Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We talked last week about the fact that God loves you so much that the moment you start for Home, the moment you give what He treasures to Him, which is your attention, that in so many words He rushes out to meet you. And we also discussed the fact that you love God so much, each of you, right now, love God so much that you avoid experiencing that fact. It does sound crazy. It’s hard to understand why you would do such a thing. But there is a reason, and the reason is that if you were to let yourself feel it, you would have to abandon a project, a pet project, that you are addicted to. And that pet project is to be right.

“Gee,” you say, “I didn’t know I was trying to be right.” Well, think about it for a moment. If you have had as a goal to be independent, autonomous, and successful at it, you have been working very diligently to do it so perfectly that you could establish that your word, your definitions, the meanings you wish to give to everything, are right. Because the minute you can demonstrate that they are right, that you are right, you’ve demonstrated that you have accomplished successfully being independent. It’s called “self-righteousness.” And for the most part, what you call “righteousness” is just that, and only that.

The Truth, whether you find it in A Course In Miracles or anywhere else, will undercut your self-righteousness constantly. Self-righteousness is arrogance. Self-righteousness is or the practice of being right is your attempt to become equal with God—which can’t be done. But, there is this carrot hanging in front of you that you’re chasing after, and that is to actually accomplish becoming equal to God—a creator on your own.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re around a very righteous person, it’s very difficult to communicate with them because they never listen to you? They’re always reflecting back to you their point of view in a generally coercive way. Their intent is to get you to agree with their point of view, and so they don’t let you in. And it’s uncomfortable to be around them.

Now all of you may not be obnoxiously righteous, but you must understand that when you are trying to confirm your perspective on things to yourself, or to anyone else, without ever saying, “God, what’s the Meaning here?”, without ever letting anything else in, you are in a state of a denial of Reality that holds you apart from it and keeps you from being infilled by it.

Righteousness is a defense against Right, with a capital “R”. So, from the ego standpoint, everything we’re talking about is bad news. Because, in the process of yielding to the Father, in the process of yielding to your right Mind, you must abandon the very idea of being right or wrong. You have to abandon being something in your own right. The “you” that has been trying to establish itself as “real” or “right” must get less and less of your attention. Notice I said “it” must get less and less of your attention, because you’re not “it.” You are the Divine One. You are the One God Created. You are the One that cannot ever become less or different from What It Truly Is. This means, then, that from the ego standpoint, waking up means it was a failure. It means, and it will feel like, you are having to abandon the cause of being right, of becoming right, of proving you are right, and thereby proving that “you in your own right” are real.

And so, as you let humility in, as you become humble instead of arrogant and self-righteous, all of the feelings associated with the ethic you’re giving up will feel like failure, will feel like failure, will feel like failure, will feel like failure. And it will echo over and over and over, you’re a failure, you’re a failure, you’re a failure. You’re failing at your goal. You’re failing at your cause. But see, that’s the temptation of your conditioned thinking that would invite you back into the ethic of trying to prove you’re right. And so in this sense, waking up doesn’t feel good.

You see, just because you can’t be right doesn’t mean that you must be wrong. It means that there is something else to be than right or wrong. And the something else to be is Whole. The something else to be is What You Truly Are. And as we’ve discussed over and over, the only way you can be What You Truly Are is to acknowledge your Source—that you are not the source of your existence, God is, Something Else is, and you are the Embodiment Of It. You are the Presence Of It presencing Itself right where you are. There’s no sense or experience of failure that accompanies that. And there’s also not any sense of being right. But there is the Experience of Pure Integrity. Not integrity over and against that which lacks integrity, but simply Integrity as the State of Being. And in that is Invulnerability. The Invulnerability that is yours, always has been yours, and always will be. It’s an eternal constant.

This is what you get instead of the tense struggle you are experiencing in your attempts to be right—ultimately right. This is what you get when you abandon self-righteousness. This is what you get when righteousness is not your goal. You get to be Whole. You get to be Sane.

Let’s go into the book.

… and let’s remember that the god of sickness is not sickness. Sickness is not the god. The god of a sick mind, the god of sickness is your belief that you have a capacity to formulate images and concepts, and then choose for them to make them real; that you have a capacity to have a perspective and a point of view different from the only one that’s really available to you, which is God’s Point Of View embodied in you as you.

God.

What does that mean, “Do not look to the god of sickness for healing”? It means do not look for a personal capacity that “you as you have defined yourself” have to accomplish anything on your own.

Healing of yourself, or of another, and I’m really addressing the idea of healing another, can never be the result of a force of will that you bring to bear with your best expression of truth to change someone else. That’s looking to the god of sickness for healing. It means you’re looking to something that has apparently arisen out of a capacity you have to have a point of view different from God’s, and then using that point of view about yourself and your righteous capacity to accomplish things, to force another one to experience his or her good.

Looking to the god of sickness for healing means that you’re looking to something other than God Himself; that you’re not silencing your mind and your concepts and the chatter of ideas that you love, and in the silence desiring of God to know what is the Truth so that you might let that through, so that the inspiration that comes might easily find voice and words and actions that are in perfect harmony with it.

Oh, the healing of what? Your Brother that’s in need of healing, or you healed of your independence because you prayed and you let God in and abandoned your independence? You must be healed in order for you to give the Gift of Healing.

Now I know that there are those who say, “Well, the only place the healing needs to occur is in you. That once you let the Father in, together with the influx of Truth that you will find yourself knowing, you will no longer see a call for healing. You will no longer see a Brother in need of healing.” And that is not true. You will find yourself seeing the calls for Love from your Brothers as calls for Love, instead of demonstrations of their illness. But until there is clarity in their mind, they will continue to embody their illness, their devotion to their ability, their capacity to formulate concepts and try to make them real by seeking mutual agreement through mild-mannered or coercive means. And so you will see their obnoxious behavior not as a statement of their obnoxiousness and what kind of person they are, but as a call for Love. And you will extend the Love that you’re in-filled with.

You are not creating other’s bad experiences. When you see a bad experience, when you see bad behavior, when you see obnoxious behavior, when you see individuals suffering from their beliefs, you’re not creating that out of whole cloth. And your mind is not the only place that healing needs to occur. But your mind is the place where the influx of Love and Truth must come in order for you to see another’s confusion as a call for correction, rather than a statement of their actual condition.

I’ve said, “Listen, learn, and do.” You listen. You go within, you listen, and you learn by means of the influx of the Experience of Truth, and then you do—meaning you act spontaneously out from the Clarity of Truth that you find yourself knowing because it’s been revealed to you. And you do engage in actions that promote correction so that your Brother’s confusion is replaced by knowing the Truth that frees him up.

Continuing.

… meaning God…

There’s that verb again.

Lies the very Wholeness of you.

[small laugh] And I know you say, “Yeah, I know, but that’s very hard to believe because all the evidence is that I can. All the evidence is that everyone has.” And thus you tell me of your god. You tell me what you are worshipping. You tell me what is of value to you, what you believe is more valuable to you than the Truth. Now you might not think that’s righteousness, but it is. You value what you believe more than you value What God Is Being.

You might think you’re very malleable and flexible and willing to wake up and to hear the Truth from me, but you will argue. And when you hear of somebody with a terminal disease, you will find yourself confronted with your own sense of mortality, and you’ll say, “I have nothing to object to that with.” And in effect, your behavior and your attitude tells me that you’re trying to teach me that the god of death is all-powerful, and that’s the god you are serving, and that you’re certainly not going to mentally contradict your god of death.

You say, “I can’t contradict it. Nobody but you has ever accomplished it. And I’m not even sure I’m talking to you, Jesus. I would like to believe that I am, but I don’t know for a fact. But I sure do know that there’s no one on this planet today that was here 2000 or 5000 years ago and has been here uninterruptedly. And so I have no justification for an absolute faith in my Divinity or the fact that I need not die.” Just be honest with yourselves. This is the god you serve. This is the god you have faith in. And this is the god you will confirm. I mean, really, tell me, you’re at a dinner party with friends, or maybe they’re people you have never met before, are you going to sit there and say, “You know, none of us needs to die. I’m not going to die”? Oh, no. Why not? Because you are an obedient servant to your god.

If you are not aware of the obedience to your god that you practice, you will have no basis for conceiving of there being another experience. Nor will you see that there is an absolute call for you to dishonor this god, disagree with this god, argue every single point that stands in the favor of this god, and consciously and conscientiously withdraw your allegiance to it, by what? By no longer giving lip-service to God. “Oh, I know there’s a God. And I know my Life is Eternal. And I know I will forever be with God.” Come on! That isn’t what you believe. You believe that the ultimate stroke or action that exists to be experienced is your death.

Now, is that bad? Does that make you wrong? No. It just means that you’ve forgotten that there’s another way to look at this and that you can withdraw your allegiance to this god, to this belief, and place it somewhere else. And then begin to do it.

And I tell you what, when you’ve overcome death, then tackle taxes. [single audience laugh]

What can die? Your misplaced faith. The concepts that you’ve made-up that couldn’t actually replace What God Is Being. Your faith in your concepts. Your faith in the images and likenesses that you’ve created.

You see, when you look at things and you think you know what they are, and their Meaning has not been revealed to you by That Which Made Them, you are blaspheming God by having a preferential concept that says, “This is more real to me, this is more valuable to me, and this is the god I would rather serve than God.”

Again, can you go to hell for this? No. You are in hell for this. And ultimately, you’re suffering from something you haven’t actually accomplished. You’re just suffering from believing that you have, and being at odds with Who You Are and what you can really do.

Continuing.

You see? Well, that’s not part of the teaching of your god, is it—the god of death? No. It says you aren’t of God, you are of yourself. And you have a capacity to demonstrate that fact. And in fact, you will have my undying support in your attempt to prove the fact that you don’t belong to anyone, that you are self-sufficient, and that you have a capacity to authorize and create. Forget about God—you are god.

But, again:

But your god, the one you fear, offers you death as the crowning end to a miserable life.

That’s worse than a gold watch after forty years of work. Tell me, which of you, who of you, would go to work at a company that promised you that upon retirement you would die? [single audience laugh] But you say, “But those are the only kind of companies that exist. And for centuries everybody has worked for those kind of companies. And upon retirement, they did indeed die. I have no example of there being any other kind of experience. And so I will continue to dedicate myself to put in my forty years.” You see, the god of sickness is the idea that you have a capacity to decide which God/god is Real/real—either God, the only one there is (with a capital “G”), or the god (with a small “g”) that I’ve made-up. Now if God is Life (with a capital “G”), then a small “g” god has to be the opposite—unlike God—therefore the god of death.

Now just let this sink in. Just let this register. Because this is not the God you would serve. And not only that, Truth dawning in your minds by virtue of our conversations, or by virtue of you reading the Course, or by virtue of your own enlightenment, is telling you that the god of sickness is a supposed capacity you think you have to decide which God/god is Real/real, and that one of them is pure imagination—the one, it happens, that you’ve been serving—and that it’s your Birthright not to be serving that god, but to be yielding, and I’m going to say, partnering with the only God there is—your Father, the Source of you, That Which Is Embodying Itself/Himself/Herself right where you are as All There Is to you. And that your Birthright and your Inheritance is from Him. And the Inheritance is the undistorted Fullness of All That He Is—the conscious, undistorted Experience of All That God Is. And that there is no alternative to Life.

And so, somebody is poking a little hole in your box and a little bit of Light is coming in. And as the Light comes in, it’s going to uncover what you’ve been doing that hasn’t been working, because what you’ve been doing can’t be done. And it’s not to make you guilty. It’s not to make you wrong. But because being right has been your ethic, it will seem to you initially as though it is stating that you are wrong. And of course, wrong is bad, and bad means penalty. That’s all part of the rigamarole of the righteous mind.

Does your god teach you this?

And I’ve said there are only three things that the Father won’t let you have: sin, sickness, and death.

Is that what your god teaches you? Oh, no. No. “No, for sure there’s going to be sickness. And for sure there’s going to be death. And in all likelihood, considering the fact that you have such a miserable existence, you’re going to indulge in a little bit of sin for a little bit of pleasure.” That’s what your god teaches you.

Continuing.

… God …

(PAUL: Just a moment here.)

(PAUL: I’m sorry. Just a moment. Okay.)

We’re going to back up.

That’s a mighty statement.

Can you say the same thing about your god? If you will accept yourself as your god has defined you, that you will be incapable of suffering? Oh no. You’ll not only be capable of suffering, you will inevitably suffer and you will inevitably die.

But God didn’t create you independent of Him. And so if you do not want to experience suffering, you’re going to have to let your Source back in to your mind. And you’re going to have to be willing to be subject to the capital “W” Way Things Work, which will mean that you will have to abandon any further attempts to be right/righteous in your own right or on your own.

Now when you can see it so starkly that your allegiance to your god means that you’re serving the god of death, then what do you have to lose? What do you have to lose to dare to let God in? I mean [laughing] what could take away from you more than your life, which your present god already does, apparently, you believe. So hey, you might say, “What the hell. I’m going to try accepting myself as God created me, and see if I will be incapable of suffering.” You know, the god you’re serving already has you losing your life.

Again, so important.

… what?

You see, this is where the rub comes in, because you’re engaged in an ethic of proving that you are your own creator, and that you are going to create yourself by succeeding at accomplishing something on your own by being right on your own, and demonstrating your rightness so inescapably that nobody could miss the rightness of you, and, in that ultimate demonstration of being right, securing your existence as a valid, independent agent. But, because that’s not What You Are, you can’t do it—thank God.

God is not a theological idea. God is not a religious idea. God is palpable capital “P” Presence. God is the experienceable Conscious Experience of Being. It’s what each of you is experiencing right now and misinterpreting.

And I will add: You will experience healing.

… what?

… who …

See? It undoes the declaration of emancipation that you took, that you made—the divorce you got that caused you by virtue of the divorce to forget Who You Were because your Father is what makes you Who You Are. The Son is the Son because of the Father. And the Daughter is the Daughter because of the Father.

The power He gave your own mind.

Denial is a foolish activity, but it is an activity you can engage in.

And when we’re talking about Awakening, we’re just talking about your neglecting to deny God by looking at each and every thing in your experience and saying, “What is the more that is here than what I’m seeing? Because at the moment when I look at it, I am not having an Experience of God, and therefore something is missing. Because if anything is there at all, it must be God appearing. And there must therefore be an accompanying Experience of Divinity, of Holiness, of Joy, of Bliss.”

Continuing.

Wow.

Well, the ego could say, “Well, when you tell me that I don’t realize how much I have denied myself, that sounds like a real putdown to me. You trying to make me feel bad? You trying to depress me? You trying to make me feel guilty? Well, I’m going to.” [audience laughter] You see? [said in a loud, angry voice] “See how much the Truth helped me, God? You gonna tell me the Truth? I’m gonna be depressed, because You’ve got to be telling me that I’m wrong! You’ve got to be telling me that I should feel bad because I don’t know how much I’ve been denying myself. So there, God, try and save me. You just try and save me. I’m too depressed to listen to you. I’m unwilling to listen to you. It’s not fair what you want. It’s gonna take me a month to get over my misery just from this one connection with You, God.”

But anyone who is Awake recognizes that kind of response as a call for not reaction, but as a call for something that allows for sudden release, such as a simple thought.

“Wouldn’t you just like to see the more that is there that you’ve been missing? I know you’re very upset and very angry and very depressed, but aside from that, isn’t there a part of you that would simply like to see the more, to see what you’ve been missing? It doesn’t matter what you haven’t been seeing. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve not been seeing it. It doesn’t matter what it says about you that you haven’t been seeing it. Hey, wouldn’t you like to see the more? Come on with me and let’s take a look. Engage your curiosity a little bit.”

“Oh, and now you’re gonna sweet talk me, huh?”

“Mm hmm.”

“First, you kick me down, and then you try to be sweet.”

And you, like God, if you’re confronted with this, should smile also in response to that. And then you can say, “You know what? There is more for you to see. And again, it doesn’t matter that you haven’t been seeing it. It doesn’t matter how long you haven’t been seeing it. You’re capable of seeing it. And when you would like to see it, let me know. It’s okay.”

A Son is not a slave. A Son is not something to be controlled, any more than God Who Is Omnipotent can be controlled.

The invitation from the Son is to cause reaction from the Father. “Well [Son], you are absolutely incorrigible. I never should have even bothered to try to tell you the Truth. You are what you say you are, and I’m through with you.” If that happened, it would mean that the Father had forgotten that this was His Son, like Him, constituted of only That Which The Father Is, embodying All That The Father Is, with no other source of anything to be embodied. And the Father doesn’t forget this, else He would forget His Son, just like the Son forgets the Father when he says, “I’d rather see things my way.” And conversely, if God forgot who His Son was, that His Son was His Son, He would forget that He was the Father. Existence would cease.

But you see, when you forget, when the Son forgets Who He Is, existence doesn’t cease, because the Son isn’t God, even though God is All There Is to the Son. And that’s the ego-insulting fact that everyone has to be willing to accept. It is your salvation.

God …

You see? For God to interfere with you, would mean He would have to forget that you are His Son and What Is True About You, which would cause God to forget Who He was. That would be an attack on Himself—grounds for insanity—which cannot happen.

… God’s …

Oh yes, you would! You prefer the god of death. And you would rather fear the god of death than love the God of Life. Why? Because you don’t have any justification for doing anything else. All the evidence tells you that death is ultimate, absolute, and final.

And you play with your spirituality. You play with wonderful ideas, like Life is Eternal. But you really still believe that death reigns, and that it is to be ultimately feared, and there’s no justifiable reason for believing that death can be overcome. It’s too much to ask you to believe that death can be overcome, that terminal illnesses can be healed.

And that their absence is just “remission.” You see? I mean death, you’re never let off the hook from death. If you no longer have a terminal disease, it’s not that you’re healed and whole—it’s that “it’s in remission.” It’s there, but it’s not at work killing you. You see? And the reason you never let yourself off the hook is because you will not withdraw your allegiance and devotion to the god you believe in.

Can I invite you to just be radical and do something different than serve this god so obediently? Your god can’t take away anything more from you than your life. And that’s already in the agreed-upon contract you have with your god. So, you’re not even risking anything to do something radical and to believe that maybe God is as actual as the god you’re serving, and that you are actually as Divinely Real as I’m telling you that you are. And that in your being radical enough to shift your allegiance from your god to your Father, you just might remember Who You Are, and be transformed out of an insanity that you can’t believe you’re in, but I’m telling you that you are.

But insanity is not terminal. It’s just an ongoing bother until you abandon it—like a mosquito buzzing around your ear.

Here’s the Truth.

… through this practice of being a little radical.

And what’s the most valuable gift you could give Him? What is it that is His Treasure? Your attention.

You know, steal a little bit of your attention away from your god, the god of death, and give God a little bit of your attention. That’s the most wonderful gift you could give Him.

… what? …

To you.

… You …

… God’s …

You refused to accept it because you said, “Father, I’d rather do it myself.”

… the return of the Son—you.

Another way of putting this that keeps it well grounded is that your right Mind awaits your return to embrace it.

Now this is what God tells you. It isn’t what your god tells you.

Meaning what you have made-up.

Well, there’s that word again.

Stop talking. Stop asserting your definitions. Stop describing the likenesses and images you are making up. Stop trying to be right, and stop using every action you can engage in to convince others that you are right just so that you can somehow validate, ultimately, eternally validate yourself by virtue of your having demonstrated that you on your own are right.

Now, don’t make this all complicated. Don’t make it all emotional. Don’t even make it intellectual. Don’t figure that you’ve got to reason this out to the nth degree so that, by virtue of understanding it totally, you will be transformed, because there won’t be any little tiny spot or speck in your mind that’s confused and that will make you clear. No. That’s still control. That’s still you being in charge.

The simple way out of this is to simply be conscious in every moment of your day with the curiosity to see the more of What God Is Being there than what you’re presently seeing. Why? Because you want to feel the Joy, and you want to feel the Bliss. You want to experience the Divinity, the Godness, the unadulterated and unchangeable Goodness of everything.

And I want to leave you with this simple thing. When you are sure about anything, without having had an intimate moment with that thing in which you became undefended enough to let that thing disclose to you What It Divinely Is, your attitude and behavior is a call for Love. It’s a call for correction.

You can’t just say, “The misperceptions that I’m having at the moment are not real, and therefore everything’s okay.” No. Not knowing the Truth about a thing is a state which itself is a call for correction. And so, ask for correction.

Let your prayer each day, each moment, be, “Father, correct my perception. Help me abandon my allegiance to incorrect perception. Help me to be corrected.” Don’t wait for someone else to come along and recognize that the way you’re being in the world is a call for correction, who will then love you enough to elicit and inspire a corrected perception. Ask for correction yourself. Initiate the process of correction yourself. In other words, understand that when you look at a flower, or you look at your mate, or you look at a friend or a tree, or whatever, and you say, “I desire to see more of What God Is Being there than I’m seeing,” you are asking for correction of your mind, which means that you’re going to have to allow a change of mind to take place. And you are going to have to let yourself be made new. Just be aware of that.

I love you.

The more stark the difference between Truth and illusion, the more fascinating and the more interesting waking up becomes. So don’t be afraid to look illusion squarely in the face. And don’t be afraid to look at your misguided behavior squarely in the face, because when you do, it becomes obvious to you what you do and don’t want to participate in. And so you can bring your willingness to the process of inner correction. And you won’t die from it, and you won’t hurt from it, and you will not be made to feel guilty, in the process, for anything. But you will be called upon to allow the correction to occur, so that you are no longer engaging in the actions arising out of misunderstanding or lack of clarity in you that has reinforced your bondage and kept you from knowing Who You Are.

You know me, I could talk endlessly. There is enough here for you to let sink in, be with.

And I look forward to being with you next week.