Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Two prayers: I wish to see only the Evidence of Love. And: I wish to only be the Evidence of Love.

It’s not just a wonderful intent. It is a substantial desire. I mean by that a desire that has substance to it, because it lifts you out of your habitual processes, the habits that keep you blinded to the Evidence of Love and keep you distracted from being the Evidence of Love which it’s your Nature and Function to be.

How many of you succeeded this past week in the practice of wishing not to be the evidence of the absence of Love? The intent not to hurt another’s feelings or not to be the presence of jealousy or hate or distress, you know, broadcast for everyone to hear. Paul will be glad to tell you that he was lousy at it this last week. What is it? What is it that can distract you so easily from a wholesome intent to see the Evidence of Love and to be the Evidence of Love? It’s really easy. The answer is habit.

What is a habit? It’s a response that is second nature to you. That’s why it’s a habit. It’s second nature. Of course, first nature is to be the Presence of Love. A habit is second nature. And so you have the intent to be the Evidence of Love, and you’re being loving and someone responds to you in a surprisingly awful way. That in itself can’t be bothersome. But, the ego says, “Wow! They didn’t grasp where I was coming from. Uh oh. We’re in a state of lack of communication. They’re not seeing me at all. Obviously they’re not even paying attention, even though they’re right here in front of me, and they heard what I said, and they should have felt what I was feeling. So, not only is there no communication, this person is actively ignoring me and that makes me feel left out. That makes me feel excluded from them, even though our being together implies that we are together, even though the fact that we’re talking implies that there is communication. But that person has an agenda of their own, and their agenda is not to hear me. Their agenda is for me to hear them. There’s no respect for me. You know what? It’s not worth it to be the Presence of Love. It’s worth it to me to feel how badly I feel, and to mull it over and stew about it—the injustice of it.”

Paul did this practically every day even though each morning he got up and tried to start out fresh. And so to be the Evidence of Love went way on the back burner. Self-protection, self-assertion, and the attempt to be recognized because he deserves to be recognized came up on the front burner. This is the way it happens with everyone. No one becomes defensive unless they feel hurt. If they feel hurt, they feel something has been taken away from them. And they believe their belief! You believe your beliefs. And then you begin to act from there—defended, separate. And you move into varying degrees of attack, varying degrees of expressing distress toward the source of the distress, and the attempt to change that one. And the experience is a miserable experience.

Now mind you, last week we talked about the fact that you think nothing of believing that you have a capacity to embrace and embody opposing thoughts at the same time, opposing intents at the same time. And you don’t even question it. It’s impossible, but you don’t question it.

Paul felt hurt. [in a funny, whiny voice] You all feel hurt. And you think the hurt is genuine, and you respond on the basis of that ignorance. You forget that you have a choice. You forget that all you have to do is sit down and meditate so that you can discover that your Peace is available to you regardless of what you’ve been thinking, and regardless of what anyone else has done. The state of misery is not a fact. It’s like your lap. It’s an arrangement of your body that disappears when you stand up. Your lap is not a fact like your arm is. Your hurt is the result of an arrangement of conflicting ideas, of conflicting beliefs, that aren’t facts. The moment you sit down and do a meditation and you get into your Peace, you find that the misery is gone. Why? Because you abandoned the arrangement of beliefs and concepts that you were holding on to that said, “That person can do something that can deprive me of my Peace. And they did it and I don’t have my Peace! And it’s their fault! And I’m stuck until I win this battle with them.” You see, it ‘tain’t so. It’s just an arrangement of ideas and concepts that have no actual … well, it is a configuration that isn’t actual—purely imaginary.

The result of believing that someone else can and has taken something of yours away from you is pure insanity. It can’t be done. And you need to be vigilant about the way you’re using your mind, so that you don’t accept an idea that has no basis in fact and treat it as though it does, and lose sight of the fact that no matter what they’ve done or said, you’re still as Whole as God made you. You are still Mind, Singular Mind that has not been divided up, and therefore is totally intact. And because it’s intact, not one part of it has disappeared, or been taken away. So this other one hasn’t taken anything away from you at all.

You’ve abandoned the Conscious Experience of your Wholeness in favor of the pleasure of a state of reaction, while at the same time claiming that your reaction is justified, your hateful reaction is justified because you’re such a loving person and they don’t see it. Do you see what I’m saying? Do you see the inconsistency? But you believe it! You all believe it. Why? Because the arrangement of beliefs, the arrangement of concepts that you’re employing have become a habit. And you slip back into the habit because more persistence is needed in abandoning it for the Truth.

Now I said, “Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” If you’re not careful, you might think that I’m saying, “You, whoever you think you are at the moment, whatever ego you are at the moment, if you will know the Truth, the Truth will make you free of all these other egos!” Ha ha! [laughing delightedly] No. The Truth is not an idea to be applied to the human condition. The Truth is not a tool to be applied to circumstances. Truth is when the light bulb goes on. Truth, the realization of Truth is when you say, “Oh, I see what he means!” Now you’re knowing the Truth. And at that very moment, you have ceased to be subject to the lie about which the Truth isn’t Truth. There’s nothing left to apply the Truth to.

So don’t think as we go through the Course that you’re learning about Truth so that you may bring it to bear upon the human condition. You’re reading the Course because it is put together in such a way by the Holy Spirit that it will trigger release from the habits, the particular configurations of beliefs that hold you bondage, by triggering an “Aha!” that undoes the configuration, that in effect causes you to stand up and see, “Oh! My goodness! My lap isn’t permanent! In fact, it’s only something that can be called a lap if I sit down. It isn’t a thing at all.” You see?

When you say, “I wish to be the Evidence of Love,” you are saying, “I wish to have the Experience of Love that the Father is blessing me with constantly, so that I might extend it to my Brother or Sister, no matter how beautifully or awkwardly they are behaving.” If you’re saying, “I wish to be the Evidence of Love,” you’re saying, “I wish to be a healer. I wish to be the Presence of that which doesn’t believe everything that my conditioned thinking tells me is going on. I wish instead to see beyond it with the Father’s Eyes. I wish to see What Is Really There.” That is an Act of Love—that wish, that desire.

A healer always looks beyond appearances, or beneath appearances, or behind appearances, to that which has to be really there in order for there to appear to be a costume covering it up. To be a healer, you don’t give recognition or acceptance to the costume at all.

Well, that doesn’t seem to be justifiable once you’ve been hurt, once they’ve hurt you. But the fact is it’s hard to do when you have determined that they have succeeded in taking something away from you that they couldn’t possibly have taken away, because there’s nothing that can cause you at any moment to be less than Whole. Their behavior may need improvement. But no matter what their behavior is, they can’t take anything away from you.

The reason you want to be a healer is because it causes you to begin to fulfill your Function. It causes you to move into a frame of mind that honors What Is True about you. The Love of the Father which gets extended to a Brother because you have desired to Love your Brother, blesses you, because it keeps you from being successfully distracted into confused thinking and actions based on confusion that will do nothing but keep you in the dark.

Whether healing occurs in every instant of your day or not as a result of this, don’t abandon your intent to see the Truth. Don’t abandon the intent to be the Evidence of Love in your world that blesses your world, because correction or healing is needed. If you want to feel good, then you must insist upon and persist in extending Love, the intent to extend Love, the intent to see behind the masks. And until anyone is awake, they’re presenting a mask at all times.

Isn’t that wonderful? It gives you constant opportunity to fulfill your Function and thereby remember not who you are, but WHAT You Are. And in remembering What You Are, you become disillusioned, free of illusions. You come back into your right Mind and you lessen the density of the camaraderie of the dreamers by withdrawing from the group.

Vigilance and diligence are the key words here. You must be vigilant not to be the evidence of the absence of Love. And you must be diligent in your intent to be the Evidence of Love. You must be persistent in wishing to see only the Evidence of Love, because the Evidence of Love is behind every mask and underneath every costume, even the ones you’re wearing. You see, I’m not talking to any of your costumes or any of your masks. I’m talking to You, the Real One that’s there. And this is healing. And this is transformational. Whether you continue to come here and sit with blank stares, or twinkles of “Aha’s,” I persist. And you, all of you, along with Paul have the opportunity to embrace this natural activity so that the joy of experiencing the Father’s Love loving you as it gets extended to your Brother, secures in you greater commitment to wishing to see only the Evidence of Love and wishing to be only the Evidence of Love.

Let’s go to the book.

Remember I didn’t say any of this would be easy. The Truth is simple, but the breaking of well-established habits isn’t easy. This is why vigilance is necessary. This is why being conscious and not just floating through your day is so essential. To be drowsy and lazy in your mind is not a characteristic of Mind. The Characteristic of Mind is attentiveness, being fully attentive to All of Creation, to all that is included in Mind, which is All of Creation Itself. So, as I’ve said before, just because you might not find it easy is no justification for abandoning the nurturing of your Divine Birthright, the nurturing of capacities that are fully present in you at this very moment, that are not stunted, that are not weak, that are not shriveled up. They are fully present, fully functional, whenever you choose to employ them. And another way of saying that is whenever you choose to value the Experience of Singularity and not try to employ conflict as the means for coping with life. Conflicted ideas in your mind held simultaneously and acted upon as though they could be acted upon.

Okay. Let’s start in the book. And the heading here in the Course as it was finished by Bill Thetford is:

Total commitment, that’s moving into the Singularity. Without any conflict, without anything extraneous. The Wholeness of being Conscious.

I think by now everyone of you should be pretty clear on why. Your Function is to be the Presence of Love. Your Function is to be the place where the Extension of Love occurs and if you withhold it, you are denying your Function. You are blocking your Function and that will never be comfortable.

Understand that because Mind is a Singularity, whether you try to be it in a conflicted, nonsingular way, because it is a Singularity, everything it does is wholly committed to what it’s doing. And so, if you are choosing to be conflicted within yourself and determine everything about your world on the basis of that conflict, you will do that with total commitment because Mind cannot be polarized. It can’t be divided into positive and negative. So you will be positively good, or you will be positively bad. You see? Because there is no way for there to be a mixture of the two. So denial is as total as Love. We could say hate is as total as Love. Anger is as total as Love. Dishonesty is as total as Love. Because whatever you are intent upon, all of the power of Singularity will be embodied in it.

Continuing …

Nor is it possible to love it totally at times.

Now, you must remember here that this is referring to the Christ That You Are, that you’ve never stopped being, even though you deny it. Your mind is, like we said last week, the only Mind there is. Mind is a Singularity. There is only One; that Mind is God; that Mind is gifted by God to every single part of His Creations; that Mind is the One Conscious Experience of Being Conscious that you are experiencing. It’s the Christ-Mind because it’s the Mind of God.

So denial …

… the Christ That You Are …

… and I might add, foolishly, of course …

Again …

If you get up in the morning and you say, “Boy, yesterday so-and-so was a real bastard and really wrecked up my day,” well, as you get up and move into your day with that thought and that context, it won’t be just so-and-so who is colored by your distress. It’s going to be that the milk is not cold enough in your bowl of Cheerios. It’s gonna be all the lousy drivers on the freeway. It’s gonna be the circumstances that got you to work seconds before you would be late. It is going to color everything, because you really can’t be a divided Experience of Consciousness. Mind you, this isn’t because there’s anything going on in Creation, or the world, that is true justification for your misery. But when you employ misery relative to one part of Creation, it will spread to every part of your Conscious Experience. Why? Because Mind is a Singularity.

You used to think of your Real Mind and the ego as though they were two different minds. Stop. Let go of that concept. The only difference between your right Mind and the ego is the difference in the use you’re putting your one and only Mind to use. You’re either putting it to good use, or bad use, but there’s only one Mind. I point this out to you so that you might understand that the ego is not a mind claiming to be your mind that you must escape from, and which you might not have a very good chance of escaping from because “Oh, it’s a defense mechanism, and it is very excellent at what it does. And so it is going to be a struggle.” No. It’s a matter of choice between using the one Singular Mind that there is well, instead of poorly. It means taking responsibility for how you’re using your Mind and being conscious enough not to slip into the sloppy habit of trying to be loving and angry at the same time.

“I’m a loving person who has a right to be angry. I’m a loving person who has a right to be pissed off at you. And boy am I pissed off at you! Now Susie Q over here, I love her. [kissing sound] Mmm. She’s a sweetheart. But you, you’re a bastard! I hate you!” And you have that all in one sentence. And you think you’re feeling those things simultaneously, and it’s impossible. And you don’t recognize it, and you don’t challenge it. And as a result, you block the Extension of Love that it is the Function of your Being to be, and you feel miserable. Loving little Susie Q doesn’t really make ya feel good; it’s just a nice contrast to how much you hate so-and-so. And it doesn’t move you out of misery.

[Said to Susan, Paul’s wife] Susan, I’m making no reference to you [slight audience amusement] when I say “Susie Q.”

Continuing or repeating …

You see, Paul isn’t so different from all of you, and he thinks that he can be conscious of Reality partly, even if he’s distressed. But the fact is that whatever consciousness there is of Reality that he thinks he has, is still under the shadow and gloom of the misery he’s experiencing because he thinks he’s been hurt. He thinks something has been successfully taken away from him that couldn’t possibly have been taken away from him. And so, if you deny any part of it, you have lost awareness of all of it in its True Light.

Continuing …

In other words, denial can be used on behalf of unifying, just as it can be used on behalf of dividing, of disintegrating. Don’t look for that in the book. I’m saying that.

… another word for “attack” is “defense.” When you are be being defensive, you are engaging in attack against that which you are defending yourself.

Well, let’s bring that down to earth here. You come up to a friend, a neighbor, an associate, a boss, whoever, and as I said, unless they’re awake, they’re in a costume and presenting a mask. Denial is, positively speaking, your instant recognition that the mask and the costume aren’t the individual. And you choose not to honor the mask or the costume, but to acknowledge the individual. You see, now you have denied the presentation, the costume, whatever means that one is using to defend himself or herself, because he or she, like you, knows that in the separated and alone state of mind that he or she is in, everything calls for defense. Because vulnerability is the bottom line of that experience. That person doesn’t necessarily know that, but that one experiences it as though it’s real. And that’s why they employ a mask, and that’s why they employ a costume, just as with you.

True denial is your unwillingness to respond to the costume or the mask, and to insist upon recognizing that there is Something Divinely Real behind and underneath the mask and costume, and that’s the only thing you’re willing to communicate with, to be present with, to witness for. That is the positive use of denial.

So, again …

… or divisive …

… the part behind the mask of that individual, or another individual. Not all of the Brotherhood. And …

… your Mind. The Mind of the Christ that you Are …

And likewise Mind, the Mind that your Brother is, is too powerful to be subject to exclusion.

… and your Brothers will, and so will you until you’re awake, but less and less.

Well, this week Paul wasn’t interested in blessing anyone. After all, he believed he had actually been hurt, actually been deprived of something. Some part of him had been taken away by being ignored. Such insanity.

That doesn’t mean you have the same problem he has. It means that since your Function is to be the Extension of Love that the Father Is Being through you, because that is your Function, you need to be engaging it. And he needs, your Brother needs the blessing. You need the blessing of fulfilling your Function and knowing that you are. Not knowing in your head, but experiencing the fact that you are and feeling the Integrity of You.

Write this down and put it on your refrigerator.

… the blessing.

In other words, this is the Way Being Works. That’s what is so simple about all of this.

Continuing …

You’ve denied it in another. You’ve denied it in another by being unwilling to extend the Love that it’s your Function to be extending. So you have denied it in another, but by virtue of not extending it, you’ve denied it to yourself. So, you see, this has nothing to do with whether or not another is worthy of your Love. It has nothing to do with what he seems to have done to you, or not to have done to you. It has nothing to do with whether he knows more or less than you, or you are in a worse position than him. It has nothing to do with all of these configurations of conflicting ideas that you’ve put together and are believing. It has to do with the fact that it’s your Function to extend Love. And you won’t experience being Loved until you extend it.

And that one will not experience it until someone is willing to extend it, and thereby not respond to the costume and the mask, and thereby provide an environment in which that one can more easily say, “Well, maybe I don’t need this costume and this mask. Maybe I don’t need this defense.” He deserves the blessing because of Who He Is, or She Is, underneath the mask and the costume. And you deserve the blessing, because it’s your Function to be in receipt of it because you are extending it. This is what brings you back into your right Mind, and this is what brings you back into the True Experience of Reality.

Now, continuing …

It’s simple. Whatever you’re being right now, whatever way you’re being, however you are identifying yourself right now, however you are conceiving of who and what you are right now, it is exactly what you want.

And if you are a person who is always a victim, if you are a person who can always find a parking space right in front of the place you’re going, if you are a person who has generally happy relationships, or if you are a person who has generally frustrating relationships, it’s because this is what you want. Because you don’t do what you don’t want. And if you’re getting what you don’t want, you have to be willing to look at the configuration of beliefs that you’re valuing and holding onto.

“Oh, you know, [sighing] I’m in such a self-defeating situation. I’m on welfare, but welfare is set up so that it’s almost impossible to get off of welfare, because once you start making money they decrease your welfare, and that isn’t enough to keep you going. And to hell with it, I’m just gonna stay on welfare.” Now there’s a string of ideas, held in a context that you find valuable.

You would say, “I don’t want this misery,” but you won’t let go of the ideas that continue to reinforce it. You are experiencing exactly what you want, and you are what you are currently defining yourself as. And until you want something different, you will have this, because you want it. Admittedly, you want it for crazy reasons, for inconsistent, illogical and conflicted reasons. But nevertheless, you have justifications right down to the dots on the “i’s” and the crosses on the “t’s.”

Oh, I know this is insulting to your egos, but it is empowering to the Christ That You Are, because it tells you that you hold the key. In a way you hold the power—the power of decision, the power of vigilance, to choose once again in a new way and to use denial constructively by saying, ‘This is inconsistent. This does not make sense. And I refuse to validate it because the Truth is I am the beloved Son, or Daughter, of God from whom He has withheld nothing. Therefore, nothing has been taken away from me. And I am not at a disadvantage, even though at the moment I cannot see where the advantage is. But I’m not going to continue to validate the justifications I have been using for staying at a disadvantage.”

Again …

At least for the time being. You can want to be something else.

Paul wanted to be miserable last week, and it governed every response he made. Just ask Susan. And he’s no different from you.

Continuing …

… you do not need God’s blessing.

Again, as I said last week, “Let the reign of Divine Truth, Life and Love be established in me.” That’s your prayer. That’s your prayer made to yourself. You are saying, “I want to let the Truth to be established in me. I am willing to let it be established in me because it already is established in me.” That’s you blessing yourself.

“No,” somebody says, “oh no, it isn’t. It’s not all that bad.” Well, as someone said earlier today, “Well everybody’s gonna die!” Well, I’m sorry, but that’s a deprived, unloving, and vulnerable idea that isn’t true and needs to be rejected outright, instead of rehearsed and put into the air as though it’s a fact. “Well everybody’s gonna get sick once in a while. I mean, there are germs all over the place. Yeah. We’re just human.” Well, that’s a deprived, unloving and vulnerable idea. And you subject yourself to it. And you don’t challenge it, at least not consistently enough. The picture you see, therefore, of yourselves is deprived, unloving and vulnerable, if you’re not awake. That isn’t what it says here.

What it says is:

Period.

If you accept it in anyone else, you have accepted it as you. If you haven’t accepted it as you, or we’ll say, as being true about you, then in looking at another who is claiming it to be true about them, you’ll say, “No way, José!” Because that’s not part of your picture of yourself. It’s not part of your conception of yourself.

Listen to this.

Again, understand that when Paul chose to be miserable this last week, his whole world looked miserable to him. In other words, All of Creation was made to look miserable together at the same time, even though Paul was choosing only one or two individuals to be distressed about. So the illusion always affects the perception of everything simultaneously.

Again …

Teach no one that he is what you would not want to be. Or what? You’re teaching that that is your perception of yourself as well. If it wasn’t your perception of yourself, you would contradict that other one by saying, “That’s not the Truth about you. Here’s the Truth about you.”

Continuing …

Okay, everybody, that means that vigilance, diligence, separating the tares from the wheat, the masks and the costumes from the Individuality wearing them, is going to be an ongoing, ultimately permanent activity. Because, you know what? When as a result of your being the Presence of Love, being the Evidence of Love, your Brothers and Sisters take off their masks and costumes, you will still continue forever acknowledging the Christ that is there. So seeing the Christ in your Brother, seeing the Truth underneath the mask and costume, is not a temporary activity to make a correction. It’s the beginning of you each being in your right Mind, fulfilling your Function, that will bring you back into your Sanity where you will remain forever, doing the same thing and nothing else. You see?

So, again, this isn’t about learning ideas of Truth that you can apply to the human condition until it’s no longer needed. This is about you beginning to be What You Really Are, and never abandoning It again.

Continuing …

… [in an amused voice] the moment you said, “But, Father, I’d rather see it my way,” and you came up with a way to see it that was not the Father’s Perspective, you made (or created) perception.

And you will want it until it no longer serves your confused and silly motives.

And I’m going to add that not only are they mental judgments, but they are judgments backed up with an emotion. “He (or she) did me wrong, put me at a disadvantage, actually took away something valuable that was mine, and it hurt.” And when you say, “it hurt,” you are saying that you are experiencing an emotion. And that emotion is the fire behind your revenge. And it is the energy which, like a drug, distracts you significantly from remembering that your Peace is available to you and is only a choice away from what you are currently miserably experiencing.

Continuing …

In other words, you have disregarded them.

You’re giving life, you think you’re giving life to something, but it’s only an imagination. There’s nothing actually there to receive the life that your attention is attempting to give to it. So, in effect, you’re like the emperor with new clothes that has no clothes. You are giving life to something that isn’t there, and so you’re doing nothing, thinking that you’re doing something and caught up in an illusion of simple emptiness.

Before we end for the day, I just want to reiterate the difference between emotions and feelings, as I use the words. I use the word “feeling” relative to Soul—your Soul Capacity, your Capacity as Soul to experience fully the Meaning of every Idea in the Mind of God. It is your Capacity, Soul is your Capacity to feel the Fullness of God in every Aspect of Creation. It is Soul which allows you to feel the Presence of God right where your Brother is, instead of the mask or costume he or she is wearing. Feeling is Soul Sensing the Meaning of Creation. Emotions, on the other hand, are not properly feelings. They are defensive reactions to a misperception of the Kingdom of Heaven. They are defensive reactions to a misperception of a Christ that is confronting you. Those are emotions. Real art never arises out of emotions. They arise out of Soul Sensing.

It’s important to understand the distinction here, because the sloppy use of the word[s] “feelings” and “emotions” will keep you from being able to make the distinction between What Is Real and what is not real, what needs to be denied and What Needs To Be Affirmed.

“Oh, well. I feel hurt. I feel the pain of the behavior I was the recipient of. And because I feel it, it’s got to be real.” But you know what? Feeling unifies, and emotions divide. And so you take a good look at what the end result is of feelings and emotions, and you will be able to determine Which One Is Real and which one is not. And when you can see that an emotional response is not real, and therefore not valid, you will not confirm it and base your actions upon it, because you will end up looking like, and being, a fool temporarily. And it’s not your Birthright to be experiencing yourself that way.

I love you. And I will continue to stand here with every single one of you that’s behind the costume and the mask, to magnify that Which Is True And Real about you, so that you might feel comfortable in de-masking and disrobing, so that the gloriousness of the Creation of God that is what each of you is might bless everyone because it’s no longer hidden.

Okay. I look forward to being with you next two weeks from today.