Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’re going to go right into the book.

Hmm. Here we’ve been talking about, for lack of better words, the human condition. And we’ve been talking about the two kinds of seekers for help, and we’ve been talking about the two kinds of help providers, with all of its seeming complexities.

And what’s this?

Well, if you wish to be an agent for change, if you wish to be having a different kind of experience from the one you’ve been having, if you’re tired of quote “the human condition” unquote, then there’s something you must do. And the something that you must do is to step back from the human condition. Go back to square one, as it were, which is innocence, purity. You have to be willing to step back from the problem and its complexities.

It’s very simple. Paul cannot hear me if he’s not willing to set aside whatever complexities are confronting him, whatever hooks are engaging his reactions. In other words, he’s learned that in order to deal with them, he must step back from them and join with me. It’s the same with everyone.

If you want to be an agent for change, if you don’t like the situation you’re confronted with, you must first of all take care of number one—you—in the sense that you are the one observing the situation, the call for correction, the call for Love, and so you’re the one who must move into the place where the call for correction can be responded to successfully. And that requires you, for lack of better words, to get your head on straight. And that’s what we’re doing here.

You must step back and learn, recognize, that:

In order for anything to be eternal, it must be unconflicted. Conflict is disruptive and destructive of the experience of Peace, the experience of Singularity, the experience of Innocence, the experience of Purity. When you’re looking unjoined with that which can provide you the experience of Singularity, you cannot help but see conflict, and you cannot help but respond to it from a conflicted place within yourself.

Again.

And we’ve talked extensively about this. When you look at the flowers and you see a plant, you see a product of evolution. You see something that blossoms, turns to seed, and dies. And you see a cycle occurring repetitiously over and over and over again. And you interpret it to be a material organism, a material object, subject to and governed by the laws of matter. You are not seeing God’s world. Technically, you are seeing God’s world, but you are insisting upon interpreting it falsely, and believing your definition. And so you do not see what is Real.

… which all of you, in one way or another, look forward to. “There’s a new Heaven and a new earth and old things shall pass away. Glory, I can’t wait!”

In other words, if you’re going to ever see anything more than a material flower, or a material table, or a material tree, or a material sister or brother, you’re going to have to look beyond the meanings you have been applying to them. You have to arrive at a point where you’re willing to recognize that you haven’t been perceiving anything at all but pure fantasy, pure imagination.

This is one of the most beautiful questions that you can entertain. And it’s one of the most pregnant questions that you can entertain, because the answer is a revelation. The answer is something that happens when you let yourself have a moment of intimacy with the flower, innocent of the meanings you have projected upon it, with a desire to have it communicate to you its God-derived divine Meaning. In that invitation, you open the door to actually perceive, in place of what you’ve called perception, which has been a matter of seeing what isn’t there at all and therefore doesn’t truly constitute perceiving at all.

The great question:

You will know when you genuinely and honestly become curious—curious enough to bring your attention to the place where the answer can be provided.

Now the same thing applies to a Brother who seems problematic to you. If you want to see what’s really there, then you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to abandon what you’ve called your perception, so that the Real Meaning of your Brother can register with you and thus provide yourself the experience of perceiving what is really there; providing yourself with the experience of actual perception.

Now:

… You …

And I would tell you that every act of Love that you have engaged in is eternal, whether you’ve been awake or not.

In other words, as you’ve looked at the world, defining it on your own terms, and therefore have been unconscious of what the world really is, you, because you are still the Christ and can’t ever stop being the Christ, have engaged in expressions of Love, in being the movement of Love. And so, out of everything that you’re seeing that you’re not seeing clearly and which therefore isn’t real, those acts of Love have been and still are the only Real things that have happened. They are, relative to your experience of your perception of the world, the world’s only Reality—your world’s only Reality—your made-up world’s only Reality. Why? Because the expression of Love, being the embodiment of Love, isn’t something any of you have ever made up. It’s something which you have allowed, something which you have allowed expression to, and thus introduced it into, so to speak, the fantasy world that you live in and are devoted to.

So whether you are awake or not, you are still creating. You are still being a co-creator with the Father, because when you embody and express Love, you are letting the Love That God Is find expression, be expressed, right where you are.

This is why I tell you to bring your curiosity to what is in your face. Because the Real World that is there that you’re not perceiving, can be perceived without your having to die and go somewhere else. And so keep your attention where the opportunity to experience the Real World, to actually perceive the Real World, can happen.

You see? You don’t realize that you intend not to see the Real World. But when you look at a flower, or you look at your Brother and Sister, and you use the definitions that your doctors and your scientists and your philosophers have taught you, you are choosing to look without innocent eyes. You’re choosing to look through a sieve, a filter, that alters your perception so that you don’t see exactly what is there. And the inexact experience you’re having becomes for you an exact experience, and you trust it as though it’s valid.

Now a willingness to perceive nothing else is what you bring into play when you look at the flower, or you look at anything, and you desire to have a moment or a time of intimacy with it without preconceptions; with an intellectual acceptance of the idea that it just might be God presencing Himself, and therefore that it has divine Meaning that is worth experiencing. That is the way you bring a willingness to perceive nothing else but what is there, what is Real.

If you accept what is false and you accept what is true and you make no distinction between them, the state of mind you’re in can only be described as insanity. It is a state of mind which is incapable of being clear. It is a state of mind called confusion. And yet, although that’s what you experience everyday, you call it normal. And you think that you have found ways to successfully live in this state of confusion.

Continuing.

… and I will say, it does not reject goodness entirely because it can’t.

… why? Because you aren’t that insane. You know the Truth. You know what Love is. You know what Principle is. You know what Life is. And if the effort was made to convince you that death is life, that hate is love, and there is no Life and there is no Love, [small laugh] you wouldn’t buy it. So the ego is never quite that stark. It suggests something far less than the extreme position, and that you can live with. And so you do.

… what does it do?

… and what is it, the little something that it adds? It adds a bias to the perception. It adds a twist. It just biases what’s Real.

… in other words, when you got your bill of divorcement.

You see? You provided that little bit of bias, that little bit of torque we’ve talked about before; that little bit of twist that makes the energy and the experience of a thing not quite what it was as the Father had made it. It causes an experience, for each of you individually, that distorts What It Really Is.

To establish your PERSONAL autonomy you tried to create unlike your Father, believing what you made to be capable of BEING unlike Him.

You see? You say, “The Father gave me free will. Why did He give me free will? Because He wanted me to learn how to be like Him and become like Him alongside Him. I have free will to learn how to bring all of my skills as a divine Son of God into play and to a level of excellence on my own.” That’s an interesting little bit of torque.

And you believe that as you develop these skills and become excellent at it, that you will actually have succeeded at creating unlike Him, and thus added your gift of originality to His. And so you’re all very busy developing your skills, honing your skills to be a better and better independent autonomous authority.

… and of course that only happened when you weren’t paying attention.

… like every act of Love, every expression of Love. Every loving, mindful embrace of a Brother or a Sister or your world, is true. And …

And is eternal.

… in your fantasy world.

So here we’ve backed off from trying to respond to the call for correction, or trying to respond to the call for Love that presents itself as objectionable or unkind or hateful behavior. We’re stepping back to consider what we are doing in terms of how we’re using our mind. That’s what each of you is called upon to do if you wish to be an agent for change, if you wish to be helpful. You must be willing to bring your attention to the only things that are the Real World right here in your experience, and devote yourself by perceiving only these, and this will lead you to the Real Heaven, because it will make you capable of understanding it. The wish to see what is Real is what opens the door for the Real Meaning of the flower or a Brother to be communicated to you so that you understand it.

Now:

… or have …

When Paul is joined with me, he’s not experiencing opposites. And in this place where opposites don’t exist, he can be the reflection of God. He can be fulfilling the purpose of Being. And it’s the same with all of you. But, in order to have this experience, he has to be willing to set aside his inclination to seek justice; the inclination to react to egos with a better retort than what they’ve dished out so far. He has to be willing to abandon the satisfaction of being a successful ego. He has to abandon the great satisfaction that he and all of you get from conflict, because at the bottom line you all thrive on conflict. You feel invigorated when you’re in the middle of it. And you feel that you’re called upon to bring a certain amount of excellence, even though it can only be ego excellence, into the picture so as to be coercive enough to bring about a solution. But what? A solution by force. And that’s not healing.

… going on a diet in which the opposite of goodness isn’t present …

This is when the experience of Truth can register with you because you have provided the condition under which, for lack of better words, the transfer of Knowledge can occur.

Now Paul can tell you that when he has this experience, he’s not yet realizing that he’s always had it, and he had it already before each time he chooses to set aside his independent right to be reactive or self-righteous, and joins with me.

… all of you …

… and I would add: Between yourselves and your Creator’s Creations.

These are the mutual definitions that you’ve all made up and agreed to validate and stand by and reinforce, if you have to die to do it—even if you have to die to do it.

That sentence, if it were made into a work of art, would be a large frame in which there was printing that said, “You have made many ideas which you have placed between yourselves and your Creator, and these beliefs are … ”—and the rest of the printing would be in flashing neon tubing—“ … the world as you perceive it.”

Right now, right here in this room, right here where any of you are, right there where any of you are, you’re seeing your definitions. You’re seeing what you have been trained to see. You’re seeing what you’ve been talked into seeing. And so you’re seeing what you’ve been educated to see and not what is really there.

And heaven help you if any of you have a slightly different perception of everything, because if you say it out loud, you’re likely to be carted off to the loony bin. And certainly if you’re a child who hasn’t yet been totally trained as to how you’re supposed to see, you will be talked out of what you’re seeing. You will be corrected. “No. Those flowers aren’t shimmering, Johnny. No, you can’t really see through the railing. You’re misunderstanding what you’re seeing.” You see?

Now this is important.

… meaning here in the world.

And like I’ve said, you’re only ever confronted with Reality. The only thing confronting you is Reality. The only thing confronting you is the Kingdom of Heaven. But because you’re choosing to validate the definitions you’ve applied to Reality, you call it a physical universe that came from a big bang; what you might call a confluence of physical forces that had a universal effect because it was so powerful.

… Reality is what’s confronting you …

… the definitions you’ve applied to everything and which you use in order not to see what’s really there …

… which is the only thing that is there …

Again, what you have created have been voluntary or involuntary expressions of Love, voluntary or involuntary embodiments of Truth, embodiments of Life, that wiped out a cancer, or the measles, or the chicken pox, or the whooping cough, when you experienced healing. Those embodiments of Truth and Life and Love remain eternally.

But:

But you know what? There are many who don’t even know there is a Real World to experience right here. They think the world is exactly what they’ve been taught it is, and so there’s no occasion for them to try to see beyond it, to try to free themselves from the bondage of it. But to those of you who are aware that there’s another way to look at this, who will dare to believe that you can perceive the Real World, you will discover means that you’re willing to believe that you can know yourself, because they will go hand and hand.

… what does that mean? It means that when you have the moment of intimacy with the flower, and you become undefended against its communication of its divine Meaning to you because that’s its purpose—is to express, to communicate its divinity, its Meaning—that experience of its Meaning is the equivalent of knowing God. It is the experience of knowing God. And in the acknowledgement of it, you are then glorifying God.

It’s the will of everything God has created, everything that God is being, to be known. It is your purpose to be known for What You Are. It is the flower’s purpose to be known for What It Is. And the unobstructed experience of knowing the Meaning of everything, is best described as communion. And it’s an infinite Knowing, because no part of the infinity of Creation is obscured from you. It’s a large experience.

Now:

… again, what you have made up …

That’s why you stop often during the day, or should, to say, “Holy Spirit, what is the Meaning of this? What is the Meaning of that?”—so that what is true about it can be conveyed to you, because you truly are interested in experiencing what is true, and for that moment you are willing to abandon what you believe is true, so that you might become free of the entanglement of the state of confusion that a mind that cannot tell the difference between what is Real and what isn’t real, is subject to.

Don’t laugh.

That is what it teaches.

… why does it teach it? So that you will be curious to experience it. So that you will invite the experience of it in. So that you will abandon your habit of trudging along repeating the old paradigms.

That’s the question. Do you believe that only Reality is true?

[laughing] If you believed that only Reality was true and that you weren’t experiencing it yet, if you believed that only Reality was true, why you would be busy everyday doing what is essential to letting it in.

Now, we’re talking in a larger picture here about Reality universally, but we can apply this to the Reality of specific things, like a Brother or a Sister, who is in a state of fear, listening to the voice for fear and acting out their fear, which is a call for Love. What do you do? You come back to the point of remembering that only Reality is true, and that at the moment you’re not seeing it, and therefore you really do want to see it, so that you shift your own use of your mind into an abandonment of the pleasure or fascination with conflict. And you move from that into a devotion to Peace, Singularity, where the purity of Love and Life can register with you so that you’re not confused, so that you can tell the difference between what is Real and what is unreal, and in that clarity automatically abandon any devotion whatsoever to what is unreal, and thus move into a state of Singular-Mindedness.

Only Reality is true.

In other words, when you have the experience that only the Real is true, when you have the experience of God in a thing, you will realize that your experience of it had been an interpretation, and the interpretation wasn’t true. And that realization will only last a moment, because you will be consumed with and interested only in having the experience of What Is True.

… everything you made up …

… the good stuff you made up as well as the bad stuff …

It will be forgotten.

The believers in quote “the world doesn’t exist” unquote love that statement. They say, “It says right in the Course, ‘even the real world will vanish from your sight.’”

It’s simple. As you wake up, as you move through this awakening process, as enlightenment registers with you, you will begin to learn that the world as you’ve been seeing it, is not the way the world really is. And there is a world that really is, that is available for you to see. And so it would seem that there are two things going on, when there is really only one thing going on called a Real World that is being misperceived. And the misperception seems to suggest a second world. So we talk then about a Real World and an unreal world. The unreal one is made up of all the definitions you’ve applied to the Real World.

You see, like pin the tail on the donkey, if you have the donkey on the wall and you pin a peacock’s tail to it, you could call it a “pea-mule” or a “pea-donkey.” Does that mean there’s such a thing as a pea-donkey? No. But you could become committed to that idea, and you could draw pictures and paintings of pea-donkeys. And everybody could become familiar with a pea-donkey. And everybody could say, “Yes. Yes. There are pea-donkeys. We’ve never seen one. We heard that there were some sightings up in the Northwest. We’ve found some strange tail feathers where you wouldn’t expect to find them. But, no, we’ve never seen a pea-donkey. But they do exist. And we found some strange footprints that probably could only have been made by a pea-donkey. And we can tell that it probably weighs about 250 pounds.” And blah, blah, blah.

So we talk as though there’s a Real World and an unreal world. When you abandon your commitment to your definitions and your beliefs so there is an innocent mind that’s unguarded, Reality can register with you. And as it registers with you and causes you to become aware that the world you have been seeing hasn’t been real, you’re in a position of shifting your allegiance from the unreal world to the Real World. The moment you shift your allegiance to the Real World, which is your experience of Reality, the unreal disappears and you could say that you’re momentarily left with the illusion that you’re in the Real World that was in contrast to the unreal world. But the moment that full unguarded embrace of the Real World happens, it ceases to be the Real World and you are experiencing Heaven.

Now:

Which I referred to in the past as Knowing, with a capital “K”. It is the experience of Truth that could be called Knowing, or Knowledge, that hasn’t been arrived at through intellectual processes, that hasn’t been arrived at through reasoning, that hasn’t been arrived at through discussion and mutual agreement. It’s something that is, before you could have a single thought about it.

You see? Remember that we’re backing off from the human condition that we’ve been discussing for the last few weeks, we’re backing off from that in order to consider the use you as a possible agent for change need to bring into play in order to truly be an agent for change. So we’re abandoning the ones calling for help in order to get our mind into that place of clarity where you can extend the awareness of Truth that has arisen out of an experience of What It Is.

You look at the flower and you say, “I perceive a flower.” But I’m telling you, you don’t perceive its Meaning. You don’t see God there. And if you’re not seeing God there, you’re seeing a perception, a misperception. You’re seeing a nothingness which you are devoted to, to the exclusion of the experience of What It Really Is.

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind. It’s not something far off and very different, radically different from you. It’s the very core of you. It’s the very essential Being of you.

So when you are confronted with a Brother or a situation that calls for correction, or that is a call for Love, you must be careful not to suddenly jump into the fray, thinking you have the answer without first acknowledging that you don’t have the answer, and because at the moment you’re not seeing it with the Holy Spirit, or with me, that you are not in a position of responding constructively. And so you back off and ask, “What is the Meaning here? What am I to be here?”—without bringing into your question a dance of all the little concepts that you have stored up for such an emergency, to be used in an emergency, and trying to fit them into the answer that the Holy Spirit will give you. You really need to want to go into this place of asking, this place of inquiry about what Truth is, with total innocence.

Well, now if you were misguided, then you could be guilty. You could feel shame. You could feel guilt.

But you’re not misguided; you simply have accepted no guide at all. So that knowledge means that it’s very easy for you to say, “Holy Spirit, guide me here. Father, guide me here. Jesus, guide me here. I will yield to your help. I will yield to your guidance. I will yield to the revelation of clarity that you hold in trust for me; that you have been holding in trust for me until I got tired of doing everything by myself.”

Continuing.

Now:

In other words, you need to recognize that you understand nothing, but don’t accept that as the truth about you. It is, at the moment, what you’re experiencing, but understanding is your inheritance. And it is there in you at every moment awaiting your welcome of it, and it’s called the Holy Spirit. It’s called your right Mind. Another way of saying it is that you must recognize that you understand nothing because you’re not utilizing your right Mind at the moment. But do not accept that as a permanent fact, because you can choose to look another way. You can choose to ask for the guidance. You can do something new.

Now:

Well, I don’t need to explain that, do I? That’s easy to understand. The key point is you are not without a Teacher, with a capital “T. A capital “T” Teacher you can depend upon, you can lean into completely, you can lean into without reservation, because that Teacher’s purpose is to remind you of Who You Are, to return your right Mind to you, if you’re willing to let it in once again.

How did you make the problem? “Father, I’d rather see it my way. Father, I want a divorce.” “Hey guys, I got a divorce. Would you believe it? Believe it! Let me tell you about it. You may want to get a divorce yourself. Come on. Let’s have a little get-together here and discuss this new way of being.”

How did God answer the problem? [small laugh] By causing you to be nothing different from Him, and therefore incapable of becoming something you’re not—which means that when you thought you became something you were not, when you thought you were successful at it, you had accomplished nothing at all, except to move yourself into a state of delusion temporarily, to abide there until you got tired of it.

There’s a saying, “Order is Heaven’s first law.” And many people who are very, very orderly in their life take pride in the fact that “Order is Heaven’s first law,” and they are expressing Heaven’s first law by the orderliness of their things and their life. And they try to help other people be orderly. [small laugh] But the key word is missing from that sentence. God’s Order is Heaven’s first law, not your concept of order. God’s Order is Heaven’s first law.

And so when you decide for the answer which you will have, it’s going to be God’s answer. God isn’t going to help you be more orderly according to your concepts of order. God’s answer is going to be the uncovering in you, the revealing in you of what Reality is, of what is Real. And you can thank your lucky stars that for the most part it isn’t going to have anything to do with what you thought everything had to do with. It’s going to be a most wonderful surprise. So when you ask for the answer, don’t try to drag your preconceptions into it, else you’re not asking with innocence.

Now we’ve spent a great deal of time here this evening describing in somewhat great detail the act of stepping back from a call for Love to attend to the use you’re putting your mind to, so that you might put it to the use that reflects God’s Purpose in you, rather than any purpose you’ve made up for yourself, so that you can respond to the call for Love and actually be an agent for change. I’ve used a lot of words, but the simple, the simplicity of it all, lies in at any given moment your saying, “Father, or Holy Spirit, what is the capital ‘M’ Meaning here? What do I need to know?”—and listening. It took all those words to embellish the simple act of sitting for a moment or an hour with a flower, desiring to know what its capital “M” Meaning is, and not introducing anything extra into the mix. It’s something that simple, something that peaceful, something that uncomplicated.

The key to its success is the devotion you bring to the intent in the moment, because you could sit there for an hour with the flower, without any impetus, without any motivation to actually have the experience, and sit there pleased with yourself because you have been willing to take a whole hour for this holy exercise of being willing to experience the Meaning of the flower. You’ve got, as I said last week, to be hungry for the experience. There has to be desire there. And the desire will not come from your ego frame of reference. The desire will come from the Christ in you that you are.

I look forward to being with you next week, and I love you.

And I invite you to enter into this simple act that we’ve talked about at some length. Do I want the problem, or do I want the answer? Decide for the answer, and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already.

That is enough.