Teachings of Christ Mind

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

I’m going to start out with some good news. With all this talk about the ego and how it’s not your friend, and so on, together with the sloppy way or careless way in which reference to the ego is made, it can seem that you have become an ego. “I am an ego. I have actually become something different from What God Created. And I’m living out a life that expresses ego-hood.” And this definition of yourself as an ego becomes part of the box from which you experience being.

And because, through careless thinking, you think of yourself as an ego, and now you know that there’s more to life than ego-hood, you think that you have to overcome this thing called “an ego.” And it makes it sound as though you have to abandon what you are, you have to somehow stop being what you have become. It’s possible for you to begin to think that your waking up is going to be the extinction of you, because the Real You is so radically different. And that’s not something an ego wants to do—become extinct. And so there is a part of you that resists waking up, even though you are desiring to wake up.

And of course, [there is] this idea that Individuality (which is another word for Indivisibility) is going to disappear and you will drift into a blissful, undefinable, pink cloud of bliss where there will be no differentiation of any kind, just an experience of love and peace which your common sense tells you is just a more pleasant form of and perhaps a more beautiful form of a static experience—we could say a pleasant form of being dead.

Now, I’ve said before many, many times, the only thing that is confronting you, the only thing available to you to experience is the Kingdom of Heaven, which you’re seeing clearly, or through a glass darkly. That idea allows you to begin to be able to look at everything with a curiosity you didn’t have before, because you’re seeing the Ultimate—you’re just not seeing it in its Fullness. And it’s easy for you to imagine that your capacity to see it more fully as What It Is, is available to you, and the only reason you haven’t been experiencing it was because what you thought it was, was the only thing you thought it was, and there was no alternative to it.

Now, the equivalent of this, that will also be helpful to you, is for you to understand that you right now are the Christ, the Christ Mind, the Christ Consciousness, seeing everything clearly, or through a glass darkly. You’re not an ego seeing things clearly or through a glass darkly. In other words, you are the Ultimate right now, experiencing the Ultimateness of you fully, or in a very limited fashion.

So you’re not here to struggle to become the Christ. You’re already that. You are already the Presence of Mind. You know, something happens, an emergency occurs, and somebody jumps in and does all the right things, while other people are standing around, dazed a little bit, immobilized, and people say, “Well, he had the presence of mind to respond appropriately.” That’s what the “Presence of Mind” is when I use that word.

You are the Presence of Mind. Not the Presence of a thing called a Mind, but the Presence of active Conscious Awareness, from which nothing escapes, in which everything is experienced, and experienced with correct perspective so that you are able to be appropriate at every moment.

Now, what I want to convey most clearly to you is that right at this moment, that is What You Are. You are the Presence of Mind in which every experience is available to you to see with clear perspective, True Perspective, and to be able to be appropriate at any given moment, at every moment. Either that is what is going on right now, or something less than that is going on right now. But the fact that something less than that is going on doesn’t mean that you have become less. It’s like you sitting in these chairs suddenly realizing that you don’t just have to sit there. You have two legs. You can stand up, and you can run, and you can walk, and you can dance. It’s as though a capacity is present that it hasn’t occurred to you to utilize yet.

Do you see, though, that what I’m saying is that the Ultimate of You is present, being embodied ultimately, or less than ultimately? You’ve already arrived, because you never left What You Are. You never managed to become so out of sync with Reality that you became something brand-new that God never created.

Now if the Kingdom of Heaven is what you’re experiencing right here, right now, and if you are the Presence of Mind that is God, then all that’s left for you to do in order to wake up is to realize that it’s utterly easy, because you are already what you hope to become. And every thing is already the Kingdom of Heaven. And you’re in it, and it’s in you, because the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. So, no struggle. None of this is about struggle. None of this is about becoming.

As you go through this next week, I want you to carry this with you, and I want you, many times a day, as often as you can remember, to entertain the idea consciously, “I’m in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven. I’m already in the Ultimate Place. Wow! I want to see it. That’s all. I want to see it. I want to experience it. And also, I am the Christ. I never did become something else that I’ve got to work out of being. I’m already the Christ experiencing and exercising my capacities in a limited fashion.” What does this mean? It means that you are always engaged in Divine Being. You’re always engaged right now, right here, in this quote “this lifetime” that you think is separated off from Eternity. You’re already in this lifetime here and now …

(PAUL: Just a moment.)

… being the Divine One That You Are, [the] Divine One That God Is Being right there where you are.

This is why the Course says that the journey Home is a journey without distance. It’s also a journey without improvement. It’s a journey of not bettering yourself. It’s just a journey, in so many words, of being without providing as many constraints upon yourself.

Here is an example. Many of you would love to teleport or levitate. It would make many things much easier, and certainly would affect your economy and the world, if oil was not needed. [small laugh] But what if simply walking around the room was an actually limited form of teleportation and levitation? Do you see what I’m saying? Right now everything you’re doing is an embodiment of Ultimate Things which you think are human and material and physical and unspiritual and un-Ultimate. Now, if you were to consider that a simple thing like walking was something much more than walking, you would immediately find your movement, your normal everyday movement to be much more fascinating; something to pay much more attention to. You know, if you’re levitating a millimeter a second, if you’re teleporting a millimeter a second, there’s not a great sense of movement, but you’re still engaged in teleporting. Do you see what I’m saying?

You are already living the Life Divine and misinterpreting it—not seeing it fully. This is why you can dare to bring so much more curiosity to what you call your normal daily experience than you usually do. In fact, the majority of you find your everyday experience to be a significant distraction to your spiritual path. You cannot have a single experience in your day that isn’t a Manifestation of Divine Ultimate Activity.

It’s like a bunch of kids out in the universe, out in the play yard, and the majority of them are making sweeping movements from universe to universe, or galaxy to galaxy, and little Henry is teleporting a millimeter a second. And the other guys say, “Come on. Come on. Why are you moving so slow? You know, come on! Be more expansive in teleporting.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, no. You know, if I move too far too fast, I miss everything in between. And I want to smell the roses. I want to savor everything.” But if he savors everything slowly, he will get locked into a habit of savoring everything slowly. The other boys will eventually leave him alone. And he will be able to think, “Well, this is all there is. This is the way it is. I like it this way. I’m going to continue doing it this way. I’m not going to embody my Expansiveness, my All-Inclusiveness, my Universality.” You see?

And perhaps some of the other boys exercising their full capacities come upon him and he talks so convincingly about the value of not overlooking things and taking the time to move slowly, that some of the other boys join him. They want to explore this possibility. Before long there’s a group of boys only moving a millimeter every second, you see, and thinking this is great. And pretty soon the whole group forgets about being expansive. And even if those who are expansive drop in from time to time, they say, “No. No. I’m not interested.” You see, when the Voice for Truth registers with you, you say, “Why that’s too outlandish. No. No.”

But my point is, there isn’t anything about your daily existence that isn’t absolutely Divine and that in which you are not utilizing your Ultimate Capacities as the Christ in a limited fashion. But you’re being the Christ right now—just hesitantly, [laughing] slowly. But the point is that you aren’t moving around because you are a physical body in a physical universe, that has a circuitry in it with electrical synapses and communication that cause muscles to contract, and so on, and that’s the reason you’re moving around. You’re moving around because the intent to move, the intent to be in this way or that way is there, and that Intent is the Law of the Visibility and Tangibility of You. And Ultimate Things are what are appearing as you moving right now.

“Sure wish I could learn how to teleport.” Well, damn it, you are teleporting every day. The moment any of you stands up from your chair, you are levitating and teleporting simultaneously. You already know how to do it. You just do it in tiny steps, and slow. And why? Because you really do believe that you’re just a hunk of matter, that you’re caught in this lifetime in a body which you will shed one day, and then have your freedom to express your Divine Capacities. Or you will finally learn enough or refine your soul enough to be able to enjoy your Divine Capacities.

You can’t move your little finger without it being the Movement of Creation. Everything you’re doing is being done by Ultimate Means. And I want you to remember that this week. And I want you not to forget it.

We’re talking about miracles. Miracles are sudden shifts of perception. We’re shifting perceptions right now, whether you forget about it in a half an hour, or not. We are shifting perceptions. It hadn’t occurred to you before that when you move, here and now, in this lifetime, in this so-called material world, that the Movement is a Divine Capacity to be wherever the Intent is to be, and you arrive at that point by means of Divine Capacities, such as teleportation, such as levitation.

Think about it. I mean, contemplate it this week. You are already the Ultimate doing everything by Ultimate Means, but interpreting it entirely differently. And your interpretation that you are a body in a material universe, blinds you completely to the impulse to be in radically new ways, such as teleporting home instead of driving home. Or getting in your car, and teleporting yourself and your car into your garage, and then not using your car ever again, and not having to pay $3.00 a gallon for gas. You see?

Here and now is where to be radical, because here and now is where the Ultimate is occurring in slow motion. You see? Okay. In other words, your Grandeur is what is in operation right here and right now. You’re just not letting it show. You’re just reluctant to let it be embodied. Your reluctance is based upon false premises.

But you know what? It’s not an ego choosing to do less. It’s a Christ choosing to teleport in slow motion, and then doing it for so long that It temporarily forgets what Its Full Capacity is. But it doesn’t change the fact that you are the Full Expression of God here and now, with nothing of your Capacity To Be withheld from you by the Father in His Expression of You, His Presencing of Himself right where you are.

So when we’re talking about Grandeur, we’re talking about your Divine Capacities that you are utilizing to do anything that happens, but which you don’t recognize as Grandeur because you think that every single thing you do is a body using energy that can deplete the body and cause you to lose the capacity to continue indefinitely in that activity, requiring you to have rest, and to eat and get more nourishment because you get your nourishment from something out there that you put in here, and blah, blah, blah. You’ve got it all figured out wrong.

Okay. Let’s go to the book.

It would only be arrogant if you were claiming something that God wasn’t claiming for you.

The Father says, “I withhold nothing of WHAT I AM from you. ALL THAT I AM, You Are.” So it’s not arrogant for you to dare to go through your day teleporting or levitating a little bit more than a millimeter every half a minute.

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind.

Now the only thing that the Holy Spirit can transform to the Will of God is your Christhood that you are only being willing to be conscious of in a very limited fashion. And so the Holy Spirit can take your sluggish teleportation and transform it into speedy Universal Movement, because it’s something that’s already the Truth About You.

And you could say, “Wow! The Holy Spirit has given me a capacity that I didn’t have before. Wow! I must have been doing something right. I can’t think of what it was in my spiritual path that triggered this sudden shift, but, Wow! I’ve been given something I didn’t have before.” No. Your Divine Capacity that you had been using in a limited fashion was uncovered in more of its Fullness to you by the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit turned your so-called limitation to your advantage.

What He can transform to the Will of God is something that is already True About You that you’re already utilizing, even though it’s in a very limited fashion.

So, what would grandiosity be? Well, grandiosity would be you not wanting to move so slowly, wanting to move faster, recognizing that the limitation was not legitimate, and so, you as a puny body that you think you are, begin to exercise and start going to track meets, and you get a trainer, and you work to break the 3-minute mile or the 4-minute mile.

Grandiosity is you, as what you think you are, working from within the box, working within your current definition of yourself, and exceeding the physical limits that you seemed to be bound by. And yet, all you’ve done is rearrange something inside the box without stepping out of the box.

You know, you might start opening yourself up to the fact that you are already levitating and teleporting, by not trying to go from here to Paris, or even here to the next room, but by going up a flight of stairs expending less energy because you’re willing to go up the stairs without thinking that your body is carrying you up the stairs by virtue of physical energy. Just go up and down stairs, or engage in a physical activity that you engage in every day, like vacuuming or mowing the lawn, and have the inquisitiveness to see it happen with less physical effort, and therefore, less depletion. There are many creative ways to approach this, but you won’t even do it if you think you’re just a body, and Divine Capacities are for somewhere in the afterlife.

In other words, the attempt to break the 4-minute mile, the attempt to come up with faster and faster jets, the ability through technology to develop a quote “transporter” unquote, as in Star Trek, that will get you from one place to another instantaneously, is a form of grandiosity, because it’s an attempt to do something that’s actually Divine without engaging Divinity in any way; managing to accomplish something Divine as a body that has nothing to do with God, and which someday, as they so sweetly say, when someday you lay it aside. Isn’t that repulsive? [some audience amusement] “Someday when you lay it aside.”

Now this isn’t some nice, theoretical idea—that:

You see, for it to be theoretical, it would be like, “Well, yeah, but I know I’m in the mortal condition right now. But I also know that I’m held in the Mind of God as What I Truly Am.” You know, the Mind of God “somewhere else,” unrelated to this human condition that you’re experiencing for the time being until “you gently lay your body aside.”

That means you’re not missing from it. Right now you’re not missing from it. You, right here, right now, are not missing from it. You are the Presence of God experiencing Life by means of Divine Capacities, but giving it definitions that exclude their Divinity, and thus rendering yourself unconscious of the full scope of your Capacities.

“Well, I’m just an ego, you know.” No, you’re not. “Well, I’ve got a lot to learn.” No, you don’t.

The simplest … remember this, the simplest acts that you engage in employ Divine Capacities and nothing else.

… by dallying with the ego. By playing with this fantastic idea that you exist independent of God …

Which is another way of saying, it awaits your recognition of It—not that you’re going to journey back to It.

… the Voice for Truth. The Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

You know what? If you’re going through every aspect of your day employing Divine Capacities, then you are succeeding, even if it’s in limited fashion, to be the Movement that expresses the Christ That You Are that constitutes Creation. And even though this happens unknown to you, all that you are expressing is held in trust for you to experience, once you decide to open up your eyes and get a little bit bigger view.

If you walk up the stairs as a body, getting tired because you’re walking up the stairs, you are at the same time the Ultimate, the Christ. The movement is levitation/teleportation combined. And those Divine Capacities being used, if I may put it that way, constitute an affirmation or confirmation of God—an embodiment by virtue of it being an Act of Divine Life. And that affirmation or confirmation never fades. It is an eternal confirmation.

And the awareness of it will become yours when you stop this silly habit of thinking that right now you’re not the Ultimate; you really are just a body trudging up the stairs every day, and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and down the stairs, and stressing your heart and moving yourself closer to the grave, because your body is physical and doesn’t have Divine Capacities of regeneration. And therefore, you know, your daily activities are part of what they jokingly call “the terminal disease called ‘life.’”

… your Eternal Place in Him …

Well, why would it say that? Since when did [laughing] … since when did any of you think you were engaged in “replacing the Kingdom”? “Well,” you say, “That would be a very arrogant idea.” [small laugh] But when you’re insisting on calling the Kingdom something else called a physical universe that started from a big bang, that will slowly reach a point of ultimate expansion and then fall back in on itself and everything will cease to exist, and start all over again—when you do that, you’ve replaced the Kingdom with a different definition of It. And then you’ve replaced It further by believing your definition and making commitment to your definition. And in the process of all of this, you confirm further your ignorance of What It Is and What You Are.

… and I’m going to add: Even though the human condition is evidence of the fact that you try …

Continuing.

But you’ve tried. You didn’t know you were trying, because, you know, your parents taught you, your physicists, your scientists teach you, your doctors teach you that you are a body. And here’s how the body works, and here’s what physics says about it. And for every expenditure of energy, there’s a cost, and that cost must be replaced by food, or medicine, or oxygen, or rest. You see? So you have been replacing yourself.

But it says:

… in other words, the Meaningfulness of your Presence …

You all do go around with a picture of your value. And you try to live your life so as to demonstrate more and more value—more and more of your value. You see? But once again that’s a value created inside the box that doesn’t exist. And it requires the mutual agreement of others to confirm, in order for you to be able to believe it. Because, after all, if they don’t recognize your worth, you haven’t demonstrated it yet. And therefore, because you haven’t demonstrated it, it isn’t valid. It isn’t there yet.

Though, that’s outside the box, that has nothing to do with the box.

The value of you that’s in your mind is a mind you have fantasized, is a value you have fantasized. And so, yes, you have to arrive at a point where you abandon your personal evaluation of yourself. Some of you suffer from a valuation of yourself that is too great, because it’s not Real. And others of you suffer from a valuation of yourself that is too little. And either valuation—one that’s inflated but not Real, and one that is deflated that is not Real—is nonsense, is meaningless, is a big fat zero. So either evaluation that you apply to your[self], any evaluation you apply to yourself must be let go of.

You abandon the one that is in yours alone, and you just accept the fact that your Value, your Meaningfulness, is Infinitely Divine and Divinely Infinite, and it’s held in place by God’s Determination of What You Are. And the measurement He uses for His Determination of you is What He Is. And He knows that you are nothing less than What He Is, because He is the One expressing You, being You.

Continuing.

… and I’m going to add: As God sees you and determines you to be …

You see that? Arrogance is you inside a little box trying to be more of what you think you are, but aren’t. That’s arrogance—plain, pure and simple—not complicated, not otherworldly.

And you say, “Well, but I didn’t know that my evaluation … that I thought my evaluation of myself was truer than God’s, because my parents told me what I was. And everyone else tells me what I am. And, indeed, to me it looks like that’s what I am. And I don’t remember ever in this lifetime determining to see myself in a different way from the way God was seeing me.” Well, I’m sorry. You may not remember when you did it, but you did it. There was a point at which you said, “But, Father, I’d rather see it my way. I would like to explore the interesting experience of determining what things are and what I am.” And so now you’re undoing it. Now you’re undoing it because you are tired of the experience, and you are inviting in the Voice for Truth. You are inviting in my Voice to tell it to you the Way It Is, so that you can stop dallying with the ego.

Now, continuing, it says:

What that means is that the little you that doesn’t really exist, in the little box that doesn’t really exist, can’t actually make an evaluation of anything, much less evaluate something that doesn’t exist. So what you call your evaluation of yourself is tinkling brass. It’s nonsense. It, therefore, is nothing in actuality. And that’s why you’ve got to not continue to value the definition you’ve made-up.

And because it’s nothing, it means that God’s Will is still in place, as a Singularity, as the only thing going on. And you still are right at this moment the Christ engaging in Life by means of Divine Capacities and simply misinterpreting them. So if Truth is indivisible, a Singularity, your evaluation of yourself, the only evaluation that could constitute an actual evaluation, must be God’s. There isn’t any other evaluation that could be True.

You’re neither behind the Point of Perfection, nor advancing toward it; you’re at that Point and must evaluate yourself therefrom, must understand yourself therefrom. And that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the fact that right now you are the Christ. This is the evaluation. And every act you engage in is an act employing Divine Capacities. You’ve just been interpreting them in an extremely limited way.

Continuing.

… oh, you get that? You go where the answer is. Where do you go? To that which is nothing more than your right Mind—the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that utterly intelligent?

… meaning that its Source is not an imagined you inside an imaginary box that doesn’t exist.

The Voice for Truth is the Voice for God. The Voice for Truth does not lie because it is the Voice for God, and God tells the Truth. God tells it As It Is. That’s what that means. Not the Truth [sung in a loud, ascending, musical, trumpet-like voice, as though Truth’s arrival is being announced by the sounding of trumpets] da ta da ta da dum. But He tells it As It Is—simple as apple pie, normal as apple pie—but radically different from the way you’ve been thinking about it.

You don’t have to go far to find something as interesting as good science fiction. You don’t have to go very far for experiences that are radically new and transformational. Everything you’re experiencing is an experience in your Mind. I’m not going to say, “a Mind,” because “Mind” is not a noun; it’s a verb. It’s a Movement of Consciousness. Everything is in your Mind. Everything is your Mind in Movement. And your Mind in Movement is the only Mind there is, in Movement, which is God.

So you don’t have to go any further than your own Mind to find God or yourself. And you don’t have to go any further than your own Mind, which means turning toward the Altar, going to the Place of Excellence in you, and inquiring of the Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your right Mind, as to what the Truth is. Understanding that the Truth you’re going to be told, will have everything to do with everything you’re already experiencing—like walking up stairs, like standing up out of your chair—telling you What It Is Truly, and, as I’m telling you today, conveying to you that that which is aware of it and that which is engaged in it, is and always has been the full-fledged Christ, the Sons and Daughters of God, if you will, being What They Divinely Are, using Divine Capacities that are what constitute them fully, or in very hesitant ways. But you’ve been the Christ being the Christ, utilizing Christly Capacities to do everything that you thought was un-Christlike and sinful and never hitting the mark. Even when you have not hit the mark, you’ve done it with your Divine Capacities.

Sure, you can toss a tin can into the trashcan and miss the trashcan, or you can toss it in the trashcan and get it into the trashcan. Either way, it doesn’t mean that two different characters did it—that when it missed the trashcan, it was an ego—and that when it went in the trashcan, it was the Christ. And it didn’t go into the trashcan because you have no meaning and you are lost temporarily—you have strayed from God and you’re experiencing the penalties from having strayed from God. No. It just means that the Christ has thrown the can, it missed the trashcan, and the Christ says, with all the Christ’s Divine Capacities, “Well, you missed the trashcan because you’re an ego.” You see? [small laugh]

The Christ has the capacity to say anything the Christ wants, and believe what is said. Do you see what I am saying so clearly to you? That whether you are living What You Are clearly, or through a glass darkly, you are the Christ doing it all.

So you have already arrived. And all that’s left is for you to be more curious about what these Divine Capacities are that you’re employing every day, thinking that they’re just physical capacities, which will ultimately create physical incapacities for you, because you aren’t Divine. You see?

Oh, I see over here on the next page, the word “ephemeral.” Well, that’s a really neat spiritual word, isn’t it? Ephemeral is so nonmaterial, so unrelated to, you know, carrying out the trash, or walking up and down the stairs. And we’ve been reading here about Grandeur. We’ve been talking about that God is incomplete without you, and you cannot be missing from His Grandeur. Could have gone way off on a big head trip about all of this grandiose, spiritual subject matter. But it’s all about you. And it’s all about you right here, right now, needing to dare to look at everything you’re experiencing with eyes that are different from your conditioned expectations, with a curiosity.

And I’ve told you today why you can expect that curiosity to be responded to in ways that allow you to see yourself and be yourself in new ways, which doesn’t mean be yourself by ascending into Heaven, but you ascending up the stairs as you carry the groceries in with no effort. You don’t have to do it as a body anymore. You never did. And you never have. You never have. You get it? You’ve always levitated and teleported everywhere you’ve moved. You didn’t teleport a body. Form identified the Movement of Mind.

Waking up is really interesting, isn’t it?

Okay.

I look forward to being with you all next week. And I love you.

Okay.