Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Before Paul learned how to meditate he thought that to be conscious meant to be thinking, and that the only time that thinking wouldn’t happen would be if he were unconscious, under anesthesia, or asleep. Not having had any other kind of experience beside constantly thinking while awake, he made the assumption that they were equivalent. And he had never had any contrary experience. And then he learned how mediate. And meditation, the practice of meditation took him into a place where he was perfectly conscious but there wasn’t a single thought streaming through his mind. And so he became free of the idea that being conscious was identical with thinking; that they were inseparable and inextricably bound, if not one and the same thing.

Now in a similar manner Paul, along with everyone else, has grown up having the experience of consciousness being a private experience. After all, you each are the only ones occupying the experience of awareness that you call “being conscious.” You think your thoughts. No one else knows them. You have your feelings. Unless you express them verbally, no one else knows what they are. And you never have an experience, generally speaking, of feeling or experiencing another presence in this arena of awareness that you’re experiencing. And so you have all assumed that this “private experience of being conscious” is normal and is the totality of being conscious.

Now, we’ve been discussing for a number of weeks now, the state of being an orphan, of orphanhood—the experience of being independent and private—and that, in effect, this state of orphanhood is quote “the problem of being” unquote, and that the answer to the problem is to break the privacy, to break the autonomy, to invite something else in—the Holy Spirit, me, the Father—to break the act of independence that none of you knew you were engaging in. And we talked also about the experience of having virtue go out from you, and that the only way you will have virtue go out from you is when you have broken the independence. You’ve negated the independence from your Father that you set into place, and said, “Father, what’s the Truth here? Fill me with what needs to be extended to my Brother. Help me to care enough to be present with my Brother in ways that allow virtue to go out from me.”

Now all of you have your moments, we’ll say, where you can be really, really sweet and very kind and very thoughtful. And you can relate to someone else with great care, and the caring is received and felt by the person you’re extending it to and they’re happier for it. But that does not necessarily constitute virtue going out from you, because you as a well-developed little ego who has learned exceptionally good manners and how to wrap people around your little finger and how to cajole them into cooperation and feeling good even, you can do all of this without abandoning your private state of independence from the Father. You just are a really skilled, well, P.R. orphan—really good at public relations. It’s one of those skills you’ve gotten under your belt that makes you feel like you are doing much better, and you are overcoming the negatives of orphanhood, and establishing so that everyone else can recognize it that you’re a good person, that you have substance to you, that your presence is meaningful.

So be alert when you go to bed at night and ask yourself whether virtue has gone out from you, because if there have been apparently beneficial interchanges with others during your day in which blessing seems to have occurred and you had no experience of communion or joining with the Father, virtue did not go out from you. And you need not to be fooled by the harmony and sweetness and apparent benefit that occurred during your day. It’s important for you to know that virtue has not gone out from you if virtue has not gone out from you, even though circumstances may seem to reflect back to you that something wonderful happened. You can get caught in behaviors of kindness and thoughtfulness and of virtuousness that are acts, that are part of your repertoire as an expanding and growing orphan. You see?

If the Father never came to your mind, if the Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—never came to your mind during the daytime when all of these things were happening, virtue could not have gone out from you. If you’re not plugged in, nothing can come through.

Now, before Paul learned how to meditate, if somebody had said to him, “You know, you can be conscious without thinking,” [laughing] he would have said, “That’s interesting news, but it doesn’t mean anything because I have never had the experience, and I don’t know how to have the experience of being conscious without thinking.”

And likewise you could all say: “Well, it’s very interesting news that I have an eternal link with my Father in which there is forever communion occurring and that I never have to experience being alone. It’s very interesting news that I have a Guide who is Awake and therefore fully Christed. It’s interesting news to know that you, Jesus, are available to me and everyone else simultaneously, and that I can experience you as a presence distinct from me, in the same space that I experience and have always experienced me being. But I’ve never had the experience. And I don’t know how to have the experience. And I don’t know if I want to have the experience because it means that a lot of my fundamental premises for understanding my life and the world will have to change. If I let you in, will you leave? Or are you going to be there when I’m sitting on the toilet? Are you going to be there when I’m making love with my partner? You know, just how undefended, just how far do I have to go in letting go of my autonomy and my independence and my right to the privacy that I thought was … [small laugh] I thought it was a given. I thought it was the way life is. My mind is private.”

You see? Yes, to let the Father in as an experience in the space, for lack of better words, in which you are conscious—in other words, in your mind—to let the Father in, to let the Holy Spirit in, to let me in, has significant “life changing meaning;” as much meaning as someone who thought they were an orphan and had been raised in an orphanage, as much meaning as it would have for an orphan who had grown up in an orphanage to suddenly be confronted by a man who says that he is that child’s father.

“But you can’t be my father. I don’t have a father. I have been an orphan my whole life.”

“Yes. But I am your father. And circumstances caused us to become separated, and I was told that you were dead, and I didn’t know that my son was living, and so I didn’t search. But then I discovered that, indeed, I had a son and he was alive, and so I’ve come.”

That kind of news that the aloneness and the isolation of orphanhood involved, that kind of news causes great reorientation to have to happen.

“Well, you know, I didn’t like not having a father, but now having a father introduces a whole new set of circumstances that I haven’t had to deal with, and now I’m going to have to deal with them. And I’m not sure if I’m ready to have a father. What are going to expect of me? Are you going to want to talk three or four times a week? Are you going to want to get together and go to baseball games when I don’t like to play baseball? Are you going to expect me to call you? You know, you’re showing up is throwing my life topsy-turvy.”

Well, certainly there is a certain amount of inconvenience at discovering that you’re not an orphan, but the experience, the natural experience of family is returned to you, is returned to the orphan. Connections that it was appropriate for him to have all of his life, but which he had learned how to cope without having, are now present for him. And part of the inconvenience of the adjustment is going to involve letting that in; embracing it and being willing to engage in communication, togetherness, relationship. You see?

Now what all of this is leading up to, there is a method to my … there is a method afoot here. You hear the word “self-righteousness” and “self-righteous,” and you also hear the word “righteous”—”Oh, he’s a self-righteous bastard” or “He’s a very righteous person”—and I want you to become clearer about the meaning of those words.

When you as a competent orphan, who is becoming increasingly competent by the day, acts, makes decisions, authorizes things without ever once having any conscious awareness of connection with his Source, not even thinking that he has a Source, he is an unplugged light bulb pretending to be illuminated. And so he is pretending to be something he isn’t. You are all pretending to be something that you aren’t when you are having no experience of union with your Source, and are running around this planet with your cord and plug hanging from your posterior, dragging behind you, thinking that you’re actually running around and doing things, when actually nothing can be happening because the plug isn’t plugged into the socket. That’s “self-righteousness.” You see? It’s a righteousness that is relative to capacities that you, as a independent self, are engaged in.

Every act of an orphan who doesn’t know of his Birthright, because he doesn’t know of his Father or of his Source, is engaged in acts of self-preservation. Acts of self-preservation rather than just living life, because not experiencing any Birthright, not having an experience of a Father, there is automatically a feeling of vulnerability. An unplugged light bulb can’t help being bothered by the fact that there’s no light coming forth.

And so his experience is seen as one that is hostile, one that is polarized—”good” and “bad” warring against each other—and him learning how to be a better and better “good orphan” having to battle against the “bad orphans.” And as a result [small laugh] every act is an act of defense.

If every act is an act of defense whether it’s called for or not, that is offensive, isn’t it? It’s an expression of arrogance based upon incomplete information that will not necessarily fit the circumstances. And there will always be a willingness for everyone that orphan deals with to be used in a way that puts them at a disadvantage if it serves the ego, the orphan, who is arrogantly trying to illuminate himself without being plugged in.

Self-righteousness is unpleasant because it’s an act of defense. Self-righteousness is unpleasant because, at the bottom line, it’s an act of hate. I’m putting it strongly. But if it isn’t love, it has to be “not love.” It has to be the opposite of love. Now it can’t be love because the orphan is incapable of embrace, because if he were to embrace and include and truly let in and relate to valuably, he would have to break his isolation. He would have to abandon his orphanhood.

So, let’s go to the word “righteous.” One might say that Saint Francis of Assisi was a righteous man, or that Mother Theresa was a righteous woman.

When one abandons the privacy and the autonomy and the arrogance of being a self-authorizing presence, and does not lean unto his own understanding, and does not lean unto his own memory, and does not lean unto his own personally-developed skills—and he lets out a sigh and relaxes, and allows his mind to go silent because he doesn’t want to be filled with himself—he doesn’t want to be filled with his best thoughts or his best judgments; he wants to be in the silence so that he can listen because he is interested in letting in something else, and the something else he wants to let in is the Father, or his Guide, or the Holy Spirit, or me—he has or she has provided the environment in which something new can be experienced. In the arena of conscious awareness called “being alive” that each one experiences, the Father can register with you. The Holy Spirit can register with you. I can register with you. We can talk. We can relate to each other.

In the absence of your assertive use of your mind—to fill it with activity that covers up what can occur in the silence—the silence, if you’re willing to let yourself experience it, you will find is very full. And it’s very full of a new way of being with your world and with your Brothers and Sisters. Paul is doing it right now. When you do that, you are “a righteous man” or “a righteous woman,” because there is no self-righteousness in it. There is nothing present as an independent, authoritative, self-determined agent that can accomplish anything.

And when righteousness occurs, virtue goes out from you and everyone is truly blessed. Everyone. Not just you. Not just those who can hear my voice on the internet, or eventually on a recording. Everyone. Everyone everywhere. Virtue, when it goes out, touches everyone. Love allowed to move is an infinite movement, and those who are Awake experience it, are consciously aware of it.

Now, you might say: “God, what hope is there for me? Obviously, I have been taught everything wrong! My whole basis for perceiving everything is a result of false teaching, incorrect teaching. And it is so much a part of me that the very idea of actually experiencing someone else in the same space I’m in, in my mind, is inconceivable to me. And yet you’re telling me that that’s what is normal, and that the privacy I’ve been experiencing is unnatural, and that the effort I put to “being private well” is an attack on God and is an attack on myself. I have reason to be eternally depressed. How can I possibly … how can I possibly overturn everything I’ve ever learned? How can I possibly overturn everything about the way I experience everything? You have presented me with a real problem. If I’m not going to be mad at myself for being led into this, I’m going to be mad at those who led me into it.”

Yeah, you could do that. Or you could say, “Wow! If I’m seeing everything incorrectly, if I’m not perceiving anything as it is, that means I have a lot of discoveries in front of me. It means I have a lot of opportunities to see things in a new way. And every time there’s an improved shift of perception, my experience is going to change for the better. And I’m going to get feedback that confirms to me that my Birthright really was to be joined, and that what Raj has been saying is True.”

As bad as the news might be, if someone doesn’t tell you you’re off the track, you will forever be off the track. And you won’t know it. That’s hell.

So the way out of the dilemma of having been taught “how to perceive everything wrong” is simple. Remember that there is a God. Be willing to consider that there is actually a God, and that God is the Source of your Being. God is what is presencing you right now. You are not the source of your Being. You are not the creator of you. You, through your skills, are not what can refine you into something better. You are not alone and you’re not responsible for yourself. You’re not responsible for your existence. You are responsible for the quality of your existence.

And the quality of your existence will be governed by the degree to which you are attempting to be an illuminated light bulb without the plug being plugged in, or the degree to which you are illuminated because you said, “Arhh! Even though I will obviously have a tether if I plug that plug in, I am going to choose to pull it in so that I may become illuminated, and therefore fulfill my Purpose for Being.” Because the fact is that when you fulfill your Purpose for Being, there will be so much more illuminated to you of the infinite nature of your Being, and that to be joined doesn’t constitute a tethering, but a grounding in the infinite, if I may put it that way. A grounding in your Wholeness. A grounding in knowing who and what you Are.

And who and what you Are is that which is one with the Father, and we can use the word “co-creator” in the sense that once you’re plugged in, you stand with God, on behalf of what God is being, without any longer attempting to introduce anything original, different from what the Father is being, into the Movement of Creation. Then “All that Creation is” becomes your conscious experience, down to the smallest detail, so much so that if you were Awake right now experiencing yourself infinitely, you would feel the virtue going out from Paul at this moment. Everyone who is Awake is experiencing it. That’s how untethered you will become if you dare to plug the plug in. You will be anchored in the Truth of your Being. You will be anchored in your Sanity.

And that’s the good news. And that’s why I’m going to suggest that you all keep that little, yellow, sticky paper on your refrigerator that has the word “leaven.” I know, you forgot to put it up. Put it up! You might even put it on the dashboard of your car, and have it in two places. And you might put it on the wall next to your toilet, and have it in three places to remind you that you have a function and that is to glorify God.

And if you are willing to let God in so that many times during the day you remember not to pick up the glass of water or not to drive down the road without consciously saying, “Hi, Father. Hi, God. Hi, Raj. Hi, Jesus,” and remind yourself that at that moment you’re not alone, and you are acknowledging that you are being companioned with whether you’re having a direct experience of it or not. That’s a good way to begin, with the reminder that, literally, you are not alone and that a living, active Presence is present with you for the purpose of loving you out of your illusions, for the purpose of loving you out of the misperception of you being a little, mortal, physical body sitting inside of a hunk of rather-interestingly-designed metal traveling down a road to get some place where you aren’t, even though you are omnipresent. You see?

Those who are companioning with you are there to help you see everything in a new way. But in order to have the transformation of your mind in which you are experiencing everything—the world—in a new way that is a closer approximation of the Kingdom of Heaven, you are going to have to stop valuing your authority and your confidence to handle this by yourself. Because maybe you can get from here to there with a fair amount of safety by using your acquired skills and intelligence, but you are still going to think you are an orphan moving from one point in space to another point in space. And you will continue not to have the experience of both points of space being embraced in you, and you could move from one to the other by a simple shift of attention, because you are infinite, you are divine, you are invulnerable. You aren’t what you thought you’ve been.

As you do this, as you make a point of conscientiously doing this many times a day, ongoingly, just because, you will find yourself in the place where I, or the Father, or the Holy Spirit, can address you directly and guide you through a circumstance or a situation that you’re in where help is needed, or you will find us able to convey to you a perspective that will help you relate to your Brother in a more truly helpful way than anything you might have thought up by yourself. And you will know that you were not alone in the receipt and delivery of the answer or the remarks you make to your Brother in the middle of that situation. And in that conscious awareness of union, virtue will be going out from you and you will feel it. You will feel the holiness of it. You will feel the wholeness of it. You will feel the way every part of what happened fit together exquisitely. And you will know that you are in the flow of the movement of Love—a co-creator with God.

So don’t be depressed because you’ve been so badly in the dark. There is a simple way out and that is to undo the bill of divorcement that started it all where you said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.” And you undo that, as I’ve said before, by inviting the Father in. And now I’ve made it clear that you can do it by reminding yourself while you’re driving, or engaging in any activity, that you’re not alone.

Remind yourself that there are those who are companioning with you, who have your ultimate welfare and interest in mind for you. This will help break down the confidence you have that you are alone, just like meditating and having moments of silence, where you are perfectly and exquisitely conscious without any thoughts, causes the undoing of your confidence that consciousness and thinking are one and the same thing; inseparable. And so there is a movement in your Being, you could say—an undoing.

You don’t have to tackle every single misperception. All you have to do is undo the one thing that started it all, which was where you said, “Father, I’m going this way and doing it my way, and seeing it the way I want, and calling it what I say it is.” You see? And inviting the Father back in, inviting these Awake Companions back in.

Let’s go to the book.

Well, again, what’s the ego? The orphan mentality.

It’s not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible, but it is a traitor to you who believe you have been treacherous to your Father, even though you may not remember having said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way,” and that you had engaged in a denial of God and His Fatherhood of you. You do experience being an orphan, together with all the vulnerabilities that accompany it. And you don’t like it. And the reason you don’t like it, is because down deep you know this is not your Birthright. You know it is not natural to you, and therefore you cannot embrace it totally.

But, nevertheless, the orphan mentality is a traitor to you, because it keeps you—you keep yourself— distracted from the Truth about you by continually reinforcing the orphan state of mind. And it always has a willing ear in you, because you know something is wrong and you don’t know what it is, and the ego says, “I know how to make you feel better. What you need is more power. What you need is more authority. What you need is more skill. What you need is the ability to finesse your Brother into behaving in a way that serves you, even if it costs him everything.”

Now as I said last week, the ego isn’t always that forthright. It doesn’t say, “You deserve death.” It says, [whispering at first] “Listen to me. It’s impossible for you to believe that you won’t die. You hear that. It’s impossible for you to believe that you won’t die. It’s impossible for you to believe that you are eternal and will live forever. It’s impossible for you to believe that you will be only the second one in all of history who will not die.” You see? [small laugh] It doesn’t say, “You deserve death!” [laughing] But it convinces you that you don’t deserve anything else, so that you don’t resist, you don’t resist death. That slippery character.

You see? “I and my ego are one. I and my ego are one. I are my ego. My ego are me. We’re one and the same, like thinking and consciousness are one and the same. I and my ego are one.” You see? You’re confused. That’s all that means. You’re confused.

Well, [laughing] you also believe that you can’t live forever. That’s the flip side of the coin that you believe you want death. But you don’t like to look at it square in the face and see that the belief says, “You want death.” It says something a little bit more pointed and more awful than you can’t believe that you will live forever.

… when you are tempted to yield to the idea that you can’t live forever. When you are tempted to yield to the idea that you can’t possibly be only the second one in all of history that doesn’t die.

It doesn’t matter what all the justifications are that your ego or your orphan mentality can come up with for not embracing the Truth.

You see? And as I’ve said before, if you want to look at it this way, think of the odds I had to overcome when no one had ever done it before. You see? It is rather nonsensical, but you need to see, you need to see it with a light heart so that you can just go ahead and dare to say, “I dare to be willing to believe that I can be and will be the second person not to die.”

Now …

Ah! You see, when you’re willing to plug your plug back in, something more than you expected comes. You get to have, for example, a direct experience of me—not some idea about some figure in history that was written about in the Bible that now you can talk about and think about—but a direct experience of me.

You get a direct experience of me, and thereby you get a direct experience of the fact that life is eternal, because I still am, and I am with you, and I can relate to you and you can relate to me, which means that whatever this dividing line is between where you think you are and where you think I am—having passed on or whatever—is not as solid as you thought, is not as valid as you thought.

You see, dominoes are beginning to fall. Other aha’s are beginning to happen. You get more than you bargained for. You get more good than you were asking for, because all you were willing to do was to say, “I’m willing to plug the plug back in and let God back in, change my behavior enough to invite Him, or Jesus, or my Guide, into my conscious experience of Being numerous times during the day.” Just a simple willingness to invite them in and you get so much more, that grounds you for even more.

How do you make me manifest? You make me manifest in the space that you thought “you alone” were occupying. You invite me in. And you let me respond to you where you have believed no one else could ever respond because you were the only one occupying that territory, and you thought that was normal. And so you actually have blocked there being any experience of any of the rest of the Brotherhood who it is your Birthright to be experiencing intimately constantly and fully and wholly.

… where?

… in yourself—meaning in that place where you thought you were the only one occupying that place. You are full … [laughing] you are full of the infiniteness of the Creation of God, including all of the Brotherhood, and each of the Brothers in the Brotherhood is full of the fullness of God, including you.

Again …

Wow! Something else you hadn’t bargained for gets added in there.

… what? The world.

… everything. The world and universe. Everything that has been included in your conscious awareness.

You will …

And it cannot die because you’re going to be recognizing it as Creation, with a capital “C”—the visibility and tangibility of the Movement of God as Mind, that you are not separate from, and that, therefore, is the Truth about you in your totality, your infinite totality that is all-inclusive and not the least bit private.

Again, how do you undo all of this false training that has lead you to [laughing] almost total misperception of what’s really going on? By breaking the isolation that brought it all on in the beginning. And you break the isolation by inviting God, or me, or the Holy Spirit, or your Guide, in. In where? Into the space you thought you had been occupying totally and exclusively.

You know the saying, “I stand at the door and knock. Let me in.” Let your right Mind in. Let God in. Invite us in. Make room for us. Being willing to entertain us. Being willing to host us in your space—in you. You see? And I mean, literally, let us be with you and converse with you. Let us relate to you in all of the ways that you already understand relating to another. You know, we can argue. And I know we will. We can agree. We can discuss. You can tell me the way you see it, and I’ll tell you the way it is. And you can say, “Yes, but … ” and I will say, “Well, yes, but, let’s look at it this way.” And I, we, all of those who stand in your service, will do this until you are satisfied with the Truth. Let’s begin a conversation. Let’s begin a relationship, or let us continue our relationship with a little more consistency and little more frequency.

This is the way you overcome death. This is the way you avoid the ultimate realization that, as a light bulb that is not plugged in, you have no function, and if you have no function, you don’t exist. What a final revelation that is. Snuff! There ya went—if that could happen. But that’s where self-righteousness and that’s where the orphan mentality and that’s where the ego would lead you.

I’m going to tell you something; I’m going to tell all of you something. Your skill—and I say it with a broad smile—your skill at being a “better and better ego” is going to begin to fail. We’re getting closer to the time of Awakening. More and more Brothers are Awakening. The ease with which you continue to dream is diminishing. And where things used to work real well because you were so skilled at being the best damn orphan there ever was, will not work like it used to. And of course, if you persist, it will get worse, because the ability to maintain a viable, workable, functional sense of orphanhood won’t be able to withstand the loss in the ranks of orphans that used to hold it together because of group consensus.

In the absence of power that you thought you had and that you used to be able to successfully exercise, you will find yourself coming closer and closer to the point of saying, “Help! Is there anyone at the door? Is there anyone out there? Help! I’m willing to try not doing it all by myself.” And some righteousness will have crept into the picture. And self-righteousness will have diminished. And in the presence of righteousness, the inflow of God’s Love will occur, and you will receive it and it will overflow from you and virtue will go out from you and everyone will be blessed.

Righteousness and humility go hand in hand. And humility, true humility cannot be feigned. It has to be allowed. It cannot be authorized. It must be allowed.

So, I must add one more thing. You can go to the store and buy yeast and you can end up with a package that is too old. And you make a loaf of bread with it and the bread just sogs in the bottom of the pan, because there is no life. The yeast, the leaven has nothing to … no capacity to fulfill a function.

What I want you to know is that those of you who have been listening to me and who have attempted— whether you have felt it has been totally successful or not—to be the leaven in your day, your successes have been felt. And I must feed back to you that even though you, most of you, feel that you failed miserably, you did not fail miserably. Keep that yellow sticky-note on your refrigerator and persist, because the way you undo an old habit is to persist, persist, persist in the motions of a new habit.

Okay.

I love you all. I am persisting with you. And I will forever persist with you until we can just be together, without your being on your way Home, because you will know that you are Home and won’t be arguing against it any longer. So, I look forward to being with all of you next week. And I love you.

Okay.