Teachings of Christ Mind

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

During the past week somebody commented that here we had been talking about healing for three or four weeks, and then suddenly last week we moved in an entirely new direction because suddenly we were talking about your Brother being your savior, and the necessity for involvement, the necessity of letting down the defenses, the barriers, the boundaries that keep each of you separate from each other in your mind and cause you along with everyone else to feel alone even in the midst of a large crowd. Well, this is part and parcel of the subject of healing. Your Brother is your savior because he provides you with the opportunity or, as I said last week, the demand to be What You Truly Are; to perform the function that it is your purpose to perform, to be.

Well, as I also discussed last week, doing this takes time. Involvement is messy. Involvement is more than just the experience of lofty platitudes. It is a dynamic connection between you and your Brother. And if your Brother finds himself bound by justifications in his own “mindset about existing” and is suffering, you must be willing to not cringe in the presence of that, but to be at peace enough within yourself to be able to be present with your Brother or your Sister right there in the muddle, so that you in your non-reaction to what he’s reacting to might gently be the presence that leads the way out of the muddle.

Now there is an experience that’s related in the Bible about a day when I and my disciples were out in the city, and it was a busy day in the marketplace and there were lots of people, and I sensed, as I said, that virtue had gone out from me and I said, “Who touched me?” And one of my disciples said, “The people throng you and you’re asking who touched you?” And I said, “Yes, because I perceive that virtue has gone out from me.” I knew I felt that a connection had occurred in which a union or a unity gelled where I was present with someone who experienced being present with me. In other words, the two of us experienced being boundaryless. And as it turned out, it was a woman who, as the Bible says, was suffering from an issue of blood. Contemporarily you could say that it was a hemorrhaging. And in that moment of communion she was healed.

Now it’s my intent tonight to encourage you to find ways to get over the hurdle you feel that keeps you from connecting with your Brother in a transforming way. You just can’t continue being so lofty in your spirituality that you begin to see it as beneath you to muck around with those who are still involved in the muddle. The need is not for more distance, more separation between you and your Brother, but less, where your defenses dissolve.

Now someone else this week was sharing joy at the discovery of some literature about healing that went into quite some detail about actual healings that occurred, and was quite impressed and excited at hearing of actual experiences of healing. And indeed, hearing of healing, actual healing, is inspiring. But in the same conversation, this person also shared that she had received a phone call from someone who shared that they were going through a problem having discovered that they have an unhealable disease, and said, “I feel so sorry for her.”

As you look at what I’ve just described, can you see the disparity between the experience of joy and excitement about healing, and the fact that in the same time period that this joy was being experienced, she was experiencing sadness at this friend’s predicament? That’s like having, as we discussed last week, two different wants and being split, but not recognizing that it’s split, because in both cases, I will tell you, that there’s an underlying caring, an underlying love of Truth, an underlying love that is extended both to the new news about healing as well as the new news about the unhealable. And this person did not recognize the difference, did not recognize the polarity between the two views.

And I must ask you all, when you are relating to your Brothers and Sisters, are you in a place in your mind where you feel virtue going out from you? To say, “I feel so sad about this person,” does not allow virtue to go out because virtue, the consciousness of Truth, and the unreserved sharing of it, extending of it, cannot occur while feeling sorry for this friend’s predicament prevails or takes up room in one’s mind. Virtue can’t possibly go out.

Now the saying is, “As ye sow so shall ye reap.” In other words, the messengers you send out are the messengers that will come back confirming what they were sent out to find. Well, it’s not that simple because the messengers you send out, the seeds you plant, what you sow in your relationship with others, doesn’t just come back to you, reporting back to you what they were planted to blossom into or grow into; they affect others as well.

It’s sort of like the craziness of biologically changing plants and fruits and vegetables so that, for instance, they might grow in an easily packagable size. Because there’s no way to keep what you’ve done private, you plant it somewhere, even in a greenhouse, and try to keep the new strain separate from everything else, and you cannot guarantee that some ant, or bug, or bee, won’t find its way to the blossom, and then find its way out and spread the new strain until perhaps the original is no longer available.

You know from reading the Course that there are no private thoughts. There are no seeds planted that are exclusively yours. “Oh, I sent out my messengers, and my messengers came back to me. It was a private deal.” You see? No, you send out your messengers and they meet the world, and the world is affected, and indeed they come back to you.

Now there’s a new way of being, there’s a new way of being in your minds that you need to wrap your mind around, if I may say so, so that you might see that more discipline is necessary if indeed you want to be miracle-minded, and if indeed you want to be an agent for change, if indeed you wish to glorify God and have that glorification manifest.

We’ve talked for a great length of time, years, about healing, but how many of you know anything about healing? In other words, what do you do when healing is needed? Could you sit down and write a ten page explanation? Or have you let the information that I have shared register with you, inspire you with a little bit of a high and a little bit of excitement, but have never let it move you to a point of involvement with your Brother where virtue goes out from you?

To have virtue go out from you means that you have to have an intent to not be the presence of something else, to not be the planter of the seeds of disease. How do you plant the seeds for disease? Well, you can be sure and tell everybody about the bird flu, and what the latest news is about it, and how afraid they ought to be about it. You can do that. Or when others are talking about their concerns about the bird flu or an incurable problem that they’re having, you can perhaps not be the initiator, the planter of the seed, but you can be the one who waters the seed by neglecting to do anything to correct it. “Oh, I feel so sorry for her, as though I have great compassion for her.” Well, compassion… that’s nothing but bullshit, because it’s a meaningless act of quote “caring.”

Did this person, in response to the one sharing the bad news, say: “Well, you know what? No matter what the doctors say, here’s where I stand on it and I don’t go along with them because I know, and I know you know, that this is an illegitimate imposition upon you, and that it is a result of a misunderstanding, a belief that you’re entertaining, and nothing else. And I am going to ask the Holy Spirit to help you recognize what this belief is, so that you might release it. In fact, I’m going to be willing to be present with you, listening myself for what that element is, or what it is that it will take to break the mesmerism of the belief structures you’re bound by. And I will do that until I feel virtue go out from me.”

“Oh, there’s this thing of taking time.” And actually caring enough to be involved, to be present with that person until an involvement occurs where virtue goes out from you. That’s how you be an agent for change. That’s how you embody miracle-readiness, and that’s how you inspire miracle-readiness in another.

You know, the computer is a wonderful thing, and the internet is repository of humongous amounts of information. And you can go online and every ailment that has ever been experienced can be looked up, and you can find out its description, its stages of development, and whether it’s curable or incurable. You can find out all about it so that you may know exactly what to expect if you seem to be experiencing that particular ailment. Well, the gestation period is such-and-such, the recuperative period is such-and-such, and here are the symptoms that you will experience at each stage.

Now what if you’re the one saying this to another who is having a problem? You’re planting the seeds. You’re watering the belief structure. You’re watering, nurturing, confirming the disease to be real, so real that it can be mapped out. There is a blueprint for every human ailment.

“Oh. Well, here’s this blueprint, and you know what? I read this blueprint under a medical search program, and people who know what they’re talking about and who have examined and researched these things, have found this is the way it is.” And what happens? You read it and you say, “The educated perspective that has been presented here is justification for me to accept what’s being said.”

And I will tell you that whatever you can justify, you will have. And whatever you justify to another is likely to be taken as justification and applied to that one’s situation, and because it’s justified, it is what that person will have. But it’s all crap! There is another way, always, to look at the situation.

And there are only two ways to look at the situation: one is through the eyes of the Voice for Truth, and the other is through the eyes of the voice for fear. One reports the Truth. And one reports illusion; one reports lies; one reports what is not true.

Be careful, because if you justify a certain period of time from the beginning to the end of an episode of a virus, and you say, “This is the way it is. And by my telling you the way it is, you can relax a little bit, knowing what you’re going to have to endure and that you won’t have to endure it forever.” You know, this wonderful saying of encouragement, “This too shall pass.” The statement initiates or inspires no correction. It just says, “You can count on it being endurable.”

“This too shall pass.” Well, isn’t all of human life made up of, “This too shall come to pass, including you. You, too, will pass, you know.” And in fact, don’t many of you use [small laugh] your “confidence in passing on” to help you have the strength to live today, because you won’t have to be here forever. “Oh, I, you know, reasonably only have five more years, six more years to live. And it’s a little bit rough but, you know, it’s not going to last forever.” No, it’s going to end when you end. And where’s the enlightenment? Where’s the healing? Where’s the correction of the problem – now?

You see, the way you think – “this too shall pass, this can be endured because this too shall pass”—is a frame of mind that gets applied to everything you look at. It’s, you know, the end of spring, the beginning of summer, the plants are growing beautifully and the slugs are eating away at it all, and you say, “Yep, well, fall’s coming. It’s gonna get cold, and this too shall pass.” You see? “This won’t go on forever.” Or it’s a really hot summer, you say, “Well, this too shall pass. Winter’s going to come.” And then it’s really cold, and you say, “Well, this too shall pass, because spring is going to come and it’s going to warm up.” You see? Where’s redemption in that? Where’s regeneration in that? Where’s healing? Where’s correction? Where’s waking up in that?

And are you not by your very words justifying the situation as it is, plus the cyclical nature of it? Oh, interesting. S-i-c-k-l-i-c-a-l. Sicklical. The sicklical nature of problems. “But fortunately none of them last too long to be unendurable and to keep your spirits completely down.” You think like this thoughtlessly. In other words, not much thought is given to your thinking.

You’re not thinking much about what you’re thinking about. You’re not paying much attention to the use to which you’re putting your mind. And so since no change is called for, no change is had. Since nothing new is justified, nothing new is experienced because what you can justify, you will have. What you justify, you have.

When Paul was in his early twenties, there was a day that he happened to notice a rash developing which he recognized as measles. Well, he knew that there was a blueprint to the development and disappearance of measles. But that isn’t what he gave his attention to. He immediately gave his attention to the fact that it was illegitimate; that it wasn’t the Truth; that it wasn’t God-derived. Well, someone else could have said to him, “Well, you know, it’s going to go through this stage and it will take a certain number of days. And then it’ll go through another uncomfortable stage and that will take a few days. Blah, blah, blah.” But within two hours all evidence of it was gone.

Now I just reported to you an instance of healing where the blueprint became meaningless. You have got to begin to let the blueprints become meaningless to you, because all they are, are a collection of thoughts or beliefs that had been put together [in] which you have said, “Why, that’s completely justifiable to me.” And because you’ve justified it, you have it. But you don’t have to justify what isn’t true. You don’t have to justify beliefs.

You’ve really got to want to begin to know the Truth. And Truth isn’t a collection of beliefs. And after all the time we’ve been together, you know how to get to the Truth. You know that you must stop thinking, that you must become still, and you must be willing to devote yourself to hearing God’s Truth about you. Not the doctor’s best opinions, but God’s Truth about you.

You have to become a devotee of Love and its unalterable movement into expression everywhere, including right where you are, including right where the problem seems to be. And you’ve got to be willing to hang out there, perhaps like a monk in a monastery, but as a seeker of Truth in your own mind, where there’s a holy devotion, the purpose of which is to hear God, to hear the Truth, to experience the Truth, to experience virtue coming out to you that fragments the justification, that fragments whatever it was that you were holding on to that said, “Not only is what’s happening to me possible, it’s inevitable. And I have no choice about it.”

And likewise for your Brother, you see? The Truth or the illusion that you hold yourself to, is the Truth or illusion that you will hold your Brother to. Whichever it is, the messengers accompanying it are what you will send out to your Brother.

Are you going to dare to be in the world in a new way, and stop planting or watering the seeds of messages of death? Because disease is a message of death; it’s just that some diseases don’t get you all the way to the grave. And if you don’t know by now that what I’m talking about with all of you is that which undoes your ever getting to a grave, well, then I will persist in sharing that with you until it registers with you, until I experience virtue going out from me and touching you, and changing you because it’s helped uncover a bondage that, if you had seen it for what it is, you never would have engaged in.

Your Brother is your savior because he gives you, presents you with the opportunity to abandon your isolation, and to be present with him honestly enough…

(PAUL: Just a moment.)

… and vulnerable enough to let a Love connection occur, because it’s your goal to see the evidence of Love and to be the evidence of Love. Anything less than that involvement, that connection with your Brother, anything other than that is going to amount to a head trip.

“Oh, I’m holding you in a ball of light.”

“Okay, if you want to. I’d much rather connect with you. I’d much rather experience your presence here with me. But, hey, if you want to imagine a ball of light around me, oh, go ahead.”

You see? Anything other than “the connection” becomes nothing but some form of a mental incantation, like saying “Shazam!” and that’s supposed to make everything all right. Well, [laughing] you can sit on a desert island all by yourself, where nobody knows where you are because you told no one where you were going, and you can sit there and say “Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!” all day long and all night long for days and weeks, and the incantation will do nothing. Why? Because you’re all by yourself, and you’re all by yourself on purpose. With great resolve, you’re all by yourself. You went to a great deal of trouble to be all by yourself. You went to a great deal of trouble to be absolutely sure there would be no involvement.

Well, why do you suppose the idea found form in the words, “No man is an island”? Because every single one of you are living as though you were “an island” with a very definite boundary around you—and everything inside the boundary, you say, is “me” and everything outside of the boundary is “not me.” It’s very distinct. It’s very absolute. And it’s not true!

Everything you experience is some aspect of the infinitude of your Being, of your Infinite Being. And the boundary you hold so close to you, that you separate yourself from your Brothers with, is absolutely nothing more than a figment of your imagination. But it is a figment which you have reinforced so solidly that you believe it’s true. It is, however, nothing more than a belief.

“Oh,” you say, “there’s not enough time in eternity for me to be significantly present with all of my Brothers going through all of their shit with them and helping them become free of it. It’s an impossible task.”

Fortunately, it just takes your dealing with the few people that are in your experience. To be the one, or the one of many ones who are pushing the first domino and who, because of the plants you’re seeding, because of the seeds you’re planting, are causing the simple gift of attention and communion to spread without your having to plant every seed, because the seed that’s planted grows and flowers and puts forth seeds that you don’t have to cultivate, and it goes on and on and on. There are people in your immediate experience who need your love, who need your willingness to be in the place within yourself where you’re not rehearsing the justifications for death, or near death, or slight physical inconvenience.

Mind you, that the justifications for illness that you sow by communicating them to your friends—which if they’re not alert, will cause them bondage—you are bound by. Whatever the gift is that you give, you receive; you get to keep.

Now we have an anesthesiologist in the room who has knowledge about the blueprint of disease and physical abnormalities, let’s say, whose task is to work with those who are in surgery for the correction of the problem. Now you are faced with this on a daily basis. But you know what? If there’s someone who’s come in because there’s a melanoma on his face and it’s going to be surgically removed, you by virtue of not finding the justification for the disease that the physicians find and that the patient himself finds, could very well be the trigger that causes the melanoma to dissolve before the surgery can begin. “Oh, dear! That might put you out of a job!” Well, it might, but what a wonderful thing.

But that’s the kind of changing of one’s mind that will occur. This is the kind of transformation that will occur when instead of accepting the generally accepted justifications for things, you are willing to be in that place where virtue may go out from you, because the justifications everyone else finds valid are nonsense to you, because you’re willing to entertain a different perspective gathered from the Peace of your Being and your connection with the Holy Spirit, or me, or the Father—that which will always and only be reflecting your right Mind. There needs to be more expectation of instantaneous healing that occurs without abiding by the physical laws of matter that seem to justify a particular time period of illness after which wellness returns, or a particular period of time of illness after which death occurs.

You’ve got to be radical. Otherwise what’s the point? What’s the point if actual complete correction of the problem can’t be experienced? Then you’re just using this book to make it a little bit easier to endure the inevitable.

And you may well become very familiar with the words in the book and be able to espouse them, while at the same time, so to speak, out of the other side of your mouth say, “Well, of course you’re feeling bad. You were exposed to some very potent chemicals.” You see? Wow, what a seed to plant! And if the person hearing that can seem to justify that in their mind, well, [small laugh] there went miracle-mindedness! Because what you can justify, you have.

Do you realize the dynamic powerfulness of that statement, “What you can justify, you will have?” “Well, I can’t justify instantaneous healing. Look at the damage!” Oh, okay, now the damage, the injury has become the justification for not expecting instantaneous healing. That’s not miracle-mindedness. And that is not the frame of mind in which a sudden shift of perception can occur, and therefore no shift of perception, no shift of the conscious experience of Being can occur. And it won’t! What you can justify, you will have.

You know, somebody says to you, “Oh, I’m having this condition,” and instead of saying, “Well, you know, the gestation period is three days,” you say, “You know, I know what everybody says about this, but I can’t justify that in my mind, because the only thing that makes sense to me is that you’re a divine idea. You’re the direct expression of God. You are the presencing that God is making of Himself right there where you stand. And I can’t justify having a conscious experience different from or less than that. And that’s where I’m going to stand. And if you’d care to stand there with me on it, that would be great.” And if that one doesn’t stand with you on it, that’s okay, because you’ve planted a different seed, instead of planting one that confirms the problem together with its blueprint, or watering and nurturing the blueprint that that person is holding in their mind.

You are either planting seeds of destruction, or you are watering them by neglecting to do anything that will correct them. And the key point is that each of you “in you” has the capacity to be that trigger that undoes the mindset, the belief system that holds the problem in place.

And if you have that capacity, well, I could throw a guilt trip on you by saying, “How can you go to bed at night without having engaged that capacity? When you have that gift to give, how can you go to bed at night and sleep peacefully if you have withheld that gift?”

But there’s a better way to put it; one that doesn’t instill guilt. “If you have the capacity to make that gift and making that gift brings your mind into greater Singularity that is more reflective of the Father’s Mind, which is what truly constitutes your Mind, and if you have the capacity to do this and more clearly express your Birthright, and be able to come back into the truer experience of your Being in which all of your suffering can disappear, and fulfillment beyond your comprehension can register with you, then… ” You see, I’m not going to say, “Why aren’t you engaging in it?” Because then that’ll send you on a search for the flaw in you—the “Why is it? Why is it, what is there in me that keeps me from my Good?” You see?

My question is, “If you have the capacity to give this gift, to make this gift,… ” No, it can’t be a question at all. “If you have the capacity to make this gift, then make the gift.”

I encourage you to be willing to be the oddball. I encourage you to be one who no longer continues to pass the justifications for sin, disease, and death on to each successive generation. I encourage you to break the line of history. You see, part of the justification for illness is that “historically” this is the way this disease behaves. So not only is there a “learned one” making the statement, it’s being tied in with “historical evidence.”

“Whoa! How can you fight historical evidence. Historical evidence is even more binding than brand-new evidence that was just discovered yesterday. At least there you can say, well, I’m gonna wait before I accept that justification because tomorrow somebody may come up with a different interpretation. I mean, after all, last week they said, ‘Coffee was bad for you,’ and this week they say, ‘Coffee is good for you. Tests have proven it.’” You see? Quote: “If it’s ‘historically provable,’ therefore as far back as recorded history is available, this disease function, this functions this way, well, what can you do?”

What you can do is remember that you see what you’re looking with. You see what you’re looking with, what you are looking for. The impetus for the inquiry that causes the messengers to be sent out sets in motion what the news is that the messengers will bring back. That’s what you must remember. And that has nothing to do with a history more than a [snap of the fingers] split second long from the moment the curiosity was there to the moment the confirmation comes back. That’s all the history there is to consider.

I wish to see the evidence of Love in my Brother. I see, I wish to see the evidence of Love, with a capital “L”. We’re talking about Divine Love. I wish to see the evidence of Love on my skin in spite of what history says about what appears to be on my skin. That’s the way you get off the wheel of history. That’s the way you get in the venue, if I may put it that way, of instantaneous healing. Healing that’s not bound by physical laws, or time, or edified explanations.

Where are you going to go to gather your information about how you are? To medical documentation on the internet? To your own body? To your memories about similar conditions or situations in the past? In other words, [small laugh] are you going to look for what you’re already familiar with? What has already been? Or are you going to inquire of a more expansive source—the Holy Spirit which is nothing more than your right Mind? And your right Mind is the presence of Mind that is God being All There Is, and so you’re absolutely and totally divine in your actuality right now.

And I’m inviting you to shift from the voice for fear—which is the voice of history, which is the voice of your beliefs which have been built around a premise that you’re an orphan, isolated, alone, solitary, and having to demonstrate your validity—or are you going to inquire, I’m asking you to shift from that to the arena of your true Birthright where you ask of your Source what the Truth is. To ask for inspiration that lifts your capacity to perceive beyond the level of perception you have been currently employing, so that you might see the world from a different vantage point, and find that it’s the Kingdom of Heaven, and find no evidence of anything unlike the Kingdom of Heaven, which would be called healing.

Now I’m going to suggest something else. If you’re in need of healing, find someone else that you know who is in need of healing, and be willing to be present for them from that place in you that is guided and nourished by the Father’s Point of View, by the Father’s capital “L” Love. And be willing to let virtue go out from you in spite of your condition, because remember what you give, you get to keep.

Now this coming week, I want all of you to read the next three or four paragraphs that we would have read tonight, because you will find them illuminating what I’ve talked about. We will still read them with fresh eyes next week.

But it is truly important for you all to stop thinking that you can read the Course or hear what I’m having to say and still straddle the fence; still walk with one foot in one camp and the other foot in the other camp, and not recognize that you are expressing two different wants simultaneously that are contradictory of each other, and you’re making it one. You do not see it as an evidence of lack of integrity in you. You do not see it as the confusion it is. And you do not see, as we read last week, that when you make the two one, you recognize neither one of them. If you recognize neither one of them, you don’t have either one of them. Healing is when you have one or the other.

Now if you try to have the illusion, you can’t succeed, so I’m going to give you a little helpful advice. If you want to have the illusion, go for it! Try to possess it, try to make it your own, so that you find out that you can’t sooner than if you have this intent, this want that’s contrary to this want and you’re going to maintain them both and think that there is perfect consistency in you.

Somebody who’s an alcoholic, or has been an alcoholic but is trying to break the habit, might say, “I cannot conceive of, let’s say, living for five years without having a drink. That would be an incredibly difficult task.” And all of you, like alcoholics, or addicts, let’s say, might say, “Wow, it would really be difficult for me to neglect to reinforce the old justifications, the old explanations of the physical processes of sin, disease, and death and to always be free, empty of those justifications and all the ramifications that they had for me.” But I’m telling you it’s your Birthright to be empty of those.

And I’m encouraging you this week to watch to see what the seeds are you’re planting, and to watch to see when you’re shifting from one opposing side to the other opposing side. And you’ll find, generally speaking, that you’ll do the shifting when it fits the occasion. So if you’re with your spiritual friends, you say it one way. And with your non-spiritual friends, you’ll talk about the inevitability of disease and the stages of its process, and the process of death. “I mean, after all, life is a terminable disease, isn’t it?” No, it’s not.

And what you’re all faced with is the delight of discovering that. And the discovery of that is “the correction” of the problem, in which all evidence of disease, of “sin, disease and death” will disappear. So now you are, I hope, a little bit clearer about what the word “healing” means and what’s involved.

One additional thing, and it’s for you to look at—and not for you to report to anyone—each night when you go to bed this coming week, ask yourself whether at any point during the day you felt virtue go out from you. If you didn’t, then know that you have another opportunity another day in which to bring your mind into that kind of attentiveness where there’s a more ever-present willingness to be the presence of Love in a way with your Brother that will allow virtue to go out from you with the potential of healing occurring, because that kind of attentiveness, or self-discipline, is what will move you out of your old habits, and allow a gradual and graceful movement into, what I’ll call, a new arena of consciousness, a new arena of being conscious which embodies more of the Truth of What You Are, which embodies more of and glorifies more of what God is being right there where you are.

Love each other as I love you.

Now, that sound like hard work? Well, I’ll tell you what hard work would be. If I told you this week, “Get out there and be a bad-ass mother-fucker,” now that would be hard. So if you’re inclined to complain or feel that I’m… you’re being put upon to do something not really easy, change your mind ’cause otherwise I just might arrive at a day where I tell you.

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