Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Well, is everyone being offended less and less? If you aren’t, I trust that you are beginning to find that taking offense is a reaction that you don’t have to employ, and that there is an option to it. Because the more clear you become on that fact, the less you will be governed by the very thing that keeps you from being a truly effective presence in your world; the more you will find yourself able to be a practical, concrete agent for change.

And I encourage you to continue to pay attention, because whenever you find yourself in a state of reaction—which is another way of saying “taking offense”—you may know that you are not functioning on all cylinders. And you want to be functioning on all cylinders; you really do.

I trust that you will more conscientiously make the choice to abandon the knee-jerk response of taking offense, and replace it with the wish to see the Truth right there where “that which is offensive” appears to be going on. This will, in very practical terms, bring each of you back into harmony, Singularity of Mind, with a capability of having singleness of purpose as you pay attention to your conscious experience of friends, neighbors, world, and so on.

It’s very simple. And any of you who are watching television are aware that there’s a great need for what? Peacemakers. But those who are engaged in reaction can’t possibly be peacemakers, because the experience of peace isn’t available within them to convey, to extend, to put into the air, in terms that will make the possibility of changing from conflict to peace real. You see, what’s needed is not just people thinking peaceful thoughts, keeping their mind peaceful. What’s needed is those who are willing to abandon reaction in favor of choosing for their peace. Why? So that they might express it. So that as it infills you, it spills over into your behavior, so that it spills over into your words, so that it spills over into the direction you’re taking, and spills over as your ability to encourage others to take a different direction.

Let’s go into the book. This section is called:

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Now …

… in other words, that their point of view constitutes their salvation.

Anybody understand what that meant?

Let’s go back …

Even humanly speaking, you would have to say that if you dare to become involved with another with love, that it causes you to be vulnerable. Right? Love is unprotected. Love is the willingness to simply be genuine. Love is the willingness to express your deepest feelings. Love is your comfort level that allows you to honestly share yourself. But, again, that’s interpreted to mean that you are putting yourself in a position of being vulnerable. So even at a human level, the ego is certain that love is dangerous.

What you’re not aware of is that …

And why? Well, what is the ego? The ego is the ideas, the theories, the definitions of your world and yourself that you have given yourself after you got a divorce from the Father and said, “I’m just a human being. There may or may not be a God, but I exist.” You see? And when you got this divorce from your Father, you abandoned your Birthright. You didn’t know that was going to happen, but that is what happened.

So you’re now poverty-stricken. You’re now an orphan without an inheritance. You are a presence without a source other than what you perceive to be your very own mind. You’re private, in other words. And you’re separate from everything else. Now you’re not experiencing yourself as you truly are.

And, in that frame of mind as we’ve said before, you have taken this new situation, this new experience of being, with its vulnerability, with its loneliness, with its isolation—even though you’re in the middle of an infinite Universe and millions of Brothers and Sisters—and you have taken this sense of life as a challenge to succeed on your own and to build up a sense of yourself, a picture of yourself, a definition of yourself; one that has increasing, ever increasing substance and ever increasing respectability. And you engage in proving to your Brothers and Sisters who are all unlike you, because they’re orphans as well, having no Father, having no relationship with you other than by association. And you live life totally alone, totally isolated.

And you have developed theories. You have developed explanations. You have developed what you could call “programs of behavior” and “programs of thought;” some of them you called manners—ways to relate to your Brother that will get the maximum out of the relationship. And you have found that if you’re relatively kind, you will be met “in kind” by your Brothers.

And so you have developed a “theory of love.” But always what love means, at the bottom line, is whether you’re getting stroked by your Brother; what you’re getting from your Brother. “Is my Brother confirming my value? Is he confirming my value enough? Am I getting enough nourishment from my Brother? And if not, why not?” And all of this develops into what is called “social behavior.” You see, that’s not love.

And even though you say, “Well, what really works well is for me to be genuine and honest and open and vulnerable, and for the most part that tends to work well,” but what is the reason? The reason is so that your behavior elicits a confirming response from out there. To the degree that you develop this skill well, you’re able to credit yourself more and more with being a reasonable and contributive social creature. And so you are building and substantiating your sense of who you are. And of course, this is the number one goal, because in your divorced state, in your orphanhood, you don’t experience any self worth independent of the feedback you get from your world—because, of course, your “Birthright box” is empty.

Now, the fact is, and what all of you are at the threshold of making sense out of—I mean I know you know all the words, you know the theory, and you like it—but making sense out of it so that it becomes incorporated into your experience is what you’re still on the threshold of.

At the bottom line, love is when you abandon the ethic of being an independent authorizer, an independent agent, and you say, “I dare to acknowledge that I am nothing on my own because I did not create me. And the only way for me to know what I am in the fullness of what I am is to remember my Creator, and is to invite Him back in; to bring God back into the picture.” But in order to do that, you’ve got to make room for more than numero uno. You’ve got to make room for God as well. And the minute you do that, you are undermining all the work you’ve been doing to create a self that’s creditable and respectable, that has substance and power. That is frightening to the ego.

True Love is frightening to the ego because it undermines everything about the ego. In order to truly let love in and through you as a gift to your world instead of something to get from your world, you are invalidating this ego creature that you have imagined yourself to be, and maybe spent lifetimes building up into something significant.

That is why …

… on the packs of cigarettes it says, “Smoking is dangerous to your health.” And in the ego’s book it says that, “Love is dangerous to the ego’s existence”—because it undoes it.

So …

Why is it “its central teaching”? Because it’s what must be reasserted and reestablished consistently in order for the ego not to go up in a puff of smoke.

Is the way it goes. Is the way it works. Is what makes life interesting and stimulating and worth living.

Now, it isn’t that the ego as an entity, as a consciousness capable of mental movement, decides to give you a proviso. It’s just that the ego itself is the absence of Love. You see? It is the incapacity to be permeable enough for the Love of the Father to enter it. And so what the ego is, is the incapacity to find love.

It’s the nature and way of being in the realm of the ego, in the realm of orphanhood.

And it will keep it because it’s incapable of being any different.

Its “reality testing” is a matter of constantly checking “out there” with your world, with the people you work with, with your employers, with your mates, with your children, your neighbors, your friends—you’re constantly looking “out there” for confirmation of your worth. That’s the only way it can work.

Because heaven help the ego if for a moment you softened and you let yourself be filled with God’s Love for you so that you felt it—which occasionally in moments of weakness you do—and then, feeling the Truth of it, couldn’t help but extend it to your Brothers and Sisters and employers, and on, and on, so that you were in a gift-giving mode; the experience of which, of the gift flowing through you, demonstrated that you are loved, and that your function is the capacity to be the Presence of Love that gets given away. And in that is your Fulfillment—not fulfillment as a head trip, as nice ideas—but as an experience that causes you, at least for the amount of time you’re able to entertain it, to experience your Wholeness that isn’t dependent upon anything anyone else does, or doesn’t do. Ah, an experience of your invulnerability.

It can’t succeed because love isn’t “out there” for you to obtain from your world—which is exactly where your ignorance directs your attention.

So, this is important.

… which you undertake from the premise of your ignorance of Who You Are.

… the ego …

Now this looks and sounds very bleak. And it is. But it’s not the Truth about you because you’re not the ego. The ego is nothing more than current ignorance which you are validating as true. That’s all. But it’s not the totality of your mind, and it’s not the totality of you.

Remember we mentioned last week the difference between “identification” and “Identity.” The ego is the definition you have created about yourself, and it’s also the definition that other people have managed to finesse you into taking on as the definition of yourself. So the “definition of yourself” is that which identifies you to yourself and others. It’s just identification. It’s like an identification tag. But the identification tag is on something Real—and that’s you. And the proper word for that is “Identity,” and Identity is God-derived.

But the ego …

… and …

“Oh, yeah.” How many of you have arrived at a point where you say, “Man, nobody loves me, nobody appreciates me”? And how many of you have experienced it seriously enough that you feel completely broken, broken down, invalidated, inconsequential, and enduring great grief and suffering because of it? That’s called “self-defeat.” “Nobody is validating me. I must be worthless.” You see? The ego has sent you on a journey looking for something Real, but in a place where it doesn’t exist.

And you have thought that it was a valid journey to be sent on. And, in fact, even in the depths of your despair, you are not likely to say, “Uncle.” You’re not likely to say, “Yes, I have been on a futile journey. Yes, I of myself, can do nothing. Yes, I of myself, all by myself, am nothing. And I’m going stop trying to be something, become something, and demonstrate it to everyone else and get their agreement. I’m going to go into the emptiness that I’m feeling. And because even without everyone else’s approval or anyone else’s approval, I’m still here. And I’m not busy creating myself. In fact I don’t have enough gumption or energy to even try to make something of myself. But nevertheless, here I am, talking to myself. Here I am, conscious. Here I am, experiencing being. So evidently I’m not responsible for myself. Something is. I’m going to reach out to It. I’m going to risk the chance that, indeed, this Something that is responsible for my being in this deplorable state that I’m in with no gumption or courage to take on the fight any longer, I’m going to risk the chance that It’s there and that It will respond.”

Ah, now you’re at the first stage of prayer. You’re at the threshold of really not giving your total allegiance to your ego. You’re at the point of inviting something else in and breaking the isolation. This is exactly why “the ego is certain that love is dangerous.”

So, the ego …

… and …

And you’ve got to let that defeat be defeat.

What happens though is, generally somewhere from some reserve way, way deep inside of you, you say, “I’m just exhausted. All I need is a little bit of rest and I can take on the challenge again. And I will behave a little bit differently. And maybe I’ll be a little bit nicer. And maybe I won’t be so overbearing. And I will have a new modus operandi to operate according to. And we’ll see if this works this time.” And you get right back on the ego bandwagon. And not having given up, not having said “Uncle,” not having been willing to step into the emptiness of not being anything all by yourself, you missed the opportunity for a sudden shift of perception to occur in which your opportunity to come back into your right Mind slips through your fingers.

If you understand that in this process of returning Home to the Father, returning back to your right Mind, is going to feel like defeat to this independent, self-authorizing entity that you have been creating, creating, creating—if you know that, then you will not take the bait, and you will not get back on the bandwagon, and your sense of failure will not be interpreted by you as your being on the wrong track. You will be able, at least intellectually, to say, “Wow. If it feels this bad, I must really be on the right track. And I’m not going to abandon this grievous feeling of self-defeat and being nothing.”

So the ego’s …

… perceived …

Well, how could it? It can’t embrace. It holds everything at arm’s length. “Nothing is like me. Everything is different. I am unique. I stand alone in my own right.” Then it says, “And it’s a God-given right. God gave me the right to stand alone. God created me to be independent and refine my soul.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But …

Now listen to this.

… the search for love is inevitable …

Now what does this mean? I’ve mentioned before that you are all the Christ; you are all at this very moment what God is presencing Himself as, right there where you are. But you’re not believing it. You are giving preference to your “much more limited” perception of yourself. And you are valuing that limited perception of yourself because it gives you something to build upon and create a better self out of yourself, all by yourself. That’s why you value it: because in the end you will be able to credit yourself for having made yourself better “all by yourself.” And that’s the ego hit that keeps you hooked.

Nevertheless, in spite of your ignorance of what you are, you are What You Truly Are and Love is the nature of your Being, and so the draw of Love registers with you. It’s just that the ego takes that and turns it to its own use, and does it in a way that ensures that you will never become unguarded enough and undefended enough for the Love of the Father to infuse you as it is its nature to do, and inspire you to the point where it spills over and you give love, whether you’re getting it or not! You see?

… your Mind. The Source of your Mind which is God.

… and …

… by the time I get finished talking to ya. No …

Well, that’s why we must talk about this so that you must see the idiocy of what the ego is suggesting to you, so that you may see that it is a faulty trip, that it is a trip that cannot be successfully made, that it is a dead end, and that as part of the dead end you will have to find out that you “on your own” are a failure. Why? Not because you didn’t have what it took, but because you don’t exist on your own, and so you should not be being, as you go through your day, on that basis. It’s a faulty basis that you can’t help but suffer failure from.

Now, another way of saying “suffer failure from” is to recognize that what doesn’t work, doesn’t work. You see? That’s what it means: to become aware that what doesn’t work, doesn’t work. That doesn’t attack your integrity. It allows you in your integrity to say, “Wow! Yeah. What doesn’t work, doesn’t work. And this doesn’t work. Therefore, I’m going to stop doing what doesn’t work. I’m going to do something else.” It empowers you.

Like a better psychological approach to finessing your good out of your fellowman. A new set of manners to be taught and to educate the population with so that their spontaneous, habitual behavior will be recognizably more harmonious. You see? All of this [is] nothing more than rules and definitions to abide by that don’t cause you to connect with what Love is at all. Just better behavior that keeps the ego in place and keeps everybody still ignorant of What They Divinely Are and of this incredible place every one is in, that is actually Heaven, but which they’re missing because they’re busy finessing love from their Brothers and Sisters, from memory, from habit, but not from feeling, not from Soul.

So …

… endlessly search …

The ego cannot recognize love, because in its busyness to find it “out there,” it is defended against letting it in “in here”—in your heart, in your Soul, in your Mind.

If you don’t realize it, give it a little bit of your attention this week. Just contemplate this sentence:

Now, I’m going to tell you [small laugh] that it’s already been leading you on a journey which has led you to a sense of futility and depression, and it’s called “the human condition.” Because the ego, that private little sense of self that you created for yourself by saying, “But, Father, I’d rather see it my way,” it has been causing you to be conscious in the middle of Kingdom of Heaven, without being conscious of it as the Kingdom of Heaven. And it has caused you to see yourself as an orphan, when you are the full-fledged, fully-empowered Son of God, direct expression of God, in every moment.

And as long as you insist upon going through your day unconscious of God being in it and unconscious of your true divine nature, you cannot possibly recognize yourself or the Kingdom of Heaven for what they truly are. And so you’re already in a sense of futility and depression. You may not believe it fully, but you cannot say that you are in any ongoing way experiencing bliss, invulnerability, peace, harmony, joy. So you’re already on this journey, and you want to abandon it.

Now we’ve talked in the past about the fact that you only have two choices available to you. You could say one of the choices is to behave as though you are independent, a self-authorized presence having creative power of your own, or, you are the offspring of God, you are the embodiment of what capital “S” Source is being right there as you. Another way of saying it, is that you can listen to the voice for fear, or you can listen to the Voice for Truth. There are only two options: unreality or Reality.

We’ve just talked about what “seeking and finding” looks like and means from the ego’s vantage point; what you will see and hear in your world if you’re listening to the voice for fear, which is the voice of the ego. Now we’re going to talk about what “seeking and finding” means when you’re aligned with the Voice for Truth, which is the Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your right Mind.

And I’m going to put another phrase in here for you to abide with: Be, and you will have. Become, and you will lack.

If you’re engaged in becoming something more, then you are moving forward on the basis of an absence of something that you must obtain. Emptiness is the motive. Emptiness is the justification. And the overcoming of emptiness is the goal. But that’s what the orphan feels. And the orphan is just the Christ unconscious of his divinity.

So …

Abandon becoming. That’s what happens when you get to the depths of the pits where you realize that you “on your own” are a failure. When you get to that point, you have the option to stop trying to become. And when you abandon becoming, you find, as I said, that you don’t disappear. You still are. And if you will dare to just be, instead of becoming, you will begin to have revealed to you all that is yours. And so, by being, you will have. You will be filled with what is already and eternally yours.

Now why is that? Again, the beautiful integrity of Reality is that if the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind, then your aligning with it as you abandon your sense of privacy, means you are aligning yourself with your Self, which is an integrating event which illuminates to you at an experiential level the unity of you, the indivisibility of you, and the complete incapacity you have to experience conflict because of what you really Are.

So under the Guidance of the Holy Spirit which is nothing more than your right Mind, you cannot be defeated. You can’t be defeated in waking up.

If the goal that your right Mind puts before you is for you to experience your right Mind, then it’s the intent of your right Mind to give your right Mind back to you and, you could say, give yourself back to your Self.

This world that you have made up. This world of orphanhood among orphans.

… why? Why would you have a longing, a yearning? Why does everybody have a longing and a yearning to go Home, whatever those words mean? Because your divine Being hasn’t forgotten Home. Your divine Being hasn’t forgotten what it is. And it is too wonderful to be able to completely forget.

And so the very Truth about you, the eternal Truth about you, isn’t some spiritual thing out in the ethers. It’s right in the very being of your consciousness every day. The desire is there because you are there; the True One that you are is there. And this effect can be described as the Holy Spirit reminding you of the Truth about you, and inviting you to pay attention to it, and to abandon the distractions that you entertain and validate all day long.

The difference is that you’re going to stop looking for it “out there.” You’re going to stop looking for that which validates you out there in your Brother’s approval, and you’re going to stop judging your competence by, or incompetence by the lack of approval you get from out there.

Now many of you have heard the phrase, “You see what you’re looking with.” And if you’re looking from an orphan’s mentality, you will see disassociation; you will see aloneness; you will see sourcelessness; you will see independent entities struggling on their own. And you will not be able to see that these individuals are really the Christ as the Father is being them right there, just as you are the Christ as the Father is being you right there. You see what you’re looking with. It’s all in the center of you, so to speak.

But I’ve just helped you to understand a little bit better how it could be that your Home is there within you.

You can rely upon that which is nothing more than your right Mind to lead you into a more and more solid Sanity, a greater and greater integrity, a clearer and clearer experience of your invulnerability.

Ah. As you experience the influx of the Truth about you and the Love that you experience in it, you will discover that it will be almost impossible not to let it overflow and spill over into your sharing with your Brothers and Sisters. Oh, what did I just say? Your sharing with your Brothers and Sisters, instead of your getting from your Brothers and Sisters—your gifting them.

To gift them with the acknowledgement of the Truth about them by remembering it for them, and reflecting it back to them, reminding them, so that they can’t possibly think that the only way there is to look at things is the ignorant way they’re currently looking at it, at everything; the limited way in which they’re looking at everything.

The Holy Spirit.

So that you might learn that indeed you never were an orphan. You never were limited. You never were tiny. You never were all by yourself any kind of authority. And any satisfaction that you had been fooled into believing you would get by being a successful, independent authority, was nothing but a bunch of hot air, pure illusion, that never could have satisfied you and can’t possibly trick you into going after it again.

If being unconscious of your Birthright is what you treasure, you will sell your Birthright. And you will commit yourself to this other thing. And you could say that your unconsciousness of What You Are is a “living death,” because it’s a “living unconsciousness” of What You Are right now.

Because you’ve sold everything else, you’re impoverished. You are empty. The fullness of life is not yours. And so you can be sure that you actually have purchased death. You actually have purchased unconsciousness.

And I’m going to add: You can’t sell your divinity. You can’t sell your Identity.

… no orphans …

I’ve reminded you before that the Holy Spirit is your right

Mind held in trust while you dally with the ego.

With enthusiasm! With a real willingness to embrace it.

And how do you do that? With conscientiousness you lean into it, even though you haven’t experienced it for a long time, and you begin to rely upon it and ask of it, “What is the Truth here?” before you jump to your well-defined conclusions and your mutually-agreed-upon definitions of manners, or proper behavior, or how to finesse the most out of your Brother.

And I could say: Your inheritance awaits only your recognition that you never were unredeemed.

You never actually succeeded in becoming less than the fullness of what God is being right there, because nothing you could imagine, could diminish what God is being.

You seek death. You engage in seeking for something that cannot possibly be where you’re looking for it. And so you’re committed to behaving in a way that will always result in defeat.

You know, I’m sure that you’ve observed people, not just people who aren’t experiencing incredible success and fullness in their life because they’re not doing it joined with the Father, but people who, I’m going to say, literally seek for love where it cannot be found. In other words, how many women or how many men look to get love from someone who cannot give it? How many look for love from someone who is so self-centered and so self-preoccupied, or so committed to what they want to do, that they don’t even recognize the presence of anyone else to extend to?

Now, this touches too close to home for almost everyone. Just because you happen to do it in more subtle ways yourself, or now as opposed to back when you did it in the grosser way, doesn’t mean that you can be happier with yourself. Because you still need to wake up. You still need to abandon looking for love where it doesn’t exist; trying to get your sense of your worth from others’ acceptance of you, from others’ praise of you, from others acknowledging that they feel you are worth a great deal to them. That’s not where your worth lies. What they’re appreciating is not what your worth is.

Your worth lies in What You Are, whether anyone is acknowledging you or not. It lies in your divine relationship with the Source of Being. It’s ever-present with you. It’s the inviolable state of your Being.

Seek and find. Stop becoming, and start being. Become, and find lack. Be, and find Wholeness. Be, and find. Be, and have. And start today.

And don’t get hung up on what others are, or are not, doing. Don’t get hung up on what that says or means about you. And do what you have to do to be able to be the presence of a gift that will bless your Brothers and Sisters by illuminating what is true about them because they can see it in you.

Remember, we’re talking about a simple thing: the choice between the voices you are listening to, the two voices, and the radical difference between the two ways of experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven are, depending upon which of the two voices you are listening to. All this should have done tonight is to make the difference clear enough that it’s easier for you to make a choice as to which way you are going to be.

Still, we’re talking about getting your head on straight. We’re still not talking about being an effective agent for change for someone else.

Okay.

I love you all.

And I want you to find a little joy this week from what we’ve discussed, and not further difficulty or tension. If you’re feeling incompetent, if you’re feeling like nothing you do does any good, take a look and see what you’re using as the measuring stick. Is it other people? Is it the way they’re behaving, or not behaving? If it is, you may know which voice you’re listening to. And you may know that if you’re listening to that voice, you cannot help but end up failing, having the experience of failing, having the perception of failing, even though it’s a false perception.

If you catch that, if you recognize it, you can turn to the other Voice—the Voice for Truth—so that you might have clearer experiences of what I’m going to call “reintegration within you,” where you are less flustered, where you are less discombobulated; experiencing less chaos, more peace, more harmony, more integrity.

Decide which voice you’re going to listen to and do it. Make a point … make a point one or two or three times a day to remember to lean into the Voice for Truth, even if at the moment you don’t know what that’s going to mean. Have the intent. Let there be the conscious awareness that it’s your desire to let in something other than what you’ve already imagined. Let there be moments where you are desiring a mutual joining, a partnership, where you’re not doing this alone and you are willing to give deference to the Voice of Wisdom, because you want to experience the Wisdom of your Being.

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