Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’re talking about making the Gift of Freedom. And last week I shared with you two prayers that I had shared with you earlier. I wish to SEE the Evidence of Love and I wish to BE the Evidence of Love.

In order to see the Evidence of Love, you must be willing to see the Evidence of Love. But sometimes, your Brothers or Sisters consciously choose to be unlovely; I’ll put it that way. They do it out of fear. They do it out of desperation because they have this false experience of being alone, just as all of you do to one degree or another. And the question is what do you do with a Brother who insists on engaging in activities and language that is UNloving?

Remember, again in the context of making the Gift of Freedom, Real Freedom means to be free of that which binds you. And remember that we’re talking about the fact that the expression of self-will which everyone thinks is the meaning of free will is what binds you. And so, when you come to a Brother with the desire to make the Gift of Freedom, you’re coming to that Brother to say, “Freedom means something different from what you believe it is. And at the bottom line, it means that you’re going to have to abandon what you have called freedom. You’re going to have to abandon what you call freedom.” Well, not everyone wants to do that. In fact, at the bottom line, none of you are awake because none of you is willing to abandon the expression of freedom, by your definition, which is the right to express self-will.

So you are likely to be met, not by willing agreement, but you are likely to be met by resistance. So how do you not become discouraged? Well, the easiest way not to be discouraged is not to try to force an understanding of True Freedom on someone who is adamantly committed to expressing self-will. It’s only when you try to do the impossible that you get frustrated and discouraged, right? Those who are not willing to listen to me in the within-ness of themselves do not hear me, even though I am willing to speak, even though I do speak. So you must be willing to back off from those who vehemently refuse to consider that there’s another way to look at the meaning of freedom and there’s another way to look at the meaning of free will, which, as we’ve been discussing, means yielding to the Father’s Will, letting the Father’s Will be your will, which in Truth it is.

Now, in extreme cases where you’re dealing with those who are caught in an ethic of expressing self-will, who see it as the be-all and end-all of existence, and when their behavior is obtuse, unpleasant, hateful, when it expresses jealousy, and they don’t want to shut up, they want the freedom to express it endlessly, loudly, to anyone who will listen, you must say, “No.” You must say, “You cannot continue this behavior in my presence.” And in effect they become excluded from your company. What that amounts to is an intelligent action of restraint that is being applied to an uncontrolled expression of that which is unlovely.

And don’t ever think that the Course teaches that there should never be restraint of any kind. That amounts to sheer stupidity. When this happens and you have to say “No” and an apparent exclusion occurs, it’s because you have good reason for it. You have intelligent reason for it. You will not participate in enabling that which doesn’t express the True Nature of the one who wants to be hateful or unlovely.

So you have a picture of them in your mind regarding an accurate assessment of their current behavior, and you know that until the behavior changes, the restriction must stay in place. Now comes the important part. You’ve set up the restriction. The exclusion is in place and you understand why the exclusion is in place. The reason can in your mind become a definition you have about that individual. And here’s the place where you will make a mistake, because you can’t allow the description of their current behavior to become the definition of them in your own mind. Why? Because the minute it becomes the definition of them in your own mind, you have forgotten Who They Are. They are not their behavior. None of you are your behavior. But your bad behavior can’t continue.

Why would you make the Gift of Freedom to your Brother? Because you love your Brother. Another reason you would give the Gift of Freedom to your Brother is because as you’re in the process of waking up, healing becomes your goal. The correction of misunderstanding, the correction of misperception is your goal because that constitutes healing.

You have forgotten Who You Are and I am remembering for you. And because I continue to remember What You Really Are for you, I can share it with you so that you can remember. You’re here to remember for your Brothers and Sisters.

And so if you set a limit on behavior and if you use the reasons for the limit as a definition of them, you will no longer be able to remember for them Who They Are. And you will not be able to be an agent for change, and in effect you and that Brother will become locked in a picture—a picture that is not the Truth. And you will have gone to sleep a little bit more, instead of having woken up a little bit more. And you will not be able to be an agent for change.

Where a brother or a sister or a parent or a child insists on behaving in ways that are desruptive/harmful, you must set the limit. And then in the quietness of your mind when they come to your thought, you must take that opportunity to remember for them Who They Are. You don’t confront them with it, but you nevertheless remember consciously. For you to remember What They Are is an Act of Love.

To remember the definition you’ve applied to them is an act of hate. To hold them to the definition you have of them, to hold them to the picture they have presented of themselves is an act of hate. It is not healing

So remember, you give the Gift of Freedom because your goal, your intent, is to heal. Healing someone doesn’t mean controlling them into their good. It means acknowledging What Is True About Them in your mind so that you are not confused. And in that acknowledgement of What They Truly Are, you are remembering the Father, you are remembering God. And by remembering God in your mind relative to your Brother, you are glorifying God right there and that is your Gift.

And you know what? There’s never a time to abandon that activity. That doesn’t mean you have to sit there twenty-four hours a day remembering God right there where they are, because there’s a whole Universe. All of your friends, all of the things in your experience deserve that acknowledgement, because that’s how you glorify God. And that’s how you make the Truth about you yours, because you haven’t forgotten to remember Who Your Brother Truly Is.

I can remember Who You Are but that won’t change you. As I remember Who You Are and it filters into your awareness, you have the opportunity and the obligation to extend that recognition on to your Brother, and then change occurs for you. That’s why there’s never a time to abandon your Brother, even if you have had to exclude or set limits so that abuse can’t occur, and so that the enabling of an abusive attitude doesn’t become acceptable. You see? So it’s a fine line.

Remember though that if you’re getting discouraged, it’s because you’re trying to enforce another’s good on him. You’re trying to enforce another’s freedom on him. And that doesn’t make sense, does it? [in an amused voice] How can you enforce freedom on another? You cannot force another to be free. [laughing] You see? That’s control and the absence of freedom for your Brother.

Remember your Function is to be the Evidence of Love, and so your very being is healing. And that’s the goal. The uncovering of That Which Is Real right where the unreal seems to be presenting itself.

I’m going to back up one sentence from where we left off.

… your … the Father.

And I’m going to add: Where are you going to recognize Him? In your Brothers. In your Sisters. In All of Creation that’s all around you.

But you’re going to have to be willing to see it there right where someone is saying, “No, I’m not the Evidence of God. I’m the bastard I am proclaiming to you is what’s here. I am the unpleasant person you see here. And I will devote myself to convincing you of just how awful I am.” You can’t dare to believe that one because then you’ll forget Who He Is and then you won’t make the Gift of the Truth of him. You won’t remember for him. And you won’t make your own … you won’t make your own my remembering of Who You Are. And you will lose the blessing of my remembering Who You Are because you refuse to remember Who Your Brother Is, because you chose to believe the awful picture he or she was presenting.

… the Father …

You see how useless it is to go off into the ethers or go off into a mountain all by yourself and look for God? You need a Brother next to you. You need a tree next to you. You could find that on a high mountain. But the point is you can’t look away from everything you’re experiencing into the vast unknown to find God. You’ve got to look right in front of your eyes.

That’s when you get to keep your gift. And that’s when you become the embodiment of What You Truly Are.

Continuing …

That means the word “and” there is inappropriate because there isn’t God and His Creation. There is God being All There Is.

You see? Free will has been thought to be an expression of will that is independent and different from every other one’s expression of free will. That’s not true. That is a definition of self-will. And that’s why awakening occurs so slowly. Because each of you is so reluctant to give up your right to an independent expression of will, and because it is humiliating to this ego definition of yourself to think that Real Will, your Real Will is shared by all equally because it isn’t yours; it’s derived from your Source—God the Father.

By letting me in as a Brother, really as a Brother, [sigh] and not trying to be different from me, and not trying to see me as different from you, so that the simple Love of our Brotherhood might surge and grow and become paramount, more important to you than your so-called independence.

Meaning the Father’s.

Now how could we arrive at that?

Well, by joining with me and abandoning your attempts to be independent, self-willed, self-authorized, you break the sense of isolation which has been binding you and which has been utterly false, unreal, pure fantasy. And you have the experience of truly not being alone. In that experience of, for lack of better words, Family, of belonging together, you’re acknowledging our Brotherhood, and therefore the fact that we have a common parent, or, if you wish, common parents—Father/Mother/God. And now God and you and me are joined in one experience as one experience.

And so …

Not divided up.

You see, sharing is the one thing that egos don’t do. They stand apart from each other, and they barter with each other, and they manipulate each other into behaving in a way that fits whatever the current definition of good is. And, of course, the word “good” means “what’s good for me.” “What’s good for us” would involve a sharing attitude, wouldn’t it? An involved attitude.

You see? By remembering Who You Are, by remembering that you are our Father’s Son or Daughter, I am recognizing His Power in you.

So you get a lot more than what you would expect by letting me in. And your Brother gets a lot more than just your gift when your Brother lets you in. It’s a Family Reunion. The Whole Family is received. The Whole Family becomes yours. All of the Brotherhood becomes available to you.

And you see how you fit in. And you see that you belong. And you see that you’re not alone, and therefore, you’re not vulnerable. And in the relief and Peace that you experience, you abandon your desire to express what you’ve called free will, which has meant self-will.

And then, as I’ve said before, you don’t continue to have this experience of fitting in. You have the experience of the recognition that all of God’s Creation is the Wholeness of You. And the experience of All of Creation and of the Brotherhood of Man becomes the Infinite Wholeness of You. And the experience constitutes a completing of your Wholeness in your Conscious Awareness. And what? The Movement of Creation, the Movement of God becomes the uninterrupted and undistorted and integrated Conscious Experience of your Being. And we have a Singularity in which you haven’t been swallowed up, but in which you can relate to all of Creation intimately, beautifully, lovingly.

Continuing …

You see, it’s more than just you and I uniting with each other.

I will tell you this. As long as you’re insisting on being independent, the Glory of God is dimmed. Not that it can actually dim, but it becomes dim to you. It slowly becomes forgotten, which is why someone must remember It for you, and why you must remember It for someone else.

… meaning when we’re joined, when you’ve let me in, when you wish to know the Truth, instead of what you had believed the Truth to be, and you’re willing to hear of Truth from me and yield to it and trust me, miracles will occur.

In other words, we’re fulfilling our Purpose. We’re fulfilling God’s Purpose for us. Your Purpose is to let God’s Purpose be fulfilled in you. You’re here to be the Glory of God. Surprise!

Well, that’s something you probably hadn’t anticipated was that uniting with His Will for us would constitute an Experience of Joy—spontaneous, unexpected, but actual. And it’s been a long time since you’ve had the experienced Joy. And yet it’s your Birthright and you deserve to be experiencing it. And it waits for your simple willingness to not value autonomy, to not value independence, to not value having an interpretation or a definition of things different from what the Act of Creation has placed there in expression.

Continuing …

… I’m going to interrupt.

We’re talking a lot about uniting with me. Uniting with me. What does “uniting with me” mean? It means letting go of the sense that you are special in your own right. Because to whatever degree you think you are special and therefore unique, and therefore different from me, it means you’re different and unique, you’re unique and different from What The Father Is and What His Will Is for you and What He Is Expressing Of Himself as you. “Uniting with me” simply means that the call is for breaking the independence by reaching outside of your specialness and of your rights, what you have called your right, which has amounted to self-will.

In other words, when you break your isolation. When you break your imprisonment. That’s what it means. It’s not even that I’m special. Uniting with me doesn’t mean yielding to someone superior. Uniting with me doesn’t mean yielding to someone in higher authority. “Uniting with me” means just being willing to be undefended with me, present with me, not holding yourself aloof so that you miss out on the wonder of Brotherhood.

Uh oh. That means your ego gets excluded. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Naughty, naughty, naughty. I know, I should embrace your ego. It’s the Christian and loving and Course-like way to do things. I shouldn’t judge your ego. I should let it be and forgive it.” Well, I can’t do it, because [laughing] it isn’t real. It isn’t really there for me to join with. And it isn’t really any part of the You that can join with me. And so it is excluded.

… get this!

Now, each of you has a Guide. Someone of the Brotherhood is assigned to each one of you. And each one of them is Awake. And so it isn’t just me that you can unite with and have the same result. You can unite with your Guide and everything that we’ve been reading here will apply equally.

Is beyond the definitions you have created about yourself for yourself and which you have chosen to believe is the truth about you.

… beyond that …

And I’m going to add that you can share this confidence for you and your Brothers and all of us.

And when you receive it from me and extend it on and make it yours, you receive it for us all.

That means, “Would you like to know what it is?”

Ask it of me who remembers it for you and you will find it.

What does this all amount to? It amounts to not going through your day without being joined with a Brother who’s Awake, who can help provide you with a clearer perspective of Reality as you encounter your Brothers and Sisters who are not coming from a clear experience of What They Truly Are and need someone to remember for them.

And if I deny you nothing, and you make a gift of not denying anything of What Is True with your Brother, you embody and make your own the Gift I have made to you. And just like the leaven that leavens the whole lump, your embrace of the Gift I have for you and your extension of it so that it becomes your own, makes it easier for those who continue to dream to wake up.

Do you hear that?

The exclusion is absolute! You don’t say, “Oh, we’ll give ya, we’ll give you another chance. We know that if we give you enough chances, you’ll change.” No. The ego isn’t real. It’s a fantasy. It’s a[n] imagination. Treat it as though it’s real and it’s an illusion. Illusions can’t go Home. And if you think you are that illusion and if you have commitment to that illusion, you will keep yourself from seeing Home, even though you’re right in the middle of it.

Again …

Mm. Sounds to me like we’re talking about what I started out with today. What do you do when you make the Gift of Freedom to someone who’s committed to his or her free will, which is really self-will, and insists upon being unpleasant, unloving? The Invitation to Freedom means abandoning what is of value to the one who’s identifying with the ego. And when a limit is imposed, it senses defeat and is angered by it. It regards itself as rejected. And what? Becomes retaliative.

Just understand that that’s the dynamic at work, so that you’re not fooled by it, so that you understand that that which has no existence actually is upset because it’s being faced with the fact that it has no actual existence. And it’s going to try to get you to come back into the crab barrel. It’s going to try to get you to say to yourself, “Oh! I’m an ego. I remember this. I know how to deal with this. I’ll attack back. He is a bastard but I know how to deal with him.” You see? And so you abandon the journey Home with me for a while.

Continuing …

Now, this is the thing you must understand because when the retaliation comes, you need to remember who you’re with. You need to remember who you choose to be with. Do you wish, do you choose to join with the one retaliating by countering his attack and getting stuck with him for a while? Or, do you choose to remember that you’re with me, and that in our union you have available through me the means to not be touched, not be snagged by, not be hooked by, the invitation to forget Who You Are that is embodied in the retaliation? You’ve got to remember that you’re with me, and then you’ve got to choose to stay with me.

And I will say you will try to go in different directions simultaneously and you will disintegrate yourself. Your integrity will crumble as far as your experience of it is concerned.

Now listen to this:

… and I’m going to remind you, that which is nothing more than your right Mind.

The direction.

What’s the direction that God’s Voice speaks for in all of us? It speaks for the Excellence Of You. It speaks for the Truth About You, just as I do. It speaks for your Awakening, because it has been held in trust while you have dallied with the ego.

And what has it been held in trust for? To be there to remind you, to remember for you What You Are. It is What You Are standing ready to address the you you think you are and help you remember that you’re more than what you think you are, so that you can come back into your right Mind, so that Sanity can return. So that you are not split into the Holy Spirit that you don’t think is part of you and an ego that you think is what you are.

The Holy Spirit speaks of one direction and that is the return of your Sanity to your Conscious Awareness. Reintegration.

Continuing …

Hm. Where’d that come from? Deception?

… well, when you say, “Hm. This table is matter. It has nothing to do with God. It was made out of the elements of the earth which came from the big bang,” oh, if you don’t think you’re deceiving yourself, you’ve got another thing coming. That’s pure deception. You said, “I choose to look at this without God.” Or, “I wish, I choose to look at that tree without God. And without God it appears to me to be such-and-such. And I believe it. And I agree with that. That is what it is.” That’s pure self-deception. Anything you do, anything you think which leaves God out of the picture means you are having a misperception. And you’re deceiving yourself when you choose to believe that that’s all there is to what you’re looking at.

… well, that’s where the first lesson of the Course comes into play. “Nothing that I see means anything.” You’ve got to be willing to look at everything and say, “What I think that is doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean what I think it does. The meaning I’ve given to it is meaningless.”

So you leave all deception behind by saying, “Father, or, Holy Spirit, what is this? What is this table truly? What is going on there where I see a tree?” That’s the way you:

Well, that simply means you want to transcend illusions. You want to get out of the realm of deceptions. You don’t want to be ignorant. You don’t want to be insane.

Continuing …

In other words, as impossible as you think it might be to connect with me, as much as you might wish that this is a special talent or a special gift given to Paul, you will not reach for me and you will not have the experience. It’s not special.

It will happen.

And don’t tell me that if I was Whole, if I was truly Awake and knew of my Wholeness, I wouldn’t need you.

Why would I need you? What would that mean? It means that it is clear to me that you are me. I am you. We are One. And for you to be holding yourself incommunicado, at a distance, doesn’t represent Reality, doesn’t represent the Truth. Dare to let yourself feel the need of your Father and your Brothers and Sisters and of All Creation As God Is Being It. Let yourself feel the need.

And quit going through your day as though you are truly self-sufficient, unto yourself, and as though you understand what everything is, and you are correct, and that therefore the misery and the stress and the strife that you feel is normal. And there’s not really an alternative to it. Don’t get stuck there for the sake of independent self-righteousness, or self-righteous independence, which constitutes a prison, not Freedom.

I am here to make the Gift of Freedom. You are here to make the Gift of Freedom. You are here to embody the Truth, rather than misperceptions, illusions and deceptions. And you are the only ones who can cut through the illusions, misperceptions and deceptions by doing something new, by doing something dependent. [said softly and gently] Come on. If you’re suffering from independence, the healing will come through dependence. I know you’re capable of comprehending that.

I’m going to say something in closing. Give up on asking, “Why did he talk about that instead of this? Why didn’t he talk about what I needed him to talk about? Why didn’t he talk about with what I thought would be the next logical step?” That’s not called yielding. That’s not called trust. We’re coming Home purposely and consciously with intelligent intent and in a manner that will work.

I love you. I remember Who You Are. I know Who You Are because I have not forgotten. And I make the Gift of my remembrance, not just in the words that come out of Paul’s mouth, but in the within-ness of you and in your hearts. And I’m doing that all the time. I am with you all the time. I am with all of you all the time. No one gets slighted. You might wonder how on earth I could be with everyone at the same time. And I’ll tell you, it’s not only easy; it’s, for lack of better words, automatic when you stop holding yourself apart from everything in your commitment to independence.

I look forward to being with you next week.