Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Well, did you have an interesting week? I’m going to give you a little practice for this coming week just to extend the learning.

As you go through this week, whenever it occurs to you as you go through your day, ask yourself the question, “Which me am I doing an impression of now? And be really honest with yourselves in answering that question.

I am going to tell you, that unless you’re joined with your guide or the Holy Spirit at that moment, you are doing an impression. And the whole point of this practice is to help you realize that fact. Not so you can see how poorly you’re doing or how much you’re failing at the only thing that counts, but so that you can begin to have an inner experience of the ease with which you’re able to be dishonest.

Now, some hard things have been said last week and already this week. To realize that you’re being dishonest is not the goal. If it were the goal, you would just have to sit with it and suffer with it. The point is, that I am explaining to you that you all have an alternative to it—one which you haven’t been accessing and employing.

If you can dare to honestly look at yourself many times during the day, and identify the impression that you’re employing at that moment, you’re bringing something into play. You’re bringing in something in addition to the self that you’re doing the impression of. You’re bringing in an observer—you. And if you can look at yourself and see the impression that you’re engaging in, it will become obvious to you, experientially, that you are something different from the impression you’re giving.

It means that the impression that you’re giving is not you, but a ploy you are using to accomplish something. The moment you can see that there is a difference between the you who is observing you doing an impression, you have a different place to be from. You can choose to continue to be from the place of the observer. And this little practice helps break the bondage you have to constantly employing impressions, impersonations and even believing them yourself.

The whole point of this is, to give you a means to escape from, to set aside a practice you have been engaged in and you didn’t even know it was something you were practicing. You didn’t know it was something you were practicing because you didn’t know you had an alternative. Awakening to your Christhood is a matter of becoming free from the bondage of ignorance that you have been under. It’s a matter of actually changing, actually discovering yourself as something beyond your concept of yourself.

The Course is not here, truth is not here to help make the human condition more comfortable. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it, when I got hold of the Course, it was incredible! And it has transformed my life. Everything is going smoothly now.” I’m not being facetious here, there are people who have this experience. “My life turned around and I owe it all to the Course. I owe it all to what I found in the Course.”

But you know what? What they’re saying is, that life between birth and death has become more enjoyable—less stress, more peace. In effect, it’s like saying, “I am being able to enjoy this ride which ultimately will end in my death. I fully expect to be healthy right up until the moment I kick the bucket. If everything continues as it is right now, I anticipate being free of illness and suffering. And when the time comes, I’ll go.”

What’s wrong with this picture? And what’s happened to you?

You’ve begun to do an impression of a student of the Course who’s life is wonderful without having been lifted out of the realm of birth and death—of real transformation, of getting off the wheel of history, the cycles of birth and death, and birth and death, and on and on. I’ve mentioned before that there’s a saying that “Life is a terminal illness.”

You know what? This Course and the truth is not here to make your terminal illness comfortable—tolerable. It’s here for healing! It’s here to actually lift you out of, or remove you from all evidences of birth and death, to bring you into the evidences of Eternal Life. To bring you into the evidence of the Kingdom of Heaven, here and now where you are. It’s not to make you happy, contented orphans still ignorant that you have a Father from Whom you have an inheritance. Because your Father is what gives you Identity.

Now, we need to talk a little bit more about impersonations and impressions to further trigger clarifications. You don’t realize just how impactful and meaningful impressions are to you. They fill your everyday, not just the impressions you’re engaged in performing but, we’ll say, if you’re in a gathering of people—you’ve been invited to a party and you and a friend go together. And at the party there are people that neither of you have ever met before and some of them are interesting and some of them aren’t and so on.

Afterwards you leave and you start talking about things that happened at the party and one of you says, “Well, you know that Mary Jo, I can’t think of her last name, but … ” “Oh Yeah, I know who you’re talking about.” “What’d ya think about her?” “Well, she reminds me a lot of John’s cousin.”

Hm-m, “She reminds me a lot of John’s cousin.” You see, the response isn’t about her. It’s about the impression you got from her. And the impression you got from her, which was your impression, caused you to recognize a similarity between her and someone else. And you don’t even stop for a moment to realize that the someone else that you saw a comparison between, was not someone else you actually saw and actually connected with. But you’re talking about your impression of the other lady.

“The impression I got from her was that she was like the impression I got from someone else.” And right there you’re saying, “You know what, I never really connected with either one of them.”

Now, you rely on this. Why do you think you engage in doing impressions? Because you know everybody is only looking at impressions and no-one’s really seeing you. Just like you’re not really seeing anyone else.

I talked last week about the employee—the burdened employee, where things aren’t going well, and so on, and he’s doing an impression of someone downtrodden. And he goes into the stairwell and starts up the stairs and he plods up the stairs because he’s so downtrodden. He continues the impression whether anyone is there to watch him or not.

Now, you might’ve listened to that and thought, “That really is a little bit far-out.” But let’s bring it into practicality here—everyday practicality. All of you have heard of body language haven’t you. All of you use body language all day long. And you watch and pay attention to the body language of other people. Even if they’re not talking, you observe to get a feeling for where they’re coming from—what’s going on with them. Are they happy today or are they not happy today? Are they angry? Are they uptight? Whatever. You rely on body language for a major part of your communication with each other. Body language is the means of conveying an impression, an impersonation.

You’ve all heard the example of there being an accident and a number of bystanders. And the police arrive and they talk to all the different bystanders and each one gives a little bit different story. Why? Because they’re giving their best impression of what happened. Why? Why all of this impressionism being practiced? Because none of you are taking the time to be present enough with someone else or events that are happening, to actually let the actuality of it register with you. You rely upon never really knowing the facts. You rely on, it’s not the anonymity, but the cushioning effect—the protective effect of never really knowing the truth, because if you never really know the truth Itself, you can’t be held accountable for anything. No-one will ever rely on you a hundred percent for anything. It keeps a distance. It keeps things fuzzy when all you’re doing is living your life based on impressions. Impressions you’re giving. Impressions you’re getting.

There is a different experience awaiting you. It’s the experience of Real connection, direct connection, where, when you look at someone, you don’t have to assume anything, you don’t have to rely upon an impression you’re getting based upon the impressions they are practicing. They may appear to be angry. But you have the capacity to have a direct connection, I’m going to say, Mind to Mind—because there are no private thoughts and we’ve discussed this before. But the fact that there are no private thoughts means that you have direct access to actuality where impressions become meaningless.

And part of waking up means that you’re going to abandon impressions, the ones you give and the ones you rely upon from others.

In a way, all of you are giving each other a snow job all day long by means of constantly communicating only by means of impressions. And everyone else is satisfied with that because they’re not called upon to correct anything. They’re not called upon to notice: This is out of line, this is out of order, this is a situation where correction is called for, this is a situation where some negative thought needs to be expressed like, “Stop what you’re doing, it isn’t working for you.” Or, “Stop what you’re doing because it’s hurting. Stop what you’re doing because you’re not being nice.”

“Well, you know, I saw her and I had the impression that she wasn’t somebody I wanted to be around and so I left.” So, no connection, no opportunity for correction, no opportunity for healing, no opportunity for sharing clarity of vision that would lift you and the other one out of the realm of impressionism. You see?

Healing can’t occur as long as everyone is functioning in this nebulousness of impressionism. The Course, the function of the truth that you will find in there, if you’ll dare to look at the not-so-nice things it says, is to unrut you, to shake you out of habits that you didn’t know were habits because you thought that was just the way life was.

So, something else you can do during this coming week, beside asking yourself a number of times a day, “Who is the me I’m doing an impression of now?” is, when you are confronted by another, to not just off the top of your head make an assessment of them, but take a moment—you don’t have to do a profound study—but take a moment to have the intent to connect with them at a level behind whatever impression they’re giving at that moment. Like, “What’s really going on with them? Well, he’s acting like a real bastard, he’s, ya know, just suddenly gone off the deep end.” That’s the impression.

But a moment of quietness in you and the willingness to see beyond that impression, might uncover to you that that one is feeling obligated to be more than he’s being. In other words, he’s not doing well enough, or she’s not doing well enough, or he or she is not doing enough, period. And the behavior is reflecting a feeling of impotence. But the impotence is a result of the mutually agreed upon definitions of all the orphans that say, “If you’re going to be something, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to be doing something important and well. You’ve got to be doing something outstanding because that’s the way you prove your competence.”

And if that one is feeling no way to actually accomplish that, it is very frustrating. The behavior that’s coming out is not what needs to be addressed. And the clarity that you experience by being willing to stop a moment and abandon your snap judgments and to listen, what that will uncover, will be the fact that what needs to be addressed is, the feeling of incompetence and the belief that competence comes from doing—instead of competence and wholeness being inseparable from Being, where nothing more needs to be done because Being itself is Whole.

The mutual agreements of orphans would say, “He is incompetent and we can help him become competent. And we’ll tell him all the right things to do and we’ll tell him how to do them.”

But you know what? The Christ, or the Holy Spirit comes and says, “Stop everything you’re doing and take a deep breath. Because all of your Meaning, all of the fullness of the gift of you that you’re here to be the expression of, is already with you. And you don’t have to try harder. All you need to do, is to relax so that it can come through, because you’re not distracted by all of the plans, all of the theories, all of the protocols that you can abide by that will get you ultimately where you want to go off in the future.

You also have the capacity to be with events, even if it’s a robin that lands in your yard and spends a little while, while you’re watching, doing what it does. You have the capacity to be present with these things. Not so that you can gather from the impression you get that’s caused by its behavior, something true about it. You have a means to ask, “What is God being here? What is really going on here aside from the impressions that its behavior provides me with?”

You have a means for direct connection. If you will dare to look at what I’ve said and look at yourselves and see the degree to which you operate on the basis of impressions and if you will realize from that experience that in all of it you’re never really connecting with the one you’re having impressions about, it will be easier for you to say, “I want to have a more meaningful experience. I want to have an experience of actual connection. To hell with basing everything on impressions anymore. For I’m never seeing who they really are, and the ones I’m inclined to compare them with, I never saw either. And we’ve just been like little balls rolling around in a humongous pinball machine that has felt pads around each of the boingers—you know the things that go boing … boing … boing … as the ball gets bounced around.”

And you all bounce off of impressions which are softnesses, indefiniteness’s. You see what I mean? And you live this life of softly bouncing off of nothing in particular, nothing specific, you see. Because you never connect with specifically what’s there and specifically who’s there. And so you’ve been missing out on something. But since everyone has always been doing it, it hasn’t occurred to you that there might be a different way to do things.

That’s the way you have been bound by ignorance. And that’s one of the ways in which you have been unconsciously dishonest. And it is something for you to become free of.

When someone is in front of you, you are provided with an opportunity to have a Real experience. Remember that. Every encounter is a potential threshold of Awakening. It truly is. Don’t value impressions. It’s like a soft gauze between you and everything. It assures isolation. It assures loneliness. It assures lack of connection. Pretty sad. And it’s not your Birthright!

Let’s go into the Book.

That’s interesting: The use of the word, “specialness” with reference to sanity, because specialness is an excellent definition of insanity. “I’m special. I’m an orphan. And I love it … I love it … I love it … I love it! I get to decide what everything is and even though life is scary as hell, I even get to figure out how to cope with it successfully. I mean, infinity is the possibility for me. You see.

If it could say this, it would say, “Those who are not orphans don’t have this freedom, they are not free to be whatever they want to be and do whatever they want to do. And so, I’m very happy in my isolation because, wow, the potentials for success are just unlimited.”

“Father, I’d rather see it my way. Please?”

Demanding what only an unloving father could give.

You got your divorce and lost your peace. You didn’t know that was going to happen. But it happened. You lost your peace and in its place came conflict. And then came the grand idea, “I can overcome this conflict and this is my purpose and I am going to accomplish it.”

Like I said before, when you said, “Father, I’d rather do it my way,” and you got a divorce from your Father, you found that you were fatherless. And that the experience of being fatherless was the experience of being an orphan, something you had not anticipated. You thought that you would still be as infinitely aware and truly aware and sanely aware as you had been before you got the divorce, except that now you would simply have the option to do things exactly the way you wanted to do them. Not so.

… the one who asked for specialness …

He could not remain in the conscious awareness of his Sonship. He was faced with the black and white stark experience of being an orphan.

Where? In the orphanage. Now …

In other words, it did not happen, but you believe that it did.

… in other words, to make special …

And do you see, that through the use of impressions, you create this soft, vague, non-descriptiveness? You place this between you and everything so that you never really connect with it, but just with the impression you get from bouncing against a soft surface? And it keeps you alone. And through the practice of impressions, you make yourself constantly lonely.

Of course, the orphan just simply takes that on too and says, “Well, I’m going to find myself a way to be happy in spite of all of this. And I’m going to think just happy thoughts.” You see? Happy, happy, happy thoughts. “I’m going to think nothing but happy thoughts. How can I not be happy then? If nothing else enters my consciousness but happy thoughts, how can I not be happy in spite of the fact that I’m alone and lonely. Something I can’t seem to do anything about. But I can manage to find a way for them not to bother me!” You see. [chuckles] Oh-h …

Even more, that your Being lies in His oneness.

That’s not the nature of gift is it. Something that’s given is given forever.

Listen to that again:

I am going to ask, if anyone who wants to raise their hand to answer, I would like to hear what the answer is: “What was the sane answer that God gave?” Yes? (audience response unintelligible) Anyone else have a different answer?

The answer was the Holy Spirit. Yes, that which is nothing more than your right Mind. The moment you got your divorce from the Father, that of you which was utterly divine became to you something different from you, but because it was you, it remained with you while you dallied with the ego—the orphan mentality.

What you divinely Are cannot be separated from you even if you are indulging in a mad idea that you are an orphan, that you’re flesh and blood and bones, that you came from a sperm and an egg, that you’re part of a process of physical evolution and on and on and on. While you constantly confirm to yourself this self-perspective, the Christ that you Are, the divine one that you Are, remains the divine one that you Are right at this moment. I could say, hidden from you, but more correctly, which you are hiding from yourself by virtue of an intense insistence upon giving preference to all of the thoughts and theories that constitute the orphan mind-set.

… the illusions …

It is not valuable to rely upon and value impressions. Impressions aren’t the real thing. If impressions are your stock in trade, if impressions are your constant companions, if impressions are the way you communicate with others, you’re missing it. You’re missing reality. You’re missing each other.

Be willing to look at this. I don’t mean be willing to look at it intellectually and surmise about it and think about it. I mean, from time to time during the day each day, ask yourself, “Which me am I doing an impression of now?” And then spell it out. “Oh, I’m doing the ‘poor me’ impression, the ‘poor-put-upon me’ impression where no-one cares. And boy, do I know how to do that one good.” Or, “I’m doing the ‘superiority’ impression. I’m doing this impression because I get to play at expressing authority and push people around and sound strong. And I don’t do this one as good as I do the ‘poor me’ but I’m getting better at this impression. I’m working on this impression.” You see. Be honest with yourselves.

And then remember, that the one who’s observing the impressions is not the one claiming to be what the impression states. It is an impartial observer—and it’s you. You are not your impressions. Even though you not only fool other people with them, you fool yourselves with them. You believe yourself. You’re very gullible! Oops, a not so nice thought.

You know, last week when I brought up the idea that not expressing negative thoughts was dangerous, I wasn’t saying “Hey everyone, go out and think mean thoughts—go out and think thoughts that aren’t nice.” I wasn’t giving carte blanch to thinking negative thoughts.

What I meant was, notice when you are thinking negative thoughts. Because you do. You think sarcastic thoughts. Somebody will say, “I never can find the bread-knife.” And immediately you think, “Well of course not, you don’t have enough sense to put it in the same place every time.” Even though generally speaking, you never say those kinds of things. And you’re pleasant with everyone, even the one who said he couldn’t find the bread-knife.

You think negative thoughts but you ignore them. Because you’re busy maintaining this impression of being a “nice guy” of being a “spiritual seeker of truth.” It is important, it is essential not to overlook the negative thoughts that you do employ. And it’s also essential for you to be able to look at the straight truth. As I’ve said over and over, you’ve got to be able to look at the fact that if you’re doing something that doesn’t work, you’re doing something that doesn’t work. Stop it! You’re not Miss Perfect, or Mr. Perfect.

Acknowledge that you’re not doing something well. Acknowledge that you’re doing something … oh dear, terrible word, “wrong”… not so that you can be punished for it, but so that you can see that you really don’t want to continue doing something that isn’t valuable—so that you can stop.

Now let’s come back.

… the Father …

Not so nice words. If you are conscious but your conscious awareness of things is distorted and you don’t know it and nobody will tell you, and nobody will show you an alternative, then you are stuck. And the description of that stuckness is insanity.

Now, you have been stuck. And someone needs to be able to say to you, “You are stuck.” But you know what? You’re stuck in something that has no real capacity to hold you. Freedom is available to you and here’s the way to gain your freedom from being stuck. You’re gonna have to think of yourself in a different way. And part of your stuckness was, that you were thinking of yourself in an unclear way. But if you will begin to consider the possibility, that right now, you’re the ultimate, right now you are the Christ because right now, God is Being all there is to you right where you are, you will be able to begin to abandon your faith in your current distorted thinking processes.

So somebody has to be able to say, “You’re stuck and you don’t need to be.” And you need to be able to hear that you’re stuck without feeling guilty for it and without feeling bad about it. Because you need to get on to the next part of the sentence …“and you don’t need to be.” “You’re stuck and you don’t need to be.” And you don’t need to be because the sane one that you are, is the one that you are right now as you see yourself in a limited way.

You see yourself in a limited way, but the self you’re seeing is whole and is divine. And if you will reach for it, instead of believing your thinking only, and what everyone else has taught you with all of the other orphans have agreed to, you will find transformation beginning to occur and you will come out of the distortions that you’re experiencing in your awareness.

… but in you, that is you …

… if you access it…

… the illusions …

And seeing them as insane, from I’m going to say, a newfound sanity, you will release them like so much nonsense, without fretting over them or fussing about, “How could I ever have been so ignorant. I was such an asshole!”

You won’t even get caught up in that because it will be so nonsensical—so untrue—that it doesn’t warrant a single thought about it.

… meaning, all you have to do is to seek this place, just seek this place …

The next section is entitled:

Five key words: Because it is about you. This Course is about you. It’s not about miracles. It’s not about truth. It’s not about a new form of Christianity. It’s not about a new form of religion. It’s about you. It’s about everything about you, [chuckles] from your orphan beliefs to what you divinely Are.

If it can’t address you while you think you’re an orphan and while you’re convinced about your orphanhood, if it can’t address you there, then it’s not complete. And it can’t move you beyond it. And so it has to talk about things that aren’t very nice. It has to talk about negative ideas.

The Course talks about correction. Correction of what? Negative things. What wholesome and holy and wonderful things require correction?

The thing is, this Course is about you, illuminating everything to you about you, so you can see what is meaningful and what is not and have the experience of the spontaneous release of what isn’t of value. Because when you see what isn’t of value, you don’t hold on to it any longer—it drops away from you. So …

What does that mean? It means that as you’re leaving the orphanage, you will be engaged in healing. Healing of yourself and healing for the other orphans. What does healing mean? It means correction—the undoing of the orphan mindsets that have caused the bondage to ignorance.

And so, it means uncovering the things that don’t work—uncovering the negative things. Uncovering the negative things and illuminating their nonsensical nature.

Well, the ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction. Well, at the least it teaches you that your function on earth is to be destroyed isn’t it? You know, one day leads to another leads to another leads to another leads to a hole in the ground with you in it. Life is a terminal illness. That’s what the ego teaches.

You see, this is what is to be undone. And truth is not here to make that awful journey more comfortable.

… the ego—the orphan mentality …

It doesn’t promise anything particularly pleasant does it?

Again, how could that be? Because it’s the greatest threat to your being able to prove all by yourself that you are a valid entity. Not only that, it deprives you of the ethic that the orphan mentality created—the idea that God gave you the right to do that, that God set that purpose in your heart and soul and being. You don’t want to be just some dumb puppet on the end of the strings held by something other than you, even if the one holding the strings is the Father. And the strings are the conduit of His creative Love that fills you with all that He is, together with His infinite perspective, so that your Birthright becomes the ever-present conscious experience of universal creation.

… which is what the ego offers you …

Because of course, oblivion and hell that the ego gives you, still gives you the option to succeed and to overcome and conquer your unworthiness and prove that you are valid individuality on your own. See, it doesn’t challenge that, it lets you have your sweet desire.

… why? …

Listen to this:

It’s like saying, you made up the belief that being is a journey from birth to death and you made this up as part of your own personal, private act of creation—the accomplishment of which will demonstrate your actual creative ability. And so, inevitably your death will prove that you accomplished it. Do you see the insanity of it? You have to die to prove you’re real, or were real. [chuckles]

Even apart from the fact that you were wrong … you see.

I want you to imagine a huge orphanage. In fact I want you to imagine a planet full of huge orphanages around the globe … beautiful—a lot of them, large, full of creature comforts. Many years ago one of the American presidents had fire-side chats over the radio with the citizens of the United States. And I want you to imagine that on this planet—this globe full of orphanages—every Saturday and occasionally Sunday nights, there are fire-side chats with Jesus, fire-side chats with me. And all the orphans gather to listen so that they might be inspired to be happier with themselves.

We’re having one of these fire-side chats right now. And the orphans say, “But Raj, don’t challenge my being in an orphanage. Don’t challenge my being an orphan. Don’t say mean things to me like I’m deluded to think that this orphanage that I’m in is really part of the Kingdom of Heaven. I know it isn’t because all of us orphans built it according to our plans. We figured out what we wanted. We know it doesn’t have anything to do with the Kingdom of Heaven. Don’t be mean to us and say that we’re deluded when we think that we could’ve raised our little finger much less built these orphanages without God. Don’t insult us like that. Don’t say those kinds of things to us.

“But I will listen to the nice things you have to say. I will listen to the inspiring things that you have to say.”

… I’m saying to all of you…

“Oh no, don’t say that to me. That’s mean. That’s unkind. That’s a negative thought. I didn’t tune in to this fireside chat to hear that.”

Nevertheless I must say …

You see, the reasoning is faulty. You are living out a goal that is accomplished by your non-existence. You are trying to prove your valid existence by it coming to an end.

“Gosh, I do. This building I live in, this orphanage cannot be part of the Kingdom of Heaven. We built it. We designed it. Every part of it expresses our private but mutual intent. We are responsible for it. And its on this globe which is a result of a big bang, not God.

So what am I doing? I’m inviting the orphans to come out of the orphanage. I’m inviting the orphans to come out of the mindset that keeps them from seeing what they really are. I am inviting you out of the mindset that keeps you actively engaged in impressionism. I’m asking you to come out of the mindset that requires that you not look at the negative things you are practicing.

If you try to use what I’m sharing with you to confirm a state of ignorance that you’re experiencing, I will not let you succeed at it. I am not here to make you more comfortable in your illusion. I’m not here to let you continue being dishonest with yourselves while you are saying that you are something that you’re not. And that where you are is not the Kingdom of Heaven. And that there is not another way to look at it, that its’ your Birthright to be looking at it through.

And it will behoove you all to be more willing than you have been to look for the direct experience of your Brother and Sister and the events in your daily lives, so that you’re not just living on impressions. So that you might have direct experience, which is what you’re supposed to be having. And so that you might see what is Really there, because you have let the Father reveal it to you.

There’s the rub. And there’s the wonderful answer: Because you have let the Father reveal it to you—because, let’s bring it home even more, not because you have let “The Father” reveal it to you, but because you have let “your Father” reveal it to you. Stop thinking of and talking about God as “The Father.” Start putting the word, “my” in front of Father all the time. There’s a radical difference between talking about “the Father” and “my Father” meaning, God—a radical difference. When you say, “my Father” and you’re talking about God, it makes a radical difference because it’s a statement about you as well. A very important and essential statement about you. And because you’re using the word, “my Father” you cannot escape the chemicalization and transformation that the use of those words cause in you.

So, be with this during this coming week. Be with the awareness that you are used to functioning in the context of impressions, which means no direct connection whatsoever with anything. Be aware that that constitutes an empty and lonely experience that it’s not your Birthright to be experiencing.

Dare to be conscious of that unpleasant and negative thought, because you won’t hold on to something of that sort once you finally accept it as the truth and you will reach for something else. And you will dare to be present with whatever’s going on in your day without employing an off-the-cuff, knee jerk response, assessment, impression. And then hesitate long enough to be with the situation or the one you’re with, with the desire to see behind the impression they’re engaged in presenting. And ask to see what the Father would show you to see. So that you might say exactly what triggers healing. This is the good news. This is the good news: The Gospel.

Be careful, because the voice, not the Voice for Truth, but the voice for fear, is liable to say, “Well this doesn’t serve me very well.” Always the orphan mentality, the ego, behaves, thinks and acts in self-serving ways.

Hearing what I’ve had to say tonight and last week, might very well cause you to have sad feelings or depressed feelings. And have no idea why you’re feeling that way. But its because the orphan mentality is saying, “This doesn’t serve me well at all. This doesn’t serve me well at all. I don’t want to have anything to do with what doesn’t serve me well.”

But there’s another part of you that does recognize the truth of what I’m saying. And so you are persisting, hanging in with it. And you have this conflict—this tension between that in you which is recognizing things it hasn’t seen before that are clarifying and are uplifting. And at the same time, what you have called your normal mentality, is saying, “This does not serve me well at all.”

The orphan mentality is not going to find what I’m saying useful or happifying. The habit that you’re engaged in, is not going to dissolve without a struggle, I’ll say. It is going to object. But then you must remember that it doesn’t serve you well to believe that you’re an orphan when you’re not an orphan. In fact, it causes you completely unnecessary pain, sorrow, suffering—unnecessary.

I look forward to being with you next week. I am aware that ego-structures are collapsing. I am aware that you are hearing what I am meaning and it’s important for you to know that although these collapses may cause certain stresses to be felt, they are indicators of healing. If the ego is complaining, something wonderful is happening.