Spirit. And so I’m not going to suggest to you that you will suddenly be able to experience your connection with the entire Brotherhood, but it is essential for you to know that all minds are joined, and there are no private thoughts. And whatever you are teaching, you are teaching to the whole Brotherhood. I need you to begin to understand that you’re not just companioned with by the Holy Spirit, or your Guide, or Me. You are companioned with by All of God’s Creations in an active way, where All of Creation is conscious of its connection with you in a direct, communicative sense.

When you’re asleep, you seem only to be able to communicate with each other through language. When you are awake, there is infinite constant communication, or, more properly put, communion where everything about you is known by everyone else, and everything about everyone else is known by you, so that it is an infinite experience of the wholeness of every bit of Creation that the Father has set into motion.

Continuing or repeating …

Doubts about what you are. What You Are is the Conscious Experience of Being. And the Conscious Experience of Being is the Conscious Experience of What God Is and your inseparability from it. What you are is unseparated from the whole Brotherhood in which there is no privateness whatsoever so that everything about every Creation of God is your Conscious Experience of it.

You are not the tiny, private, separated mind you have thought you were. You are the Conscious Experience of Infinity. You are the Conscious Experience of Communion with every Aspect of Creation, where nothing is withheld from your mind.

Do you see what we’re talking about? We’re talking about not being a little focal point of willingness to be the Presence of Love, embracing another little focal point that is the object of your affection that justifies your breaking the isolation, and by virtue of connecting with the Singular Experience of Love, teaching it, extending it so you have this tiny joining. We’re talking about triggering in your mind that you are very big, not a little point of Love being extended to another little point of Love. You are that which, when you are allowing the Singular Experience of Love to be your experience, that which is unlimited. We’re talking about you becoming aware that in that activity of extended Love, You Are Infinite. You are big, for lack of better words, so big that this teaching of Love by being Love is felt by and received by Creation infinitely.

So you see, again, we’re not talking about your going to the Altar, connecting with the inspiration of Truth, so that you can come back in your tininess and deal better in your separated state. We’re talking about moving into a State of Unity that is infinitely inclusive. It’s a new way of being aware of What You Are. It’s a new Awareness of What You Are.

And as long as you get stuck in reaching out to God to know how to be better, to find out how to be more successful separately, instead of that, you are reaching out to God so that your sense of yourself will be enlarged. And so that your sense of yourself uncovers the fact that you cannot give a tiny, private gift of Love. When you have let your Brother be the justification for extending Love and for opening up to it so that it might come through you, it goes to the whole Brotherhood and the whole Brotherhood receives it. And those who are awake feel it and are blessed by it. And it confirms their wholeness to them while it’s confirming it to you, because what you teach, you learn.

We’re talking about being big. It doesn’t matter that you can’t grasp at the moment what that bigness feels like. It matters that you know that this is the direction you’re heading in so that you don’t think that, somehow, you’re going to be the Presence of God in a tiny way in the middle of the human experience, the awful human experience. You see what I’m saying?

Again …

Vigilance for what? Vigilance for threats? Vigilance for what new, awful thing is going to occur? Vigilance for whatever will provide you with ongoing safety? No.

It’s vigilance for the Father’s Perspective. It’s vigilance for the Experience of Truth with a capital “T”. Truth that wipes away illusions. It’s vigilance for being joined, and not engaging in idle thoughts, which means private thoughts. It’s vigilance for the Thought of God.

It’s vigilance on behalf of your having a fuller experience of What You Divinely Are, because as you have a fuller experience of it, it becomes obvious to you that What You Divinely Are is What Your Brother Divinely Is. And the moment you feel that, your attitude and behavior toward your Brother or Sister will change.

You are vigilant for Truth, in spite of what it says here. It says:

… and I’m going to add: But you will be vigilant for Truth against illusions, so that the false definitions you’ve given to everything cannot continue to govern your behavior and justify to you that you can’t afford to get into your peace and you cannot afford to be loving, truly loving, because if you do, you will succumb to the inevitable attack that is inseparable from the human condition.

Continuing …

… ah, what does that mean? Truth is a Singularity. Truth is undivided. Truth is indivisible. If Truth is indivisible, it never has become divided.

So we’re not about the business of putting Truth back together. We’re about the business of abandoning illusions and our faith in them.

Threw it away. How? You threw it away by saying, “Father, I’d rather see it my way. Father, I would rather give the definitions to it.” And so, in order to do that, you had to say, “The Father’s Definition is not important to me.” Well, the Father’s Definition was the Truth. And when you said, “I’d rather define it myself,” you threw away Truth. You put it out of sight and out of mind.

Continuing …

… and we could say, by making up another kingdom …

Listen to this …

It’s a sick mind in that it is conflicted because there are two allegiances. And they are opposing.

Continuing …

Is this making sense? Your vigilance against a conflicted mind is the way to heal it. And how do you heal a conflicted mind? By bringing your attention into a Singularity and not letting your attention be divided between Peace and conflict.

Oh, you come home at night, your husband comes home at night, your partner comes home at night, and you have a mutual agreement to be pleasant with each other, to enjoy each other’s company, and you have that kind of evening together. You have an intent to give your attention to Peace and Harmony and Love. One of the partners says, “Oh, I would love to have some chocolate ice cream.” Or the other one says, “Oh, man, I have a real taste for pizza!” And there’s mutual agreement to enjoying pizza together. And so one of them goes out in the car to get it. And while he’s on or she’s on the road, somebody cuts them off, and immediately there’s swearing and anger and mental bullying of the bastard who was so inconsiderate as to be dangerous and cut him off on the home stretch, you might say.

Wow. That’s a conflicted mind. That is a mind that’s undisciplined. That is a mind that is not devoted to one thing only. It’s devoted to two ways of being consecutively within … you know, within the moment of a loveless act occurring. Complete willingness to abandon the pleasure and the love and the companionship and the camaraderie, abandon it instantly for the sake of the pleasure of expressing vitriolic anger. You see?

Your vigilance against this sickness, your vigilance against divided devotion, vigilance against devotion to instability is the way to heal it. The way to heal it is to choose consistently and persistently to give your attention in only one place where the Experience of Singularity can be had. That takes vigilance because you are all sloppy in the use of your mind. And you let it serve one master in one instant, and another master in the next instant.

And then you get back home, you walk in, and you say, “Hey! The bastard out there on the road…” and share the story, but you look at your partner and you remember love. Oh, you know, you’re so wishy-washy that you immediately drop your anger and get lovey-dovey and have a pleasant rest of the evening eating ice cream, and watching TV, and being together. No, no discipline whatsoever. I mean, hey, let’s be hot or cold. Either be angry all the time or don’t.

You see what I’m getting at? Discipline is needed. Vigilance is needed. Vigilance to see that you more and more consistently devote your attention to a Singularity like Peace, a Singularity like Love. And be vigilant enough so that you’re not distracted from it, and so that you end up bringing your mind into alignment with the nature of Heaven so that you’re prepared to let the Father take the last step.

Now, I’ve been talking as though you as you presently think of yourself need to accomplish these things. It’s the Holy Spirit, it’s You, it’s your right Mind, that will bring you into, prepare you for, the last step to be taken for you.

And so, you know, don’t try to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. Don’t you in your present, separated sense of your self decide, “I’m going to be more vigilant. And I’m going to be more loving. And I’m not going to get pissed off when the guy cuts me off on the freeway.” Well, wait a minute. Ask yourself, “Am I experiencing being companioned with at this moment while I’m being so determined and self-disciplined? Or am I just doing this all by myself and thinking I’m doing a really good thing because it’s so intelligent to do this, it’s so logical to do this?”

I don’t care how many right things you do all by yourself, you’re not going to wake up, because it’s still you being in charge with no awareness whatsoever that God has already done everything for you. And it’s your place, it’s your function, to be conscious of that and appreciative of it, and to glorify God by saying, “Wow. I was not responsible for any of this.” That’s where the Singularity comes in. It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you it all.

So let’s be clear on that. This isn’t going to be you, as you presently see yourself, using mental discipline so that you have a consistent mind. Why? Because you don’t know what the consistence is in regard to. You don’t know what you really need to be consistent about. And the only way you will know is when you have abandoned your isolation, you have abandoned your commitment to your independence, and you have let something else in. The experience of communion, the experience of joining, tells you that’s what it’s all about is joining and being vigilant enough not to abandon the partnership.

But you won’t find that out, you won’t have the fulfilling, deeply fulfilling experience of it if you are trying on your own to be well self-disciplined, doing all the right things, all the intelligent things, all the things I’ve been saying to do without being joined.

Continuing …

Why does it teach healing? Because you’re teaching Singularity. You’re teaching by virtue of what’s revealed to you about you by the Holy Spirit, that which is not conflicted.

Sickness is conflict. Sickness in any of its forms is conflict manifest. And when you start teaching What Is Singular and unconflicted, the evidence of conflict—sickness, in other words—will disappear.

Continuing …

Now, let’s just be really, really clear here. I haven’t set myself up as a teacher. I haven’t conceived myself to be a teacher. I do not experience myself as being in a superior position to you, who’s going to bless you with my beneficence. No. I don’t have myself on my mind. Why? Because I have God on my mind. Because my devotion is to not have a mind separate from His, a perspective or perception different from His, and an experience of independence from Him.

By being the Presence of Mind that is Singular, What The Father Is Being finds expression through me. And I have no plan about it, because I don’t have myself on my mind as something to have a plan, anymore than Paul has himself on his mind with a plan right now. No telling what he’ll do right after the Gathering. [audience laughter]

Because you’re all learning how to be consistent, including Paul. So, when you become a teacher like me, it means that there’s no one there being quote “a teacher” unquote. All there is, is that which is reflecting God, which is Singular and is thereby healing, and is thereby transformational. But not by my design and not by Paul’s design. I don’t have a lesson plan to guide me in raising you up out of ignorance.

So don’t get too crazy about the statement that this establishes you as a teacher, a teacher who teaches like me.

Continuing …

… the third step in the Holy Spirit’s lessons …

Now, it’s going, at times it’s going to feel like that means that you’re throwing yourself in the toilet, throwing yourself away, abandoning yourself, because the only thing that you can throw away is what God didn’t create. And the only thing God didn’t create is what you made-up. And unfortunately, what you think you made-up is what gives you definition. And how well you made it up, gives you credibility and integrity. And how consistent you are in expressing it, gives you the reason to feel proud about who you are. And all of that is going to be abandoned because that is what is creating the whole illusion of a human condition, of a secular experience, that can have nothing to do with God, and therefore must necessarily be an ongoing experience of suffering.

Again …

… vigilance for what? For staying joined. Vigilance for not being alone. Vigilance for not tolerating a moment of privacy where it’s just you, and you alone, are pretending to be there.

Again …

Do you get that? Until you put forth the effort to abide in a Singularity, the Singularity of Peace, and until you make commitment to be in constant communion with your most wonderful Companion, the Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your Right Mind, until you do that through vigilance and self-discipline, you will not come to the place where you realize What You Are, the Christ, that doesn’t need to be vigilant about anything because, in your Right Mind, there is no experience of threat. Do you understand now?

Right now you experience a conflicted mind, and it makes perfect sense to you to have a conflicted mind. But having a conflicted mind causes you to expend a great deal of effort and energy being on the defensive. Why? Because you see enemies where they don’t exist. You see enemies where all there is truly is God. You see others behaving in a threatening and harmful manner because they see themselves in an environment that is dangerous. And so they see the constant need for defense that you see. Not because it’s true, but because the state of independence includes the state of fear.

Now, you must use discipline. You must discipline your mind to undo the sloppiness, to undo the willingness to find nothing wrong with being conflicted and serving two masters in your own mind. You must be vigilant so that you recognize when you’re beginning to think by yourself, when you’re beginning to be conscious by yourself, so that you can stop it immediately and join with the Holy Spirit and companion with the Holy Spirit, until such time as you find that you’ve slipped and you’re thinking alone again out of habit.

And then, because you’re insistent upon using self-discipline, you become vigilant again to reestablish the connection. And when the connection is established, the Holy Spirit walks through your mind with you, revealing What Is True about everything in you, so that you learn that you’re not this separated entity that you thought you were. And that you are not under threat. And that you don’t need to protect yourself. And the Holy Spirit leads you into an experience of this, not an idea of it, but an experience of it within you, so that you realize that because there is no threat, there is nothing you need to be vigilant about any longer. Vigilance is required to break the habit, so that you might have a new experience in which you realize that you aren’t the vulnerable one you thought you were, and therefore vigilance against threat is not needed. And because you are more in your Right Mind, vigilance against illusion isn’t needed because you’re no longer hoodwinked.

Now, does everyone understand now? If not, listen to the tape, because I have expressed it clearly, and it will sink in. It will begin to register with you. It’s really simple.

Again …

The Holy Spirit.

… and I’m going to add the word “up.”

What is? The being. Verb. The being which you both have and are.

And you in your bigness are that which is all-inclusive and totally connected with All That Is, wherein everything that exists is the object of your affection, is what you teach by being, and which is extending to you its Conscious Acknowledgement of God right where you are, and thereby teaching you What Is True about you so that being is experienced as a Constant Extension of Love to the Sonship by the Sonship in the conscious recognition of its indivisibility.

So remember, you teach by being. And what you teach, you learn. And what you learn enhances what you teach. And although you will use a specific object of your affection to initiate the movement of teaching by being, the entire Brotherhood is taught. And this puts you in the position, because you will stand in receipt of appreciation from the Brotherhood for what you’ve been teaching, it puts you in the position of being available to a sudden shift of perception in which you realize you really are not alone and how infinite is the Love with which you are loved. I am describing the clearer Experience of What You Are that you will be having when you finally get it that your attention is God’s Treasure. And your attention needs to become Singular, persistent, consistent.

Can you feel me loving you? So can the rest of the Brotherhood as well. Right now you are sitting, you are being, in the middle of a universal acknowledgement of Love being extended to you. I love you all, and I look forward to being with you next week.