Teachings of Christ Mind

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

You know, if there’s one thing that should be becoming ever clearer as we proceed through the Course, it’s how inextricably intertwined each of you are with each other. You can’t be in the dream alone, and you can’t wake up and be alone.

What you see about a Brother is what you believe about yourself. It’s really impossible for you to have a sense of another that is better than your sense of yourself, because you see what you’re looking with. In other words, I’m going to put it this way, whether you’re experiencing a dream, a fantasy, or whether you’re experiencing Reality, you are experiencing a Singularity. You can’t get outside of the Singularity of God. You can’t get outside the Singularity of Reality. As a result, if you imagine that you are outside of the Singularity, the Singularity governs your experience absolutely, and so your illusions are bound to the same laws that Reality is.

Again, if you were awake at this very moment, you would be experiencing everyone and everything as it is, As It Truly Is. Every Aspect of Creation would be… this is not a good choice of words, but would be colored by the purity of your vision. Your experience of it would be absolutely consistent with the purity of your vision. Likewise, if you are engaging in fantasies, and you are honoring and believing your fantasies, then all of the Kingdom of Heaven and everyone in it that you see will be absolutely consistent with the lens you’re looking through—I will say the impurity of your vision.

This is just another way of saying, you are neither behind the Point of Perfection nor advancing toward it; you are at that Point and must understand yourself therefrom. If you’re already the Christ, if you are already exactly What God Is Being right there where you are, but you’re choosing to interpret it—the Conscious Experience of Being—as something other than that, you will, by virtue of the Law of Being, find everything you’re looking at absolutely colored by, affected by, consistent with whatever the distortions are that you are embodying and identifying as you, as yourself and your mind.

You’re already embodying your Christhood right now poorly. Why do I keep harping on this? Because it’s got to register with you sooner or later that right now you are the Ultimate behaving as though you’re not Ultimate. And your Ultimatehood is not off in the future after you die. And you must get this point so that you will begin to behave differently right here, right now. Because until you behave differently, you will not see differently. Whether you die a hundred thousand more times, or seem to, you will not get into Nirvana. You will not get into the Kingdom of Heaven, until you choose to behave differently, use your mind differently, be differently. So right here and right now is the place to have your curiosity that I keep talking about. And your experiences with your Brother or your Sister, your fellowman, is the place to begin to be differently.

We’ve been talking about the god of sickness. And let’s remember, let’s remain clear of what “the god of sickness” is. The god of sickness is a capacity you think you have to decide which God/god is Real/real—God Himself, or the likenesses you have made-up in place of God which you think you have a capacity to ordain with Ultimatehood—[laughing] a god that equals God Himself.

What are the gods you’ve made-up? The definitions of each other and of yourself and of everything—the definitions you have made-up about everything that are different from What They Really Are. The images, the likenesses that you have made-up in your mind are not really the god you’re serving. The god you’re serving is this imagined capacity that you think you have to make-up images and then decide you are going to call them something different from What They Are, something different from God. Remember this. The god of sickness is this so-called “capacity” you think you have to make-up images and likenesses and serve them, instead of God. It’s a capacity that you don’t have, but you imagine you have it. And you have imagined multi-layered definitions that support and boost your faith in this so-called “capacity.”

It’s important to remember this. If you see another or you see yourself sick, it isn’t the disease that is the “god” that’s trying to control. That’s not the “god” of disease. And the disease is not a god. It [the “god”] is your supposed “capacity” to see something there that God is not being.

So let’s lighten up a little bit. Let’s just say you look at your neighbor, or your friend, or your mate, and you see a human being. And your experience with that human being is ordinary, run-of-the-mill, an everyday experience. It certainly is not a holy experience. There is not a tone or a ring of Divinity, of Ultimacy, to it. Well, there you are experiencing your definition of that one in place of What That One Really Is, which is the Presence of God. Every interaction, every sighting [laughing] of another person is supposed to be awesome. Why? Because you are the Christ, with the Real Capacity to see the Christ or God in your Brother. And so is your Brother. God experiencing God is an awesome experience.

I told my disciples, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” And I’ve said before to you, “If you have seen your Brother, you have seen the Father.” If you’re not seeing the Father, something is wrong. And all that’s wrong is that you are bowing down to this “capacity” you think you have to see something other than God right there where God is the Only Thing going on. And as a result, you don’t have a wholesome, satisfying, joyful experience. It’s an experience of potential threat. It’s an experience of vulnerability. It’s hell.

So, if you are inextricably intertwined with your Brother and Sister, then it’s with your Brother and Sister and every single thing in your experience that you are called upon to look at with new eyes. Because the willingness to look at it with new eyes, instead of your previously developed definitions, is what allows the light bulb to go on, the “Aha!” to occur, the insight (the revelation) to happen. And until it happens, no matter how many times you quote “die” unquote, nothing will change. So, all of you stand at the threshold of insight and new vision. And you should be utilizing your experiences with each other and with your world for the express purpose of having this new vision.

Okay. Let’s go to the book.

The section heading is:

Withdrawn your allegiance. Withdrawn your commitment. Gotten your bill of divorcement.

When you create a new definition for something, it is an act of denial of God. You’re saying, “I prefer in place of What God Is Being there, and in place of my Conscious Experience of What God Is Being there, to see something else and give my attention and my commitment to it.” Every single definition or concept you have made-up or come to, I’m going to say, ignorantly, is a denial of God, because it is something you are putting in place of God, in place of What The Real Thing Is that you’ve created the new definition about. And your definition stands between you and God.

Now this is important.

And you should read that not as an admonishment, but as something funny.

You should smile and feel the smile towards yourself when you realize that you cannot really do this.

Just because you think you can, and just because you think you have, doesn’t mean you can or have. In thinking that you can and thinking that you have, you are imagining that nothing was something—that when you did nothing, you did something, you accomplished something. And see, that’s where the hooker is. When you think you have accomplished the creation of something that God didn’t make, that gives you an egotistical hit, a high. And like a drug, you become addicted to it. But you have become addicted to an empty act; an act that was not an act at all. And that’s why the best description of your present sense of things is “insanity,” because you think you’ve done something that you haven’t done. And you are committed to continuing in that perspective.

Continuing.

Why? Why is that automatic? Because nobody ever sat down and thought, “Well, I’m going to blame everybody else.” It’s automatic because the moment you have looked at God and said what you were looking at was something else—not God—you acted apparently independently of God and lost the experience of your Identity. And in that experience of loss of Identity, you automatically feel vulnerable. If you don’t know Who You Are, you are at a complete loss for understanding anything truly. And in that state of vulnerability, you cannot help but look at all the definitions you made and see them as untrustworthy, because after all, look what created them—[small laugh] something that has no Identity; something that doesn’t know What He Or She Is. And so you immediately find yourself at odds with everything, and experience the necessity of defense against it.

Continuing.

Now, I’m going to split a hair here. It says:

This does not mean that the message that you receive, after having given it, is what you want. It means that you want to be in a position of giving a message. You want to be in a position of authority. You want to be in a position of being able to make a definition, not realizing that in wanting to be in that position, you will end up receiving back what you’re giving, because you always get to keep what you give away.

Your definitions, whatever they are, are wrong, because you’ve made a very concerted effort to have that definition be different from What God Is Being, else it wouldn’t be your definition. You wouldn’t be able to take credit for it. You wouldn’t be able to create an imagined experience of authority that was successful in its enactment. So you want to be able to do that. You want to be able to have your definition and give it.

So:

And I’m going to add: to give.

It’s not the message you want to receive. You complain highly when you receive the message back. But it’s the message you want to give. Because if you don’t exercise some form of proactive authority, there’s nothing for you to take credit for and thus substantiate for yourself some sort of actual identity. And you see, everything you’re going to do, once having gotten your divorce from the Father, will be for the purpose of asserting and developing an identity, because you’re at a total loss when it comes to experiencing what your Identity is. That’s the first order of the day, for one who’s gotten a divorce from the Father—to establish his or her identity.

Continuing.

Well, what message did you give them? Well, if you have a definition of them and you’re behaving toward them according to the definition you have, you’re sending a message to them that they’re not the Presence of God—they are what you have determined them to be. Such an insulting thing to do. They are less than the Presence of God. Not only that, they aren’t even who they think they are; they are who you think they are. It’s the height of arrogance.

And yet, at the bottom line, it’s one of those non-acts—an empty act. Nothing is happening. But you think it is, and your Brother thinks it is. And the two of you who don’t exist, the egos that aren’t really there, get into a fight, a disagreement, a contest, a fight over who has the most authority. And all the time this is going on, nothing is going on. But you think it is. And it’s not your Birthright to be having this dream.

Again.

Now, maybe they do think they’re an ego, just like you think you’re an ego, but your belief and their belief don’t change the fact. They just cause you to be in a fog. And so the Light in them is still there, even though it’s dimmed to them and dimmed to you, so that it seems only to be a spark. But the spark is the Light Itself.

If you want to start waking up, you’ve got to be more interested in seeing the spark in them, and knowing that the spark is in you, and being willing to look from the spark in you, which doesn’t rely on any of the definitions you’ve made-up. And this is the way you begin to undo the vast, complex experience of nothingness that you’ve been caught in.

Continuing.

Now that can be taken two ways.

… in other words, not having it in themselves…

Or you could read it:

… meaning without looking with the Light in you from the spark in you.

And both are true.

Remember, you define your Brothers and Sisters, you define each other by the definitions you have adopted for yourself. And if you know and have an experience of the spark in you, you know immediately that the spark is in your Brother, and that therefore your lesser definitions of him are not true, and therefore shouldn’t be validated. And you won’t validate them because you will have a natural curiosity to unearth the spark further, unearth the Light further in them through your own curiosity to see the more of What God Is Being right there where they are.

Now, listen to this.

Well, you don’t really usually think of yourself engaging in the denial of God, but remember as long as you are having an experience of a Brother, or a Sister, or anything that you can see, and there’s nothing awesome about it, you’re looking at your own definitions with commitment. And therefore, you are putting in front of God your definition, like a mask, and giving preference to it. And that covers God up. It’s a denial of God. That’s all that a denial is.

Your denials of God aren’t you standing raising your fist to the Almighty and cursing Him. Oh no. It’s much more subtle and much more calm than that. All you do is you look at the flower and you say, “Oh, that’s a material flower. It came from a seed. It’s a product of material evolution, physical evolution.” And right there you’ve denied God, because you’ve given preference to maybe the best definition you have so far, but you’re still giving preference to a definition, instead of being willing, as I’ve said, to have moments of intimacy with any one thing, including the flower, with a curiosity to see the more that is there than what you’re seeing, knowing that the more that is there is a clearer and fuller experience of the Divine Expression of God right there.

Well, there’s another reason you have an allegiance to the denial of God. There’s another reason you have an allegiance to the definitions you’ve made-up. And that is that all of the definitions you’ve made-up have been made-up for the sole purpose of establishing a recognizable identity where you are, since you lost the conscious experience of it in your decision to see things your way. So there’s commitment and allegiance to the definitions you give because you believe that they are what make you real.

Continuing.

Just as the warrior finds Love to be offensive and threatening, the ego finds health to be threatening. Because with health that hasn’t been earned or deserved, there’s no need for the ego. What is the ego? A defense system. The experience of health, uninterruptible health, just as with the experience of uninterruptible joy, gives the ego nothing to do. It’s whatever challenges health, well-being, that puts the warrior into play, and the ego is a defense mechanism. It is a warrior. It doesn’t want to be without a job. At the bottom line, if it were without a job, you would know Who You Were and you wouldn’t be continually committed to the definitions you made-up.

Continuing.

Now let’s take this into a larger picture. Unless you are divorced from the Father, you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in the absence of your connection with the Father, could you possibly want them. You see? When you’re not divorced from the Father, you know Who You Are, and so you don’t have to create an identity for yourself. And you don’t have to create likenesses, definitions, to secure your identity, to prove that you exist, to prove that you are a force to be dealt with. You see?

… and I’m going to say, out of your right Mind…

… when you’re out of your right Mind…

Important point. All of this activity that you’re engaged in of creating definitions, maintaining them, committing to them, and defending them, affects Reality not at all; does not affect God at all. It doesn’t change anything of What Is Real, but it does cause you to forget Who You Are. And in that sense it is self-destructive. Not that you could actually be destroyed, but when you can’t remember Who You Are, something essential has disappeared, something essential has apparently been destroyed—the Conscious Experience of What You Truly Are.

Continuing.

Well, aren’t you willing to not know yourself in order to get the hit that you get from making up definitions of things that are different from God, and then joining with others to try to get them to see it your way, and for your way to be better than their way, so that they will join with you, and thus bolster you up and make you seem even more real?

In order to exist in a way that it’s not your Birthright to be experiencing.

… what god? The supposed “capacity” you have to choose which God/god is Real/real.

Now, let’s not get too serious here. This insane idea is something that doesn’t even exist. It doesn’t have any reality, so don’t become afraid of your insanity and don’t become afraid of this god. It’s all hogwash.

Continuing.

… your god…

Again, the choice to define some part of Creation as something not having anything to do with God, and as something that God isn’t being right there, but rather something you have decided it is.

What does this all mean? Does it mean that you are awful because you’re not seeing God anywhere, which means that you have a definition for everything that is different from God? No. All it really means to know this is that you are constantly faced with an opportunity, a threshold to move over from ignorance into Knowledge, from not-knowing into Knowing.

Now, your explorers are beginning to reach out beyond your planet to explore the universe. But what you need to do is to look at the flowers in front of you, or the fellow next to you, and reach out beyond the definition you gave it with a curiosity to know God—a desire to have a holy experience, a desire to have an Experience of Wholeness, of Singularity, of Reality.

Continuing.

Meaning against God’s Will.

… what?…

… an orphan. Lacking Identity. Lacking a Source.

Continuing.

It’s like, “Wow, what a horrible experience I’m having. Wow, wonder what this means? Wow, I’ve got to do something about this. Wow, I’ve got to start doing things that make me feel better. I’d better start making some definitions. I’d better start taking hold of things here because this is a chaotic experience that I don’t understand at all, and so I’m going to bring order to this situation so that I can feel less vulnerable.” And so you began to serve the depression. [laughing] You began to serve the bad feeling by creating something to relieve you of it. You see?

Continuing.

… God’s Son’s…

You see? “Oh, but I’d rather experience my creatorhood on my own. I’d rather wave the wand and have it happen at my will, regardless of God.” You see?

This God’s Son…

He wasn’t self-created. He wasn’t autonomous. He has no real existence without That Which is constantly creating him by being him, because the Movement of God is what is being everything forever, continuously.

Continuing.

You would be stuck in this experience if the definitions you had given everything which didn’t take their Source into account…

(PAUL: I’m sorry. I lost it.)

If the definitions you gave to everything that were different from What The Father Is Being right there and if you were able to make those definitions be the real meaning of the things you had defined and you had actually engaged in a real act of creation, you would be bound by your definitions right now and there would be no escape.

Now the simple fact is that most of you at one point believed that what you see is what you get. “This is it. This is life. This is creation. And whatever the Kingdom of Heaven is, that’s for another time and another place.” And so, if there’s famine, if there is pestilence, if there is disease, well, you just put a rod up your backbone and get a stiff upper lip and you cope with it the best you can because that’s life. You are behaving and have been behaving as though the definitions you’ve given to everything are absolute and are actual. And you tolerate it to the best of your ability. And you act, you be strong in the face of it. And you have courage in the face of it.

And then I come along, or someone with insight and having had the experience of revelation comes along and says, “There’s another way to look at this. This is not all there is. The way it’s being seen is not the way it truly is.” And you say, “Wow! That sounds wonderful, but it’s hard to believe. I don’t have any evidence of what you’re saying to back it up.” Right. You are already behaving as though you are trapped.

… of yourselves…

… you can do nothing, but you are not OF yourselves. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could NEVER escape.

Well, you have thought that “the way things are as you’ve defined them” is true and that there is no escape from it, except, thank God, one day you will die. And I’m here to tell you, save your energy. Don’t bother with dying, because it won’t change a thing. Get about the business today of seeing the connection that you have with your Brothers and Sisters that you can’t get out of; the interrelatedness that can’t be broken. And start being with them in a new way. Make a new gift to them so that you get to keep something new. And start waking up now.

Continuing.

“Oh,” you say, “But I am a self-made man.”

“I’m a woman working on being able to be a self-made woman, like men have been self-made men. I can’t say as a woman I’m a self-made woman yet, but I’m fighting for my rights to be a self-made woman.”

Right? And you self-made men, where’s your peace? Where’s your feeling of invulnerability? Where is your ability to be without being on guard, all you self-made men? It’s not there. It’s an empty victory. Look at it.

… your images, your likenesses, your definitions that you’ve made-up…

… meaning God…

… God…

You realize isolation is incompatible with sharing. But Creation is sharing, Creation is extending. Not like extending a rod into the air, but like extending the energy of you toward that which can receive it and have it be received, which constitutes a communication, or a Communion. That’s sharing. That’s Creation.

Oh, but you say, “But I am depressed! Don’t tell me it’s not real. Don’t tell me it wasn’t created.”

Well, I’m sorry, but what you’re calling “depression” is not a thing that was created. It’s the experience, the unavoidable experience of trying to do something you can’t do. You see? Depression hasn’t got you. You’ve got hold of an attempt to do something you can’t do, and it won’t work, and because you are Ultimate Sanity, your Sanity tells you, there is a Knowing within it that says, “Stop trying to do this because you can’t accomplish what you can’t do.”

You say, “Whoa! Something’s telling me, the Christ, what I can and can’t do?”

Yeah.

“Well, what about my authority?”

I’m sorry; you don’t have authority to do what can’t be done. And as long as you try to do what can’t be done, you’re going to have an experience the equivalent of the meaning of the word “No” (n-o), because that’s your Sanity—to tell you, “Stop trying to do what can’t be done.” That’s not depression. That’s Sanity. Depression is when you want to grouse about the “No.” Depression is when you don’t want to accept the uselessness of trying to do something that’s impossible, so that you can get about being in harmony with what is possible.

Continuing.

… you have not sinned. You haven’t accomplished anything that you thought you had accomplished, so don’t even waste your time calling it a sin. [pretending a judgmental tone of voice] “You have sinned against God. You have denied God. You have stood up to God, you little nothing! How dare you! You will be punished in hell for eternity.” It’s all gobbledygook. You haven’t accomplished anything. Nothing has happened, even though you firmly believe that something has.

Key point. This whole theory about being a mortal sinner that deserves the wrath of God is just more of the gobbledygook, more of the nonsense.

God knows that you could not sin against him, and therefore God will help you. That’s why it’s so important. God will help you because you have not succeeded in sinning, which would be the only justification conceivable imaginarily for God to withhold His Love from you. God sees that you have done nothing against Him, and you have done nothing that you’re suffering from, and [God] would help you by sharing His Vision with you to see the Truth so that the Truth might set you free from your ignorance.

Again.

Interesting or confusing? [small laugh] It’s interesting.

You never stop being the Christ. And so your Nature is such that it’s impossible for you to stop loving God. It’s impossible for you to stop loving God with a passion. Well, you might almost say, with a compulsion. Why do you think you hold on to your personal concepts and definitions so strongly, if indeed those constitute a defense against the experience of God? Because they seem to give you your identity at your own hand, and you become your own creator. And that is egotistically satisfying. And you do this with vigor because you, underneath all of this effort, have an undying Love of your Father, of your Source. And if you did not busy yourself with great intensity at securing your identity on your own, you would find yourself sucked Home.  Home to the Father because your Love is so great for Him. And that would be the end of this so-called “independent, autonomous, authoritative, successful you.”

… God…

And I’m going to add: And you would quickly abandon all of your definitions and all of this self that you have tried to build up and succeed at making whole and real in its own right.

Continuing.

Don’t make little frowns of quizzical curiosity and disbelief.

Remember, you are neither behind the Point of Perfection nor advancing toward it; you are at that Point and you must understand yourself therefrom. And these words are talking to you from that Point of Perfection that you’re already at.

You do love Him, and you do know He loves you. And your vigorous denial of Him, meaning your vigorous commitment to all of the definitions you have made-up, prove by reversal that you do know that you love God and that He loves you. And you can’t afford to look at that because at the moment it’s still more important to you to make an independent mark. In the world? No. In creation. That’s what you’re after. If you’re not yielding to God, you’re attempting to become equal to Him.

Continuing.

And if you have denied it so successfully that you don’t remember what it is you’re denying, because you’ve given your preference to the definition you’re denying God with, it doesn’t change the fact that you know God, and knew God, and knew the Real Meaning.

And let’s bring this home a little bit more. God “out there” is not calling you Home. Your right Mind is calling you back into your right Mind. Got it? Because you can’t have successfully become a split mind, an unintegrated mind, a non-Singular Conscious Experience of Being. It’s impossible for you to have become that, even though with great, you might say, mentally coercive energy, you have been able to create a stretch and a twist in the fabric of Conscious Awareness so that things look different and you can say, “There! I made it look like that! And that is what it’s going to be. I am going to maintain it as that, come hell or high water.” But all you’ve done is skewed your perception. You haven’t changed What You Are, and you haven’t changed What Reality Is.

Again, your right Mind calls to you to come back into your right Mind.

His Love for you is as uninterruptible as a parent’s love for his or her child. It’s just there, always.

Continuing.

Well, where are you going to hear his message from? The guy sitting next to you. The chair you’re sitting on. The tree growing outside your door. The sunset. Right here, right now, this life.

Continuing.

A short while back I shared with you that your attention is God’s Treasure. When you give God your attention, He treasures it, and…

… of your attention…

If you’re not looking at anything you see with a desire to see God there, you are, by the unwise use of your mind, demonstrating that you’re giving preference to what you think that thing is. And what you think that that thing is stands between you and What It Is, between you and What God Is right there. And so that constitutes a denial of God. And that’s all that constitutes the denial of God.

The unfortunate or fortunate thing is that as a result of doing that, you unavoidably experience depression, fear, and you develop a commitment to cope with it—the depression and the fear—instead of abandoning the unwise use of your mind that’s causing you to hear, “No, you can’t do this.”

It isn’t, “No! You can’t do this! I am not going to let you do this!” God doesn’t stand against you and against what you’re trying to do. God Knows, the Nature of Being Knows, the Way Things Work Knows, that you can’t do what you can’t do. And so it just simply says, “You can’t do this. There’s no way to do it. You can try till you’re blue in the face. Sooner or later you’re going to find out you can’t do it. I’ll save you a little time by telling you, you can’t do this. It just won’t work.” You see? There’s no anger there. God doesn’t provide resistance against your success. God simply says, “You can’t do what you’re trying to do. It won’t work.”

You know, waking up, this whole thing we’re talking about just isn’t a religious thing. It isn’t a spiritual thing. It’s a very practical down to Heaven [laughing] awareness of How Things Work, so that you don’t waste your time doing what doesn’t work, and so that you stop behaving as though you’re something you cannot be. And so that you will start right where you are to look at everything you’re already experiencing with a willingness to see it with new eyes, with new vision—vision innocent of anything you would insert between you as the beholder and what you want to behold. And every moment of every day provides you with this opportunity, without getting “holy, holy” about it, or too spiritual. It’s a “feet on the ground” process. It’s a “feet on the ground” of Being, with a capital “B”.

Remember that when we’re talking about the illusion and the ego with all seriousness, and we talk about all the awful things with such great clarity, it isn’t so that you can become frightened about it. It’s so that you might, with all the clarity you have about it, be able to stand there and say, “Oh. All of this serious, complex stuff doesn’t exist. God didn’t create it. I created it with my imagination. And what I’ve created doesn’t constitute a creation, ‘cause it couldn’t undo God. God hasn’t been undone. What I thought I did, I didn’t.”

That’s why you receive apparently God’s Love by grace. And that’s why you receive healing apparently by grace. Because there’s nothing for you to be forgiven for, because you couldn’t do what you couldn’t do, and therefore you didn’t, and it was never done. And you don’t have to find complicated ways to extricate yourself from something that never happened. You will wake up by Grace. And you’re going to wake up here. And you’re going to wake up as close to now as you’re able to let yourself by not making the process more complicated than it is with this wonderful imagination and apparent “capacity” to make definitions.

I love you all. And I trust all of this is beginning to become even more meaningful than it has before, and that it may be beginning to dawn upon you that waking up is less complex than the imaginative effort you had to go through to make the dream you’re waking up from.

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