Teachings of Christ Mind

Good evening, and welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.

We’re going to go right into the book. And we’ll back up one sentence.

That’s the big word here.

… guilt …

Whom you hold guilty, you hold blameworthy, not blameless. Whom you hold guilty, you hold blameworthy, not blameless.

This is a very important point, because I’m going to tell you something: The only place that guilt exists, is in the mind of the observer.

Now, just as when you take any form of matter, any form of substance, and put it under a microscope and increase the magnification of the microscope to the max, you will find nothing there, except energy—a pattern of energy, an energy form, you might say. There’s absolutely nothing there that you can put your finger on. There is nothing solid there.

Likewise, no matter who you look at whether it’s yourself or any of your brothers and sisters—those whom you would deem guilty—the closer you look, and the closer you look, and the closer you look, until you’re looking with ultimate magnification, you will find no one guilty there. Just as matter is a matter of perception, guilt is a matter of perception. In either case there is something there, but it’s not matter. It’s not something solid. And it’s not a guilty one. It’s the Christ.

Matter, looked at with ultimate magnification, is pattern of energy. The energy is Love. Love is the Substance of all things. Likewise, no matter how guilty you hold your brother to be, if you will dare to look closer and closer and closer, what you will find there is the Christ, the embodiment and Movement of Love—the same thing you find when you look at what you call “matter.”

Now, you’re all aware that matter seems quite solid to you, that form seems quite solid to you. And yet the fact is that not only is it mostly empty space, you carry it further and you find that it is not empty space with little, tiny pieces of matter whirling around a nucleus, but pure energy—what you would call “that which is intangible.”

Now I’m going to tell you that the moment you allow for the possibility, or, I’m going to say, allow for the fact that matter is not solid, but is pattern of energy, pattern of the energy of Love, patterned by the ideas in God’s Mind, you will find yourself able to pass through it—walk right through a wall or lean upon it, if that serves your purpose, if that fulfills purpose.

Now that’s the potential. That’s what you have to look forward to. You will not have the experience, however, if you hold fast to the idea that substance is matter—solid, capable of decay, and so on. You will not have that experience. And likewise, you will not have the experience of your brother or sister being the Christ—the present, direct expression of God, right here and now—or of yourself if you’re going to hold that you are a person, an organism, a body rather than the Mind in which the experience of body is going on.

As Mind, not confused by thinking it’s matter, you are the literal presence of God. You are the Christ. And you are That right now. I will keep bringing this up because this shift of attention must take place. And it’s not a shift that you are inclined to spontaneously make.

The shift is from body identification to Mind identification, recognizing that you are the conscious awareness, the boundless conscious awareness in which all of God’s ideas are being experienced. And that these ideas pattern the energy of Love—the energy of Spirit—in order to be experienced, recognized, felt, walked through or leaned against.

We talk about your being the Christ, and we talk about you being the ultimate right now. You’re neither behind the point of perfection—you’ve heard this over and over—nor advancing toward it. You’re at that point, and must understand yourself there-from. Okay! What that means is you’re not a body. You’re conscious awareness. You’re not a body experiencing other bodies. You are consciousness, which you already are. You’re already experiencing being conscious or being consciousness. And you must understand yourself there-from.

You must begin to go through your day without losing sight of the fact that it is mind moving through ideas, not a body moving through space—it is mind experiencing the movement of ideas—and that you, identifying yourself as mind, and not any “thing” going on in mind, will be you not adding anything extra to Creation. And in not adding anything extra to Creation, you will find yourself in your right Mind. You will find yourself healed. You will find yourself transformed. You will find yourself guiltless.

Only a body can be guilty. Only a body can be guilty for something that body did. And I will tell you that this body is the “Napoleon” that we talked about last week. It’s something that you are not. But if you believe that you are, and there are others that believe that you are, then you’re caught in a mental miasma–look it up in the dictionary–a mental miasma, from which it becomes difficult to extricate yourself, because it is confusion itself.

Now, you think your mind is in your head. That is the way most all of you perceive it. So at the least, you can imagine that the orphan, that which thinks it is a body, and the Christ, that which is Mind, both go together through your day. This is helpful. And what you do is, you give preference to and emphasis to the body part.

I’m bringing this out so that you might understand that the ultimate of you that we’ve been talking about, the Christ that you are that we’ve been talking about, is something that is present with you, because It’s your Mind.

You even speak of mind as a possession: “My mind.” You see? Well who’s the “my”? The “my” is the body. The “my” is the orphan. You see?

You don’t have a mind. You are mind. And you are, we’ll say, using your mind to be the observing self, to be that which is conscious of every experience you’re having of world and universe while saying, “That isn’t going on in my mind. My body is having the experience of world and universe, and of others, and of matter, and of all form.”

And so you pretend that you’re not mind experiencing everything, but that you’re a body experiencing whatever is in your immediate presence, through the use of your mind–this possession you have that is supposedly in your cranium.

So, the orphan and the Christ of you walk inseparably at the moment through your every day. The Christ of you is not at a distance. It is not afar off. It’s not something to work up to. It’s not something to train yourself and refine yourself into being. It’s you, moving though your day, every day, not identifying with It, because you’re identifying with the definition of you, which is your body.

I am narrowing the gap between you, who you think you are, and you, who you really Are. And I am finding ways to translate spiritual theology and spiritual concepts into practical ones that have relevance to you—every day, here and now! So, to shift into your right Mind is not so much a matter of shifting out of your wrong mind as it is of shifting out of your body identification, into mind identification.

If you’re riding in a car or on a train, it’s easy for you to sit there and watch the scenery move by, and imagine that you’re stationary, and that the universe is moving past you. It’s a simple shift of perception that can happen easily when you’re sitting still in a moving vehicle. You can shift the perception so as to have the experience of not moving at all, and feeling everything else moving past you.

Now, that is relatively close to the experience of Reality, because you as Mind are immovable … because you are, Mind is, universal … and there is no place for It to move. It is infinite, and there is no medium through which That which is infinite can move! This immovability of Mind, that is immovable because It is all, is what constitutes your eternal safety, your eternal groundedness, if I may put it that way. And it is in this indivisible, infinite conscious experience of being that everything is going on.

You visualize It as small, encapsulated in your head, and you take It along with your body everywhere you go.

So, as you go through this next week, I want you to practice a new exercise, if you will, that of paying attention to and remembering that you are Mind, moving through Creation. You are Mind, shifting your attention to different parts of Creation. And as that shift of attention happens, legs move, cars move, things are done. But all of those visible, tangible actions are simply, for lack of better words, the manifestation or the experienceability of the movement of Mind that you Are.

This seems a difficult thing to grasp–everything that we’re reading about. And especially what we talked about last week. The single most significant definition that you have made up, you might say—the one log, which if removed, would unloose the logjam—is the definition of yourself as a body. And you define yourself as a body while forgetting that you are the mind which made the definition. And that even though the mind made the definition, the mind never became bound by it. And the mind never became the definition.

The ultimate of you, as ridiculous as it sounds—and it’s because it’s ridiculous that it sounds ridiculous—accompanies you everyday, no matter what you’re doing. And it only seems to accompany you because you’ve resized it, in your mind. In your mind, you have resized your mind and placed it in a physical location–in a specific circumscribed location.

So where did you hide yourself, from yourself? In a definition you made up. And then you have built definitions, upon definitions upon, definitions. But the bottom-line false definition is: That you are a body, you are an organism, you are a material object that lives while that material object is alive, and perhaps doesn’t exist ever again when that material object dies. It just ain’t so.

And the way the cycle of birth and death is going to be broken is as you make the shift from identifying with the body to identifying with and recognizing yourself as pure conscious awareness, Mind—the conscious experience of Being—and begin to observe your world from that standpoint. You’re neither behind the point of perfection, nor advancing toward it. You are at that point, and must understand yourself there-from.

You must start being in your life from your Mind instead of from your body. I can’t put it any more clearly than that. And that’s where the delight of life is going to begin to occur for each of you.

Let’s go to the book.

Well, what is this strange world that you have made? It’s the world of definitions that you have made up, through the use of imagination. And how is it that “the Son of God HAS sinned?” Because the Son of God has decided to get a divorce from God and look at everything from his own peculiar slant. He has denied Himself. He has denied the Son of God. And Self-denial is the mistake–the sin, if you will.

… the Son of God.

Now, you didn’t realize that you made the Son of God invisible. But tell me, are you the Daughter of God? Are you the Son of God? You don’t think so. At least today you don’t have the evidence of it. That’s how well you’ve made the Son of God invisible.

You say, “Well I’m just a cranky overworked, exhausted, impatient, unhappy human being, doing his best, struggling through it all, with great practice of confidence and faith.” You see? Does that sound like the Christ speaking? No. When you say that about yourself, you’re saying that your Christhood has been made invisible to you.

Well, what’s the world of retribution? It’s the world of “getting even.” It’s the world in which there is right and wrong. And the wrong is ferreted out, and disclosed. And a judgment is made upon it. A judgment is made upon the one who is wrong. And the verdict is, “Guilty!” And the penalty is extracted. Retribution is established.

“Well,” you say, “I would be irresponsible not to feel guilty for what I did. I would be irresponsible for not holding him guilty for what he did. I hold guilt dear, because if guilt isn’t found, and correction by penalty is not put into place, total chaos will be the result.” And so you hold it dear.

Now, the formal definition of guilt is: Responsibility for a reprehensible act that deserves punishment. If one is responsible for a reprehensible act that deserves punishment, he is guilty.

But you’ve got to remember what I started out with today … that if you go to the guilty one and you look closer and closer and closer, which is another way of saying that you’re being more and more present with him, genuinely present with him or her, the closer you get, the more clear it will become that what you saw is not there, because what is there is the Christ.

Taking the time to get closer and closer for a more honest look is called being willing to be present with your brother. And it is an act of love. And so, the answer to guilt is not punishment, but the willingness to be the presence of love that looks beneath the definitions, looks past the definitions, with a desire to see what is Real there, and an insistence that comes from within you, that what is true there is worth finding. It’s that simple. The Truth that is there is worth finding.

… the Christ, the Son of God …

Well, wow! If blamelessness, the blamelessness of Christ … of you or your brother …

… then that’s the Truth about yourself and your brother that it’s worth persisting in finding. Because, when you find It, you will find that you are not an ego, along with your brother. That is the way out of the false identification with body. That is the way out of the false identification as an orphan.

So, when you claim that you’re not blameless, that you are guilty … or when you claim that your brother is not blameless, and is therefore, guilty, you don’t move me one bit. What you’re saying is utter nonsense. And believing that you’re guilty is the only thing that causes you to procrastinate in looking for the truth there. It’s the only thing that elicits a reluctance in you. But I’m telling you that if you will dare to adopt the outlandish, unreasonable statement that “You are not guilty,” and that “You are the Christ, right now,” you will be providing yourself the stepping-stone out of the confusion and the suffering of your definitions. Or I could say, of your mis-identification of yourself, either as a body or as an orphan.

And so it’s worth it to engage in this irrational act of claiming your guiltlessness. More than claiming it; abiding with it, with whatever feelings guiltlessness arouses in you.

You must be willing to stop condemning, punishing and killing yourselves. Why? Because, since you are the Christ, no matter how much effort you put into condemning and penalizing yourself and killing yourself, no death will occur. It will just be an ongoing state of tension and suffering. If it isn’t going to accomplish anything ultimately, except to prove to you that it’s a useless activity to engage in, then why not dare to follow my advice and begin to consider yourself and contemplate yourself as innocent, as guiltless, as the Christ, as the Son or Daughter of God in whom God is well pleased. That’s how a shift of perception can occur.

Continuing …

… you …

Now, listen to me: This is the truth!

Guilt tempts you to feel guilty.

Infinity has no direction. The Mind that you Are has no boundaries. It is infinite, and It has no direction. And therefore, everything that is going on in It, is not going on in time!

When you reach the end of time, where will the end of time be…at the end of this carpet? The end of time will be when you shift from identifying as a form to identifying as Mind. As Mind, you will move from one place to another by a simple shift of attention [snaps finger] instantaneously!

And that means that that which identifies you, which is called your body, and which you currently call yourself, will immediately be wherever your attention has been given. And the Movement will not take time. And space will not be a part of the experience of the movement of the shift of attention. So, what you call “time” will disappear when you get to the end of time. And the end of time is at the border between your identification as body and your identification as Mind. Both of which, at the present time, are constantly with you, and therefore are not something you’ll get to have in the future to work with.

And actually, when you make that shift of consciousness and you’re identifying as Mind, as Consciousness, body and mind will still inseparably be, because your body is the visibility and tangibility of your Individuality. Now, your body will be never sick, never tense, never tired, never in need. And it will identify the movement of your mind spontaneously and instantaneously.

Now, how many of you, just as I’ve said this, have visualized yourself being in a different place where this kind of thing happens? Sort of like a different dimension. Well I’m going to tell you that what I’m describing will happen right here. And when you shift your attention from Kingston to New York, New York is where you’ll be, tonight, a minute from now, tomorrow. The way things work are the way things work. And they always work.

And therefore, the truth that I’m telling you works right now. It’s just that you’re not availing yourself of it because you have this fixation on identifying yourself as a body, and as an orphan—certainly not as whatever the words, “the Christ” mean.

… which is another way of saying: As long as you believe the Son of God is an orphan and not the Son of God …

Ignorance is never a pleasant experience. But ignorance never exists all by itself. It is always paired with, and inseparable from, that which it is the ignorance of, right? A lie can’t stand alone. It’s inseparably tied to the truth that it’s the lie about, right? So what you’re ignorant of is something that you are inseparably linked with, right now, which therefore, is available to you to experience right now.

And the truth is never withheld from you by God as punishment. The truth, if it is withheld at all, is withheld by your insistence upon validating a lie, or your insistence upon validating a definition that is not true. That’s all.

… the Son of God who thinks he’s an orphan …

… and I’m going to interrupt here. It may be foolish, and it may be filled with pain and suffering and death, and sorrow and anxiety and all of the things that all of you thrive on every day. None of it’s the truth. All of it’s imagination. All of it is the result of your opting for your best definition, rather than what a thing really is.

It’s the result of a self-centered exclusive self-appreciation that doesn’t allow for anything else to come into the picture.

Oh yes, the orphan has pride. And the orphan’s every act is an act aimed at demonstrating self-originated integrity that that orphan can be proud of. And that’s part of the shift too. That’s part of the confusion. That’s part of the nonsense. And because none of it is true, you can’t be bound by it, no matter how bound you think you are because you and everyone else has decided that there’s no way out but to face the penalty!

… and this is where I interrupted, and I’m going to add: but inconsequential, having no real consequences.

That’s why this trip into fantasyland is inconsequential.

It is of no consequence to the Son of God, who has gone on this fun-ride through fantasyland, no matter how thrilling and scary it has gotten. Because it is of no consequence to the Son of God, that has taken the ride, there is nothing that the Son of God can be guilty of, that he must pay a penalty for before he can exit the ride.

… that which is nothing more than his right Mind …

Here I am, talking again about this one that you can’t believe is you. You Know it isn’t true.

You have preoccupied yourself so greatly that you have rendered yourself unconscious of the truth of it, but because you haven’t stopped being the Christ, because you haven’t stopped being what you Are, you still know it. And that’s why you can step off the ride any time you want without any further development or growth or refining of your soul.

Now, listen to this:

… again, that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

If the Holy Spirit stands at the end of time and the Holy Spirit is your right Mind, then you stand at the end of time at this moment!

The end of time is not off in the future, and you don’t have unlimited time to refine yourselves and grow into something that you aren’t, right now. That doesn’t mean that you’re out of time, and there should be a great sense of urgency. It means that there simply is no time at all to fight against or to overcome, or to be at odds with, or feel governed by.

… the Holy Spirit. Again, not some wonderful Entity afar off, who loves you greatly, but that which is nothing more, right now, than your right Mind. Your right Mind

That was and is the mission of your right Mind!

Your right Mind’s mission is to cause you to come Home into your right Mind. It is to cause you to stop indulging in body identification, form identification, and identity with and as the Mind, in which the experience of All of Creation is going on.

Your right Mind–the Holy Spirit.

Mind you, we’re not talking about in the Kingdom of Heaven which someday you’ll get to—or another dimension, or a different level of reality. We’re talking about you right here, right now, today, in Kingston, Washington, or wherever you might be on the globe. And wherever you might be on the globe, whatever the name of your town, whatever the name of the street you’re on, that’s the town and the street that you will instantaneously move from and back to with a shift of your attention.

Right here, in your everyday world, because your everyday world is the Kingdom of Heaven, misperceived. Why? Because you’ve determined that you are not the Son of God, you are not the direct Expression of God. You are a physical organism, the current end result of evolution—physical evolution.

Don’t have so much faith in the scientific community of your globe. It tells you one week that coffee is good for you, and the next week, coffee is bad for you. And the next week sugar is bad for you, and the next week, sugar is good for you. And that if you want to lose weight, the use of sugar is a very effective and healthy way to lose weight.

Don’t have such respect for the current, best definition of the Kingdom of Heaven, especially when it says that it’s a material world and a material universe that goes through a cycle from birth to death.

None of you like to think about that cycle of birth and death because it’s too depressing. But ignoring it won’t get you out of it. And continuing to work with the current definitions will not get you out of it. But what the Course is teaching and what I’m supporting with you will!

“Oh, well, Raj, I believe You’re guiltless. Let me see you. Let me see you.”

Oh, yes, but what about Henrietta down the street? What about your Father that abused you?

What about you—whom you are so hard upon? What about you, who you won’t let off the hook, but punish yourself daily, in one way or another? Like doing penance.

Take the radical step of considering yourself to be guiltless.

… the Son of God …

Now here’s the part you don’t want to hear …

Remember, the lie is inseparably tied to the truth that it’s the lie about. And the false perception of yourself that you have is inseparably tied to the reality of you.

[whiny voice] And so when you say “I’m a poor little ignorant orphan!” It’s a lie, and you’ve got to stop believing yourself. And you’ve got to say, “Well, if I’m an ignorant little orphan, a bastard, then I must really have a father and a mother. I have a Source. Something makes me real. And it’s not little teeny old me!” And you shift your attention to the truth that is inseparably linked to the misperception—the false perception, the lie you’re holding about yourself.

See, I know it sounds like I’m talking again about another order of reality, but I’m not!

And the more clearly you can get this in your mind, the more you will read this and claim it as being the fact, right here, right now, today—right here in this world you were hoping to escape from. Because that lie, that it’s a world you want to escape from because it’s full of suffering, is inseparably tied to the truth which is That right now, in spite of what you see, it’s the Kingdom of Heaven! It is reality Itself!

In other words, It’s not at a great distance from you. It’s right here. And that’s why it’s really valuable to look at everything with innocent eyes. And to look with genuine curiosity.

… big clue there …

Now, remember. Let’s stay connected here. The end of time is at the edge, the tied-together point of your identifying yourself as body or your identifying yourself as Mind. And don’t get metaphysical on me. Don’t get into a head trip. All you have to do after tonight, is go through your evening, and your day, tomorrow, and the next day, doing your best to be like the person on the railroad train, who you can grasp has the option to perceive himself moving through stationary space, or that he is stationary, and that the Universe is moving past him.

It’s that kind of a shift that occurs in your awareness.

The Course says, “I am not a body. I am still free to be as God created me.” God created you like Himself and God is Infinite Mind–the infinite conscious awareness of Being that constitutes existence Itself–ultimate existence. That which constitutes ultimate existence, you are experiencing every day, except as I said, you think it’s small, and it’s stuck inside your head and your body is carrying it around!

But the reverse is the case. Your Mind is infinite, and It carries around All of Creation in It forever.

For clarity, I’m backing up.

… the prison of his definitions …

… you, right now …

As you were created.

… the world of definitions that you’ve made up …

Meaning, judge not the Son of God. Shift from your orphanhood to your place in the Sonship. Exchange your identification with body to identification with Mind. These are other ways of saying …

… the Son of, God’s Son …

Protects you forever. It protects you forever by allowing for no means to exist for you, as I said last week, to become a figment of your imagination and then act—be that. And so, because you can’t become a figment of your imagination and be that, you are still in your Holy Place. No matter how many others egos, other orphans around you try to convince you that the way they and you in the past have seen things is correct and you must, therefore, be held accountable for your indiscretions. And therefore, it’s going to take a few more eons of spiritualizing yourself before you can even think about experiencing who you really Are.

I’m sorry. You can get off the ride through fantasyland any time you want.

You can get off the ride of the misperception of the Kingdom of Heaven you’re having, right here, any time you want, and experience the Kingdom of Heaven that’s right here. Because It is what is here for you to be experiencing. And your imaginations are not.

Am I trying to influence you? You bet I am.

I Love You. And, as always, I look forward to being with you next week.