Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Before we begin I just want to remind everyone that next Saturday, June 19th, will be our second Online Gathering. It’s a time when those of you who are at too great a distance to attend a Gathering here can participate online, ask your questions, and dialogue with me. And I look forward to being with you next week. Watch the home page because there is a possibility that the hours will change from “2 to 7” to an earlier time, so keep your eyes open on the home page.

We’re not going to let go of this word “Singularity” quite yet, because it’s a very important thing to grasp the meaning of. Mind, your Conscious Awareness, is a Singularity. Mind, with a capital “M” referring to God, is a Singularity. You have nothing other than the Mind of God available to you. So your Mind is a Singularity. You tend to think of your mind as yours, a possession. But since it isn’t something you can become dispossessed of, it isn’t a possession at all. It is What You Are.

The Laws of Singularity, in other words, the Way Things Work divinely speaking, is the way things work humanly speaking. In other words, you may have said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way,” and you may have engaged in looking at things your way, but no matter how poorly you use your mind, it still functions as a Singularity.

When you said, “Father, I’d rather give the meaning to everything I see,” you sort of became exclusive didn’t you? “Mm. I’ve decided that that’s a tree and that it grows from a seed. And it’s capable of maturing, and maybe living a very long time, but it will die.” And so you have this very exclusive point of view about an Aspect of Creation. Exclusive means that something has been excluded, doesn’t it? You’ve excluded the Father’s Point Of View in favor of yours. But because Mind is still a Singularity, you find that you are the one who feels excluded from All of Creation, from the comprehension of All of Creation as It Truly Is, as well as feeling excluded from your Source.

“Oh! You’re alone. Tiny.” If you want to be exclusive and exclude something from your experience, you will feel excluded. Not only that; from that moment on All of Creation that you see, all of your Brothers and Sisters that you’re involved with, will feel excluded from you, separate from you, different from you. Different enough from you that it isn’t clear to you whether they are totally worthy of your love because they’re untrustworthy, they’re different. All of this because Mind is a Singularity and the intent you bring into play affects every aspect of your Conscious Experience.

You’ve conveniently come up with an explanation of the state of affairs that you’re in. You say not only that you have an ego, but that you are an ego. And it’s the task of this ego to cope with this fragmented world that you’re experiencing, which is fundamentally potentially threatening to your well being. It’s got to look that way because the intent is an exclusive intent. Everything is going to be experienced as different from and fundamentally at odds with you because Mind is a Singularity. Your explanation that you have an ego, or that you are an ego, is so much tinkling brass. It’s nonsense. But you believe it and you put your energy behind securing its safety, which always finds expression in forms of defense against this world—this world that is different from you. And all the time you’re doing this, you are reconfirming your intent to see things your own way. And all the time you’re doing this, you are insuring that you will not remember Who You Are.

What I’m harping on these past few weeks is that you must come to understand that you don’t have a mind of your own, that you’re not an ego, that you don’t have an ego, but you’re the Presence of Mind, a Singularity, conducting yourself as though you’re not. And waking up amounts to nothing more than recognizing that All That You Divinely Are, you are being right now. You’re just doing it poorly. This realization will allow you to develop a new intent to be Mind well, to be in a new way, to be in the only way you can truly be. And the only way you can truly be is to be the Presence of Love. And that’s why I gave you two prayers. I wish to see the evidence of Love. And I wish to be the evidence of Love. Love is inclusive rather than exclusive. Love unifies rather than divides.

The poor use you’ve been putting your minds to has been to do that which divides. It’s that simple. That’s all there is to the ego. You don’t have to escape from the ego because there is not any such thing as the ego really. There’s the Christ behaving as though he’s not the Christ. And the call is to start behaving as though you’re the Christ.

And as it has been expressed through the ages, the means of doing that is to engage in Love. Love is the answer. Love is inclusive. Because it’s inclusive, it integrates what seemed to be disintegrated. It brings you back into the Conscious Experience of Singularity in which you no longer experience being tiny and defenseless, you might say vulnerable, into an experience of inclusiveness in which none of Creation is unavailable to you, in which you would feel as though your mind got big.

You see, we’re not talking about good behavior, being nice to your Brother and Sister, being loving, and doing nice things instead of bad things, loving them in spite of their behavior. We’re talking about not being divided in your mind, where your mind spontaneously moves into judgment about each other, which is divisive. Now, is it divisive between all of you out there, or is it divisive within you? It’s your mind that is either promoting division, or it’s your mind promoting Unity. Unity of what? Of Itself, so that in your Mind you’re not confused or fragmented. Because you know what? Only you are looking through your eyes, therefore only you are responsible for what you’re seeing. And if your intent is fragmented and confused, because of the Singularity of Mind, everything you see will be fragmented and confusing. And trying to fix up the confusion by better behavior is not going to change anything.

You are the Christ right now. You are the Ultimate right now. You need to remind yourself of that, and I will remind you of that, because you’re sure you’re something else. And you’re actually ashamed to claim that you are the Christ, because after all, what will all these other independent separate people with questionable motives do with such knowledge that you think you’re the Christ? But you are the Christ, at the moment, using your mind sloppily. And because you are the Christ using your mind sloppily, you have all that it takes to use your Mind well, because you are the Christ. This is why the Meaning of Singularity is so important for you to understand at this point.

You are my Brothers and Sisters. We are equals. We are the same. There is no difference between us, except in the way you’re using our Mind.

Let’s go to the book. I’m going to back up a couple of sentences just for context.

Again there’s the Singularity. Whatever God has extended to you as you, you are. And at the most basic, what he has given you is the Function of giving to all. If God has given you life by expressing you, then He has given you the Function of expressing it, extending it to everything else, to every other Aspect of Creation.

You can’t give life to nothing. And there’s nothing outside of God for you to give life to that God hasn’t already given life to.

Continuing …

See, here again is the Singularity in another expression. If you don’t give What You Are, then you do not know your Being. Well what’s happening instead? Well, you’re having an imagination about everything and about yourself, and that’s what you think you are, that’s what you think your Being is. But since it’s all imaginary, it’s actually nonexistent. In other words, you’re being nothing. It’s as though in actuality all the time you think you are being what you think you are, you are asleep, you are unconscious dreaming dreams of existence which aren’t actually occurring at all. And all the time you’re doing this, the Christ That You Are, because it can’t be altered from What God Has Established It As, continues to be present, functioning fully. And it’s called the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind. And all we’re talking about through all these months is turning toward the Altar, turning toward the Place of Excellence in you, which is the Holy Spirit, which is your right Mind, where everything you are conscious of is Real and is established, and is given life by your attention to it.

Continuing …

… and that means that you are doing nothing apart from Him when you think you are doing things on your own.

… His way is extension. When you engage in extension, you remember Who You Are. Again …

That’s the problem you’re having at the moment is that you have forgotten yourselves, because you’ve given preference to an imagination of yourself. “You came from a sperm and an egg. You’re the product of your environment. You’re the product of your ancestors’ concepts. You’re the product of what you were taught in school.” Bullshit. You are the product of God in every single moment of Conscious Experience. And that’s the only thing you’re a product of. And you are that right now. You are the Christ right now.

Continuing …

When? Now. It is What You Are right now, in spite of what you’re convinced you are, which is that you’re something different. I cannot put it clearly, or clearly enough. Now are you the Sons and Daughters of God. Now are you the Ultimate. Now are you the Christ. Now are you the Fullness of capital “B” Being. It’s not off in the distance. It’s not off in the future. It’s not something to grow into. It’s something to embrace consciously right now as the Truth About You right now so that your behavior can begin to change right now. The good news is the good news about this moment you’re in because of What You Truly Are in the moment you’re in.

And you’re far more than you think you are. But you’re not far more than you’re capable of comprehending. You’re not more than you’re capable of comprehending. You’re not going to have to stretch tall to be able to wrap your mind around What You Divinely Are. Your Mind is What You Divinely Are. See, you’re not the idea you have about yourself. You are that which has the idea. You’re not the concept you’ve created about what you are. You are the Conscious Awareness in which that concept was formulated. And that Mind is a Singularity. It’s already not polarized. It’s already not divided. It’s already not fragmented.

Instead of wrapping your mind around some humongous, infinite concept of yourself that is of universal proportions, that maybe you won’t be able to do, all you have to do is start identifying yourselves with your Mind instead of your body, so that you pay more attention to what’s going on in your Mind. Your body just identifies what’s going on in your Mind. And if your Mind is engaged in conflict, your body will reflect the conflict. Not just your body, but your environment. Those you live with, deal with, work with. The political situation, the international situation. They will all reflect the use you’re putting your Mind to, because [it is] your Mind, and not the body, that’s in these circumstances locally, nationally, internationally, et cetera. Again …

Not with shame. Not with reluctance. Gladly.

Well, this certainly is going to involve an inner experience of Love that will be different from what you thought Love was. And it will involve a valuing of Love as your fundamental Function more than ever before. To Love is to honor a thing for What It Is.

And I’m going to tell you a little secret. Until you’re willing to embrace the idea that right now you are the Christ conducting yourself poorly, but nevertheless the full Christ, until you are able to conceive of that as the Truth About You, you will not be able to extend that acknowledgment to your Brother. And yet extending it to your Brother is the only way you will make it your own.

Yes, there is a Place of Excellence in you. “Oh, but I don’t want to expose it. I’ll acknowledge it, but I want to keep it covered up. I don’t want to be too public with my Excellence.” Well, until you do make it public, it won’t be extended and you won’t feel it in you. You won’t feel its Meaning as your Identity.

Again …

Well now that includes you too. You are His Beloved Sons and Daughters in whom He is well pleased. Why? Because He sees Himself in you. And He sees nothing else but Himself in you because He placed nothing else in you. Okay, here’s the Singularity again. If that’s what God is extending to you, then that is your function with each other. And until you begin to fulfill that function, you will not make it your own as your own Experience of Who You Are.

Continuing …

… Why?

Singularity again.

Remember the Course is all about you. It’s all about you coming into a new Experience of What You Are and always have been, but which didn’t register with you because you were preoccupied with your concept of who you are. True, you had a lot of help in the formulation of that concept. Your parents helped you. Your educators helped you. Your society helped you.

And none of them said, “You are Mind. You are That Which Is Conscious of bodies, forms, world, universe. And this Conscious Awareness or Mind That You Are is indivisible. You have available to you for your Conscious Experience the experience of Peace, of Wholeness, of Unity, of Integrity. You are Excellence Itself. And it’s your Function to be from that Excellence and to let it find expression, or extension, toward everything of which you are conscious. And if you will allow that extension to occur, you will find everyone and everything, and all of the universe, All of Creation available to you as a Conscious Experience in which the utter Harmony of Being is obvious and undeniable, in which Joy will occur, and in which there will be no misperceptions.”

That’s not what you were educated to believe. That is not your belief, but it’s the Truth. So now you have an educator educating you properly, truly, so that you might find reason, deep inner reason for shifting the way you behave and shifting the use to which you are putting your Mind.

Continuing …

You hear this kind of sentence occurring more and more frequently as we go through the book?

You can’t have the experience of what you’re not extending. Another way of putting it is, what you are not extending is what you will experience. If you are not extending Love, you will not experience being Love and you will not experience being Loved. What you do not extend, you will not have experience of. This is fundamental. And I want you to catch the sense of it each time it is expressed in different words here.

And why is it that you cannot experience what you’re not extending? Because Mind is a Singularity expressed inclusively or exclusively. And if it’s expressed exclusively, then because it’s a Singularity, all of your experience will identify exclusion, separation, separateness. Why? Because you have excluded part of you. You have excluded the part of your Mind, if I may put it this way, that has been extended to you by God in His Creation of you and His Causing you to be the Presence of Mind that has as its Function the capacity to be aware of What Everything Is Truly.

But you’ve divided up your mind by saying, “But, Father, I’d rather see it my way.” Now, did you manage to push God away? No. But you managed to become insane. You managed to put a circumference around a small part of the Totality of your Conscious Awareness and you said, “This little part is me and I have my exclusive view on everything. And because no one can get inside this circumference, no one can see things exactly as I see them. And that makes me the king of my experience.”

And what have you done? You’ve created what I’ve referred to as a bubble; totally flimsy; a bubble in the middle of the Infinity of your Conscious Awareness of the Singular Mind That You Are. And you have excluded yourself from the rest of your Self—everything outside the bubble. And so now everything on the outside of the bubble is called the Holy Spirit, the rest of your Divinity in addition to the little bit circumscribed by the bubble you’ve created by the definition you’ve given yourself. And the rest of you is held in trust while you insist on playing inside the limits of this bubble.

But it doesn’t just sit there, the Holy Spirit, the rest of What You Divinely Are. It won’t let the bubble be. It doesn’t recognize the existence of the bubble and so it insists on registering with you in one way or another. It insinuates itself into your Conscious Awareness. But most of you are stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. And you insist upon your bubble and you keep adding soap to it and water to it so that it won’t pop. But you know what? This infinite, unbounded Mind or Conscious Awareness That You Are continues to be what is outside the bubble as well as what is inside the bubble. You’re still the Christ. You’re still the Ultimate.

And that’s why it’s so important for you to begin to be willing to acknowledge that right now you are the Ultimate. And you know what happens when you turn toward the Altar? You begin to push against the bubble you’ve created. You begin to have the intent to connect with the rest of What You Infinitely Are outside the bubble. And that weakens the bubble. And that’s all we’re engaged in here is the inspiration, the establishment of inspiration in you that causes you to want to reach outside the bubble, so that this Infinite Mind, this Singular Mind That You Are might once again experience its Singularity because the bubble pops.

“Oh, I want to wake up! I want to wake up! I’d give my arm and a leg to wake up.” Well go ahead. There’s nothing stopping you except that you don’t really want to wake up.

You know what? The little gap is like the surface of the bubble. And when you as you perceive yourself to be inside the bubble begin to let your Mind to be in harmony with the Way Things Really Are, to be in harmony with God, and to be in harmony with your Function, you bring that of you, that of which You Divinely Are that’s inside the bubble into greater alignment with God, with the rest of What You Are outside the bubble, so that you inside the bubble and you outside the bubble are in better alignment, are more parallel, you might say, so that with less difference between what’s inside the bubble and what’s outside the bubble, [snap of the fingers] the Father, as the Course says, can take the last step and pop the bubble.

All we’re doing is helping you come to a place in your own mind where you are not as resistant to God, which really means where you are not as resistant to the Excellence of You, where you are more willing to be the Embodiment of God, of All That Is Good. Where you are willing not to bring defense into play, constantly reinforcing it by behaving as though you are what you think you are, and by behaving as though everyone else is like what you think you are, therefore untrustworthy, undependable, being that which calls for defense.

Love is inclusive. And I know you think in terms of inclusive meaning letting your Brother and Sister in, all them out there. But the place where the inclusiveness will be embodied, manifest, will be in your Mind, in the Conscious Awareness That You Are, when the bubble pops. And that which you thought you were Which Was Divine joins with that Which You Infinitely Are but were unconscious of. In that Unity of Mind, in that Singularity of Mind, you will see Everything As It Is, including your Brothers and Sisters. You will see that they are part of the Wholeness of you, and you are part of the Wholeness of them. And Love will pour forth from you, because it’s the spontaneous response to the recognition of What A Thing Truly Is.

Now, until the bubble pops, you are going to have to use each other as the justification, in this instance between you and me, between you and me, between each other, use each other as the justification for an instant of defenselessness, an instant of being willing to see the other the Way God Is Seeing And Being Them. Why? So that you might have the experience for yourself as well. Again …

You can’t have what you don’t extend. Okay. Continuing …

“Oh! Well you know I don’t like to label myself. You want me to walk around Child of God, you know. I hate labels so I’m not going to call myself anything. But I’ll be loving.” No. You’ve got to acknowledge Who You Are. Child of God, the Christ, you’ve got to acknowledge What You Are. And don’t hide behind this ridiculous phrase, “Well, I don’t like labels.” The ego finds all sorts of nonsensical justifications.

And the fact is that one Child of God is the only one who can teach another anything. Human beings can’t teach at all. The human concept, how you conceive of yourself, what you think you are, is incapable of teaching anything, because it’s just an imagination. You’re not what you imagine yourself to be. And what you imagine yourself to be can’t teach anything. There’s nothing there to be a teacher.

Continuing …

Well who’s this Teacher in your minds? The Holy Spirit.

What is the lesson? Unity. Singularity. The opposite of division.

That of yourself which you have abandoned by creating a bubble around a small portion of What You Are, does not succeed in un-creating all the rest of What You Are outside the bubble. And because you are eternal, that of you which you are ignoring outside of the bubble, patiently, we could say, insinuates itself into your awareness, pushes against the bubble, doesn’t honor the bubble because it doesn’t exist as a fact.

So this patience isn’t even really patience. It’s the Eternal Function of your Divine Being eternally being What It Is, no matter how long you hold out for your right to have an independent point of view. And it doesn’t express this Love toward you as a temporary means of dealing with your stubbornness until you abandon your stubbornness. It does it because it is its Eternal Function to be the Presence of Love that demonstrates the fact that Unity is forever Real.

So, as I said last week, remember that you’re not being the Presence of Love in order to cope with each other’s stubbornness until you all stop being stubborn, at which point you can stop being the Presence of Love. You’re being the Presence of Love because it’s your Function, and because when you are being the Presence of Love extending Love, you experience Who and What You Are, and you glorify God, and you dispel illusions. Again …

… the one Teacher that’s in all of your minds …

Only His patience can succeed in illuminating the illusory nature of an illusion so that you no longer find justification for valuing the illusion. At which point you don’t want it anymore, and in not wanting it, the Singularity of the Mind That You Are will cause its appearance to cease to exist.

Continuing …

How do you teach your Brothers their abundance? By extending yours.

There it is—the Singularity again. What you give, you get. What you’re looking with, you will see. If you’re looking with defense, you will see a call for defense. If you’re seeing with Love, you will see a call for Love, and you will share the Love that you have, and by sharing it, demonstrate to your Brother that he has it.

Continuing …

In other words, attack from another could never promote attack or retaliation from you unless you perceived it (the original attack) as a means of depriving you of something you want.

Is that difficult to understand? Go ahead and nod your head. [small laugh] Come on. Let that excellence shine forth as honesty. “I don’t understand it. That’s difficult.” Okay.

When you said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way,” you did not value Creation As It Was. So you became exclusive in your viewpoint of everything, and you found yourself experiencing being excluded, alone, tiny, vulnerable, et cetera. In this state you had to grasp for your good. You had to claim it. You had to lay claim to it as though it wasn’t yours. And once you claimed it and you possess it, because it wasn’t yours to begin with, it still isn’t really yours, and now you must defend it against being taken away from you. And you live a life in which you feel like your good is not permanent. Correct? And of course, who’s going to take it away from you? All those bastards out there. All those other people who are defending themselves because they think they lack.

Not valuing Creation As It Is, you opted for your own private viewpoint and caused all that is part of the Infinitude of your own Being to seem to be different from you and something which you had to lay claim to. I am being repetitive here. And because you did not value it in the first place and gave preference to your private point of view, you now live, you think, you now perceive existence as a state of mild warfare and sometimes extreme warfare in order to possess and hold on to your possessions.

I’m going to go back to the beginning of the paragraph.

… in other words, retaliation …

… the original attack …

Key word there—something you “WANT.” You don’t have to want something you have, do you? And yet the Father has withheld nothing of What He Is from you in His Creation of you by extending Himself in His Fullness as the very Presence of You.

… see, you wanted an exclusive viewpoint. You created an exclusive viewpoint for yourself and the Infinity of You became excluded from you, and then you felt excluded from It. In other words, you felt at a loss. Again …

You see, you’re all trying to reclaim the Kingdom of Heaven, you’re trying to take possession of it again after having excluded yourself from it by saying “I want to say what everything is.” So …

You see that? You said, so simply, and from the Allness of your Christhood, your utter stability, your inviolable experience of invulnerability, you said, “Father, guess what? From today on I’m going to say what everything is, at least for me. If You want to say what it is, fine. If everybody else wants to just accept what You say a thing is, what You have meant by its Creation, fine. But you know what? I’m feeling really good. In fact, I’m feeling just wonderful and secure, and so don’t call me, I’ll call you.” [sigh] And you rejected the Father’s Point Of View. You rejected the clear, undistorted, Conscious Comprehension of All of Creation.

And then, after having excluded the Father’s Perspective, you found yourself feeling excluded from All That The Father Was Being—Creation. And then you looked around at all the other Christs that were in your face and you said, “He took it from me,” or “Now that I’m got a little bit of it back, I’ve got to be careful ‘cause she’s going to take it from me, because it’s really valuable and they’re going to want it.” And all of this causes you to completely forget that all of this what I’m telling you is misperception occurred because of something you did—not something they did; not something they will do. Something you did when you said, “I’d rather see it my way.” That’s the way the ego works. [said in an accusing voice] “It’s their fault! And I’m going to deal with them until I get this straightened out with them.” Instead of getting it straighten out where the mistake was made which was in your own mind by saying, “I’d rather see it my way.” You see? Again …

Listen to this.

What is the ego? It’s the part of your mind which does not believe it is responsible for itself and has no allegiance to God. That’s all.

Somebody else is going to have to be responsible, somebody else has to be blamed, instead of your taking a look and remembering that you said, “Father, I’d rather look at it my way.” And you’ve been fighting to look at it your way ever since; for so long that you’ve forgotten your original, radical, righteous intent to give meaning to everything yourself.

Continuing …

Why? Because Mind is a Singularity.

… here we go.

And I’m going to say again, you are the Christ. Your very Being is the Function of embodying What God Is Being right where you are. Right now it looks to you as though you have to make a conscious choice to do that, but it’s only because you made a conscious choice not to do it and now you’ve got to retrace your steps. Once you make the conscious choice to do it, the bubble will burst and then you will experience your Real Function, for lack of better words, again.

Well if that isn’t Excellence, I don’t know what it is.

Are you going to continue covering up your Excellence? Well you know what? You may succeed in thinking that you’re covering it up, but the very Excellence of You, because it is a Singularity, will govern you nevertheless. And the Laws of Singularity, the Way Singularity Works, will be reflected in what I’m going to call excellent reproductions of conflict.

I’ve said before that the ego is a defense mechanism. I’ve said before that the only way, the only thing that the ego can’t defend itself against is disregard, right? In other words, if you attack it, you will always lose. Why? Because Mind is a Singularity, and the Excellence of Mind as a Singularity when it creates a defense mechanism, it creates a defense mechanism that you can’t win against. You see what I’m saying? That’s why the only way you can become free of it is to disregard it.

Now I hope that you’re beginning to grasp the fact that you are the Christ, that there’s only Mind. You don’t have two minds—a Real Mind and an ego mind. There’s just Mind creating according to the Laws of the Singularity of Mind an Experience of Reality As It Is because you’re yielding to the Father’s Will, or an illusion of a conflicted world and universe that started from a big bang that is purely material and has nothing to do with God. You are either allowing the Fullness and Beauty of God’s Creation to register with you because you’re letting it in, or you are with excellence creating illusions that you can’t escape from until you arrive at a point of disregarding them. Because the only way a fantasy or an illusion can disappear and cease afflicting you is when you disregard it.

We’re going to end with the first two sentences of this paragraph.

What I’m saying to you is that waking up is not complicated and it’s not about learning facts. It’s not about learning concepts. It’s not about learning anything. It’s about abandoning what you’ve been engaged in that has been causing you misery by learning—and I use that word carefully—by becoming able to recognize when you’re using your Mind in a conflicted way that now you know will cause everything you experience to appear to be divided, conflicted, confused, disintegrated, so that you can make the choice for What Is True because you can see what isn’t [true] and thereby stop using your mind in a conflicted way. Because as you abandon that, the Singularity of Mind will be what’s left and you will be awake. More of the good news.

I embrace you and love you.

Let this abide with you, percolate. And again, pay attention during the coming week, moment by moment if necessary, be alert, be conscious, so that you can see whether the use you’re putting your mind to as a divisive result or a unifying result. If it has a divisive result, no matter how much you can justify it, it is an invalid and I’m going to say destructive use of your mind; not that it can actually destroy anything but it can absolutely distract you from the experience of a miracle, a sudden shift of perception wherein you find yourself behaving in a way that unifies.

Okay. I look forward to being with you next week.