Teachings of Christ Mind

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

It’s interesting that the times when you feel like you’re exerting the most strength is when you are bringing the full force of your will into play in order to accomplish something. And one of the things that you’ve all been learning as we’ve been going through the Course, and something that all of you learn who actually embark upon a spiritual quest, if I may put it that way, and you really pay attention to essential factors of yourself at the deepest levels of your honesty, you find that the great exertion of will that you try to express is actually when you’re weakest, because it’s when you’re coming from a completely independent autonomous place where you experience no connection with Divinity, no connection with everything, no connection with God.

And ultimately what sets many people on quote “the path” unquote is the disarming and disillusioning discovery that all of the exertion of will that you brought to bear in your life has not led you to peace and security that has stability to it. And you say, “There must be something more. I am missing something here.” When you arrive at this point of, for lack of better words, failure as an ego successfully exerting will [small laugh] and you accept it, you don’t fight it any more. You fully acknowledge that the attempt has been a total failure. You give up. And we’ve talked about this before. If you genuinely acknowledge the fact that it’s been a failure, you give up. But you can’t give up for very long without saying “Help!” in one way or another and reach outside of your best judgments, your best theories, and your best sense of what your will is. And that’s when connection can occur. And that’s when breakthrough does occur. And then you find yourself companioned with by me, or the Holy Spirit, or the Father, or your own Guide.

And you find that in accepting the help that you receive, things begin to turn around. Your life literally takes a new direction. You’re still in the same world. You’re still with other people. But you’re not doing it as a tiny, independent, autonomous entity. And as you find things beginning to stabilize and improve, you find, for lack of better words, that there is strength in numbers. Not just the number “one,” meaning your best sense of yourself, but in companioning with One Who Is Awake, One who loves you, One who knows What Is Of Value and what is not, and whose Purpose it is to help you discover What Is Of Value and what is not, so that you can set it aside, set aside what is not of value voluntarily.

So that you find strength to be what manifests in your life when you’ve abandoned willfulness, an independent will that you call “yours.” And so strength and weakness reverse themselves. And what you thought constituted weakness, you now find is your strength. And what you thought was your strength, you now find is your weakness. And so you don’t energize what was weakness. You honestly look at your experience and see what happened when you were exercising personal will, personal strength, and you see, in effect, that you were accomplishing nothing, even though, for a while, it appeared that you were.

It’s this kind of clarity that allows you to set aside what was a false estimate of strength, because you can see that it is valueless. Mind you, one does not have to be at the end of his rope in order to do this. But it’s very often that that is when it occurs. You all can begin to express curiosity to know What Is Of Value and what isn’t from the Father’s Point Of View before you get to the bottom of the barrel.

So let’s go into the book.

… in other words, what is joyful to the divine one that you Are is painful to the ego …

Well, think about that. Why would anyone think that sacrifice would be valuable? Well, because, for example, you’ve been taught that the pleasure of the senses is purely physical and of a base, animalistic nature. Now where on earth did that idea come from? Well, it came from the idea of evolution. After all, you’re at the top of the food chain. You’re the most advanced of all of the creatures on the planet that evolved from what? A big bang and an evolution of physical and chemical processes. So, you’re just a higher form of a really base life process, life existence. And so at the bottom line your sole reason for being alive is that you have been a successful survivor; an animal that has succeeded in surviving long enough to lift itself up by its own bootstraps and develop a conscience, et cetera.

So now, now that you’ve developed a conscience, and you’ve been able to imagine and establish values, you’ve been able to think in terms of least value and greatest value. And greatest value has taken the form of an idea of God and an idea of existence beyond, or further in advance of, this highly developed stage of animal evolution that you’ve arrived at.

And now comes the coup de grace. Now the idea is that if you deny What You Are, you will get rewards in Heaven. If you deny the physical impulses, you will be rewarded in Heaven. If you, especially for very serious religious reasons, take a vow of poverty, this will advance you greatly. If you will take a vow of lack of some sort, a vow of silence, if you will not go for the gusto, if you will not go for the success in the world’s eyes, you will get rewards in Heaven. Now you have used your minds to arrive at a point where sacrifice is a holy thing to engage in, Self-denial is a holy thing to engage in. The belittling of your present nature is a healthy thing to do because you’re not preoccupied with worldly things. But you see, it isn’t your body, it isn’t your base self, it’s not the world, that needs to be denied. It’s the interpretation of the world and the interpretation of your self that has to be invalidated.

Now, in broad sweeping terms, you could invalidate it by saying, “The world doesn’t exist.” But that’s not the answer. The answer is, “The way I’m seeing the world, the way I’m interpreting my body, the definitions I have created about myself, are not real. But I am Real and the world is Real. There is Something going on that is being misinterpreted by me, being misunderstood by me.”

And so then, the way to get past the way you’re interpreting it, the way you’re defining it, is to have someone like me tell you the only thing confronting you is the Kingdom of Heaven. The only thing you’re experiencing right now is the Only Thing going on—Reality, with a capital “R,” God being All, the Kingdom of Heaven. And why do I keep saying that? So that you might be further inspired to look at everything, to look at yourself, to look at your body and your neighbor and your friend, with eyes of innocent—innocent of false judgments, innocent of false interpretations, innocent of definitions you have applied to everything. And you look at it with curiosity.

Continuing …

Well, there is that hard word again, “Obey.” “Oh! Obedience. There’s where you let go of autonomy. There’s where you let go of independence. These are good things,” you say. “If I give up my autonomy, if I become obedient to somebody else, that’s like going back to being a child. And I have become emancipated. I’m 21 or older. And I am now in the place in life where it’s my right to assert myself on my own and enjoy the freedom in doing so.” [said in a funny voice] Well, are you having a good time? [regular voice] So you’re confused.

You know what? The idea of obedience means fitting in; fitting in to Something. You want to be the one piece of the puzzle that’s missing from the puzzle; the one that jumped out of the box and said, “Nobody’s going to find me and put me in that tiny little spot!” Well, like you, who has a puzzle with one piece missing and is frustrated, you might say that the Whole Brotherhood is looking for you because you’re missing from your spot. And the joy that would be experienced when you were there, if you were there, is not present yet because you’re underneath the corner of the sofa. And they look forward to the joy, we all look forward to the joy, of your letting yourself fit in.

And you’re missing out on the joy of being part of the Whole. And you’re missing out on the joy of finding that once you let yourself be part of the Whole and fit in, all of what constitutes the Wholeness of Creation becomes your Consciousness Experience of Being, and you cease to be a tiny part of It, fitting in with It. But this Experience of Wholeness, this Experience of Being inseparable from the Mind of God, as God, including You, moves in the Act of Creation. This is your strength. This is your bliss. This is your Fulfillment of Purpose.

But because you’re confused, you think that it will be a real and unjustified sacrifice to give up this imagined little bit of autonomy that think you have achieved. Because as long as you think you have achieved it and are committed to it, you will never feel your Wholeness and you will never feel your strength. And by that I mean your invulnerability. I mean, really, how invulnerable are you underneath the corner of the couch where the cat might get you, or the dog might chew you up? You see what I mean? Yes, you see what I mean.

Now that’s a doom-and-gloom statement for the ego. But it’s a very clear statement about to how to release yourself from the ego. You say, “Oh, I want to give up my ego.” Or you would say, “Sure I want to give up my ego.” Okay.

“Oh, well, that’s a different matter. ‘Obey the Holy Spirit.’ Can’t I just give up my ego and still have fun being independent?” That’s called confusion. That really is called confusion. No, you can’t.

… that means link up. That means join with. That means desire to know of the Holy Spirit. It means listening for the Holy Spirit. And since we have found out that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind, you don’t have to be quite so afraid of joining with the Holy Spirit, because intellectually you can grasp the fact that doing so will be an active integration of you to you.

Is there conflict? Then you don’t believe it, yet. Explore believing it. Trek into the new territory. Stop paying lip service only to the idea that you want to wake up or that you want to give up your ego.

Listen …

… why?

You are the Son/Daughter of God. Your Inheritance is from your Father/Mother. His Will is yours. The only thing is, in the act of extending it to you, God didn’t break off a little bit of His Will and deposit it in you. You are the Extension of God. You are the Presence of God Embodied. You are God Infinitely Individualized. All of the Brotherhood is God Infinitely Individualized, without ever being fragmented or broken up into parts.

Continuing …

“God! You mean I have to listen to God all the time? You mean I have to be connected with God all the time? What? You want me to become a nun? You want me to live in a monastery and be connected with God all the time and be abnormal?” No. I want you to cook dinner with God. I want you to sleep with God. I want you to make love with God. I want you to vacuum with God. I want you to deal with your Brother with God. I want you to look at your Brother with God. I want you to do all the things you’re doing from the Place of Excellence in each of you, instead of from a place of confusion and ignorance that causes you to be miserable when it’s your Birthright to be experiencing Joy.

I want you to start looking at the trees with God, or your fingernails with God. I want you to look with God so that you might see God in everything you observe. I want you to walk on water with God. I want you to swim to the depths of the ocean without scuba gear, or submarines, with God. I want you to do things with God that you haven’t dreamed of doing, but which when you do them, will inspire your Brothers and Sisters to say, “Wait a minute. If they’re doing the impossible,”—and I promise you they are doing the impossible—“then what they’re doing must be possible, and my belief that they’re impossible must be wrong.” And the moment they get it that the way they have been believing and defining things has been wrong, [snap of the fingers] they’re immediately freed to explore walking on the water, or whatever it might be that they had previously determined to be impossible.

You’re all bound entirely and absolutely by determinations you have made in your mind. It’s my task to break those determinations, to inspire you to let go of the determination, the commitment, you bring to the meanings you’ve developed.

Now, listen …

Well, I’m going to add that it’s not only frightening, it’s exhilarating! And you get a rush from it, and you get addicted to the rush of the exhilaration of fear. And then you translate that into courage to stand in the face of what you fear and not feel overwhelmed by it, not be incapacitated by it, and to survive with a reasonable amount of peace without ever getting rid of it—the fear.

Again …

Exactly. You’re getting a rush from it, and you like the rush, and you choose for it.

“Oh. You mean all I have to do is meditate?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, well, uh, what do I get from it? You know, I get a rush from fear. What am I going to get from the peace of meditation?”

“Mm. Well, let’s see here. You’re going to have the opportunity to see the Face of God.”

“Oh, my God! That’s the thing I’m most afraid of! That’s the last thing I want. You say I’m not going to get a hit from peace?”

“That’s right. But you know what? When you choose for that Peace, and you let yourself remain in it for any length of time, you’re going to find two things emerging. You’re going to find Joy welling up from a Source that is inexplicable and unidentifiable, except that it will be welling up from the depths of your conscious experience that you’re having and Love that you cannot help but let overflow out onto everything you see and everyone you know and don’t know. And as you do it, you will feel loved.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but, you know, will it give me a rev? Mm. Will it give me a rev?”

“No. No. It won’t.”

[sigh] “I’m sorry then I’m not interested because you know what? I’ve decided that if the Kingdom of Heaven is really the Kingdom of Heaven, it’s going to be exhilarating. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to always have a nervous edge to it, except that no harm will ever come from it. That’s what the Kingdom of Heaven has to be. I’m going to hold out for that.”

“Well, I’m sorry. But that isn’t what the Kingdom of Heaven is. And that’s not what it’s your Birthright to experience. And as long as you hold out for it, you’re still going to be accomplishing absolutely nothing. And you’re still going to be constantly confronted with fear. In fact, your choice for the hit you get from fear actually creates the experience of fear and increases it, thus increasing the hit, but also increasing the pain and the suffering. If you choose for that, choose for that, but it’s not the answer to your problem.”

Each of you, in one way or another, has at one time or another said, “You know, if I got up today and everything happened perfectly, and every situation was a win-win situation, and there were utter harmony manifest throughout the day, I agree that it would be a profound experience. But without the thrill, I’m not going to choose for it. If the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing but bliss, then that means an ongoing experience of monotony.” And you jokingly say, “Well, if being in the Kingdom of Heaven is sitting on clouds playing harps all day, I’ll choose for what I have.” And that’s a way you jokingly say you don’t want Reality.

Again …

You know what? We’d get a large attendance in the Kingdom of Heaven if we would open up a new ride called “Hellhole, the scariest ride in the universe.” [scattered few laughs from audience] I’m not even going to suggest that you’re already on that ride. [more audience laughs] Yes, the billboards would say, “The only place where you can be scared to death without dying.” [more audience laughter] I promise that if you thought that giving up your ego would let you have that ride, you would do everything you could to give up your ego. [more audience laughter]

Well, except [amused laugh] you think that it’s giving you something far more valuable than what you’re having to give up. You think that the ego is saying that it can give you, this little puzzle piece, a life never dreamed of by other puzzle pieces who never thought beyond the puzzle that they are a part of. It asks you to sacrifice the remembrance of Who You Are. It asks you to sacrifice … it asks you to sacrifice the awareness that it is nothing more, the ego is nothing more than you wearing a mask. It asks you to think that all experiences are happening to you, when all experiences are You unfolding Infinitely, and you’re not subject to It, and therefore, not vulnerable to It. It asks you to forget your Source, which causes you to lose your experience of your Identity. It asks you to sacrifice too much.

But you say that it promises you the satisfaction of overcoming limitations and proving your superiority to them. And you know what? You know what hooks you? The fact that you know at some level you haven’t forgotten that you are the Christ and that you are, for lack of better words, omnipotent, and that you are superior to all illusion. But you see, the ego asks you to sacrifice the Conscious Experience of What You Are, your Real Identity, so that you might have this autonomous, independent experience; this scary ride. And so you don’t have the capacity to actually overcome the illusions, to actually overcome the things that are fearful, because you have to remember Who You Are before you can have the experience of superiority over illusions that causes illusions to disappear.

And it causes you to not realize that you make the illusions disappear, not by an act of authority, but by an act of acquiescence to the Whole, by being obedient to the Holy Spirit, by yielding to God. And because it asks you to sacrifice that, you’re attempting something that is impossible. You are attempting to accomplish what will never be accomplished. And as long as you may remain committed to the attempt, you will be stuck. And you are. Except that you are becoming inquisitive. Your eyelids are beginning to flutter a little bit. And you are asking to know the Truth. And you are willing to conceive that the Truth is outside the box of limitation that you’ve been operating in. And so Movement of Awakening is occurring.

Again …

It’s very simple. When you don’t know Who You Are, when you have forgotten Who You Are, when you have decided to commit your mind to an idea, or a definition, of what you are, instead of What You Really Are, you’re in a state of Self-denial. And, in other words, you have put on a mask. The presentation of yourself with a mask on is fundamental dishonesty. And you know it. And you know that as long as you’re doing that, you’re not trustworthy. You can’t dare to look at that for very long so you say, “The world out there is untrustworthy. My Brothers and Sisters are untrustworthy, and I’ve got to be defended against them.” And now you’re in a state of survival.

You won’t begin to see who your Brothers and Sisters are until you’re willing to look at What You Are. And you’re learning that the only way to look at What You Are is turn toward the Place of Excellence in you, the Altar within, and inquire of the Holy Spirit, something outside your definition of yourself.

Ask yourself, how motivated are you to reinforce illusion? How motivated are you to commit to the experience of fear? And how motivated are you to becoming sane again? How motivated are you to finally, with conviction and commitment, say and embody the meaning of the words, “I am through with suffering. I am through with an eternal experience of conflict. I am through believing that the hit I get from suffering is valuable.”

Again …

Mind you, this “GUIDE” is referring to the Holy Spirit who never asks for sacrifice. I mean, after all, you’ve heard that there’s such a thing as the Holy Spirit.

“But,” your ego says, “For all you know, the Holy Spirit is pure imagination, something the church made up. Right? So you don’t want to mess around with that. You know, that’s intangible. Your mind? It’s real because you’re experiencing it directly, right? You’re real. Holy Spirit? Mm. Can’t be sure. Can’t be sure. If you turn to the Holy Spirit, and you believe that you’re actually doing it, you’ll probably just be going insane, and they’ll lock you up. So don’t mess around with It. I mean, you may connect with one of the dark spirits. And Heaven only knows …” Oh, it uses the word “Heaven.” Yeah, the ego says, “Heaven only knows what will happen to you then. Mm. This whole venture is untrustworthy. Don’t trust it!”

This goes on all the time, every day, in one way or another, with each of you where you are distracted from trusting the good. You’re distracted from voicing the good. You’re distracted from embodying anything that smacks of too much goodness.

Again …

… in other words, if you are presenting yourself with a mask, you are in the act of betraying something. You’re betraying the trust that the person you’re speaking with would extend to you.

(PAUL: I’m sorry.)

Key point. You will not be able to see the trustworthiness of anything else until you’re willing to consider the possibility that there is a Place of Excellence in you. And that Place of Excellence in you is the Excellence of you. And until you’re willing to acknowledge that and begin to honor it, you will not have the trust necessary to lean into the Holy Spirit, or to let yourself go into the underlying, everlasting arms of God and yield.

Continuing …

In other words, you may not choose to listen to me in the quietness of your Being. You may not give me the opportunity to share the Truth about the Father so that you might find that as Brothers we both see things the same way. As Brother and Sister we both see things the same way. You may not give yourself the opportunity to share the Father’s Will. But in spite of your ignoring It, we do share the Father’s Will. We do. It’s … the sharing of It is in place. It’s stable. It’s eternal. It’s just the Way Things Are.

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

Now what is the fallacy? The fallacy is that you seem to have a choice. You think you have a choice to be the Expression of God, or to be an independent agent. That is a fallacy. And that fallacy, that belief, is the one thing that your whole confused experience arises from. “But Father, I’d rather see it myself. But, Father, I’d rather do it my way.” It was never an option. Therefore, you have never succeeded at it. But you have imagined that you have succeeded at it. And you have lived things out through the lens of that imagination.

What does that mean? It means you don’t have to make a choice between this and that. If you neglect to exercise the choice, you obliterate the possibility of an experience of an illusion. You see that? If you say, “Yes, Father. Yes, God,” and you don’t opt for the right to have a second choice, you wake up, or you never slip into a dream. You’ve slipped into a dream, so the answer is to neglect to make that choice further. And how do you neglect to make that choice? By saying, “Father, show me the Truth.” Or if you don’t want to speak to Father, you can say, “I, from the depth of my Being, want to experience the Ultimate Truth here, now.”

And God accomplished it by being All There Is. So there is no option for anything else. You see? God accomplished it by not giving you another choice. God never set up choices for you to decide between. And in the true sense of Singularity, if He didn’t provide you with a choice, you don’t have a choice. And therefore, you never actually made a choice that caused for you a real illusion. And so you’re still in your Holy Place as the Holy Son or Daughter of God untouched, fully present right now, right here in the middle of River City, right here in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Continuing …

… God’s …

What is His Voice that will teach you how to distinguish? It’s the Holy Spirit. And what is the Holy Spirit? Nothing more than your right Mind.

Even if you don’t understand that or grasp it in its fullness, grasp the fact that it is saying there is only one thing going on. There is only one thing being done, if you will, and nothing else has been done. Therefore, waking up is not an undoing of something that has been done. It’s a sudden shift of perception in which what you thought you did that you didn’t do no longer fools you. You see that you didn’t do anything and you didn’t exist as a doer in that sense, that you’re more than that and have been all along, even though you’ve committed yourself to being an independent doer so as to try to have an experience of being an independent authorizer, which has been a rugged experience because it can’t be done. And you haven’t been doing it. And you can’t do something that you can’t do, thinking you have done it, without some kind of alarm going off within you that’s your Sanity saying, “Stop this! Stop this! Stop this ridiculous behavior.”

… sudden shifts of perception …

Remember I said when you go into the Peace, there are two things that emerge—Joy and Love—and that they, if they are allowed, inevitably spill over into your experience, blessing everything and everyone and blessing you at the same time while returning you to the Conscious Experience of What You Really Are.

Continuing …

By offering Truth. How do you offer Truth? You offer it by declaring it. You offer it by giving it voice. You offer it by putting it in the air. Not by quietly, peacefully knowing it without ever expressing it in a manner that can promote change. You dare … I invite you to dare to voice Truth, to give expression to Truth, offer Truth, instead of silly bullshit social talk that doesn’t do anything to upset the status quo. Dare to offer the Truth and say to someone, “You know what? No matter what you think you are, no matter what you believe about yourself, I know that you’re Divine, and that this cold you’re experiencing, or this headache that you’re experiencing, isn’t your Birthright. And so I’m putting it in the air right now between the two of us that I know this isn’t legitimate. And I know it doesn’t have any means of prolonging itself. And I know that it can go away right away. And I invite you to believe that too.” And then leave it.

Don’t be afraid to express the Truth, whether it’s met with acceptance or not. Make the Gift. Glorify God by expressing the Truth. You run into someone who feels worthless, who’s really down in the dumps about herself or himself, convey to them that they are worthwhile. Spend enough time with them to express the worth that you see in them. Let your actions deny their worthlessness, so that they might be inspired to adopt your point of view.

And you’re learning that there’s not just a difference between pain and Joy. They are, what I’m going to call, unlinked pairs. Everybody says, “Well, if you’re gonna have love, you gotta have [hate]. If you’re gonna have joy, you gotta have pain. How would you know what joy was if you didn’t have pain?” Is this not idiotic? But you don’t argue with that idea. “Oh, if it wasn’t dark, you couldn’t see the stars. Gotta be some darkness in your life so that the light fully means what it is.” So you learn the difference between pain and Joy and the fact that they cannot coexist. Period. And so you abandon pain.

Well, the next section is called:

Maybe next Sunday will be more enjoyable. [some slight audience amusement at the comment] I love you all, and I look forward to being with you next week.