Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Welcome to another Saturday night fireside chat in orphanland. And, as usual, I’m going to say things that will not make you comfortable, that will dispel mindsets, concepts that are bondages to you when you are in an absolute state of freedom.

You are not who you think you are. None of you are who you think you are.

Now, there’s some unfinished business from last week. All of you were able to grasp the meaning of the Text because you had such a wonderful visual aid in Paul. All of you were able to see that at various times you’ve done the same thing. You have established a goal, you have become committed to it, you have focused your attention down upon it, and you have become obsessed with it to the exclusion of your capacity to see anything around you clearly.

As I said, you could all see that from time to time you do this. But there is a larger lesson here, a larger learning. And to simply spit it out succinctly, you all—every single one of you, and there are no exceptions, even if, on your spiritual path you have moments of insight—you are, all of you, in an obsessive state twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year ad infinitum.

It isn’t just, from time to time, you have become obsessed and tiny. The very fact that you think you’re listening to me from an orphanage, [chuckling] from an orphan mindset or as a physical human being who’s learning more about what he truly is, you are doing exactly what Paul did while he was at Disneyland.

Now, the fact that it was Disneyland, helped the illustration be obvious to you. Because you know that what goes on in Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom, is very different from what you’re confronted by every day of your life. It is a place of joy, it is a place of creativity, it is a place of, well I will say, mind-bending originality. And the bottom line purpose of it is pleasure. You can’t say that about your workplace. You can’t say that about your home. But you can say it about Disneyland.

Paul went to this place, carried with him his miserable mindset, took it with him everywhere he went and lived in his own little world which was not where he was … was not Disneyland. Oh, like all of you, he had his moments of, you might say, enlightenment. He had his moments of release from his mindset when something he was experiencing caught him off-guard and a little bit of awe and joy spontaneously emerged and he was caught in the now. But after that moment was over, he quickly reinstituted his mindset.

You all, like Paul in Disneyland, are in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven right now. Now, did Disneyland have to change? Would Disneyland have to change from what it is in order for Paul to be able to enjoy it? No. Paul would have had to change, and I say would have had to, because throughout the entire trip he didn’t change. But Paul would have to change in order to experience it for what it was.

And likewise, does anything you’re experiencing right now: homes, apartments, buildings, traffic, trees, sky, stars, planets, does any of that have to change in order for you to be able to see it as the Kingdom of Heaven? No. You have to change. And when you change, you will see homes, apartments, traffic, trees, sky, stars, planets with entirely, for lack of better words, new eyes. The fact is you will experience them all with Vision.

Your eyes will still see basically what you’re seeing. But that is not going to be the source of your experience. Your Vision—how can I put it?—Vision is a Mind innocent of preconceptions … Vision is Mind innocent of agendas of its own … Vision is pure Mind which is what each of you Are, right now. And everything that you say you’re experiencing out there is an experience going on in this Mind. And every object you see, every thing you see is an idea without material accompaniments. I mean by that, the drag of gravity—the tendency to experience inertia—that keeps you from shifting directions, being flexible, spontaneous. It is without the tendency to run down, deteriorate, and finally die. That’s what ideas are minus the material accompaniments. That’s what walls are, that’s what fingernails are, that’s what skin is, that’s what flowers are.

So please understand, that to become enlightened, to Wake up, to come back into your right Mind is not going to constitute a loss of everything you’re experiencing. It is going to constitute a loss of a veil of misperceptions and tiny small mindedness and judgment and commitment to ideas that aren’t true, and commitment to [chuckle] your impressions of each other instead of your direct experience of each other. In other words, an absence of your commitment to the impression you have of another. So that you might not have this veil between you and your Brother, and can experience him as he Is.

Disneyland did not have to change the layout of the paths that people walked on in order for Paul to become free of the idea that these paths were there for the purpose of making people move where it was desired to have them be as though they were just sheep being led, manipulated, and in the process, Disneyland is making a great deal of money from these followers—these sheep that could be led.

Mind you, that isn’t what’s going on at Disneyland, but that is the mean-spirited perception that Paul or his orphan mindset created and held between what it really was, what Disneyland really was, and what Paul was experiencing.

You know what? Everyone that comes into your day, everyone you encounter, as well as every thing, comes into your experience or is in your experience for one purpose: to have its divinity recognized. Mind you, their behavior might not seem divine. And the things that you see may seem to be dying, a favorite rose-bush, or a treasured tree in your yard might appear to be dying. It doesn’t mean that the way you are seeing things from your current limited perspective are asking to have their divinity recognized. It means that in spite of the way you’re seeing them, they are already divine and the call is for you to be willing to abandon what you are convinced about or convinced of about those things.

Ultimate reality is facing you at this moment. Everything is a constant opportunity to be willing to see more than what you’re convinced is there. More than what you are convinced is there. Why? Because what is there is Real, is God Presencing Himself right there and the opportunity is stimulating.

If there’s one thing I mean to convey to you last week and this week, it is that Reality is not something you will experience in a doldrum of peace, a state of even inactivity. Reality is awesome! What you are in the middle of is awesome, whether it’s walls you think are static and not alive, or whether its an orchid that you think is alive. The substance of both is Love, living Love—loving. And in its act of loving, is conveying all that it is, divinely, for you to experience.

But no, you’re so damn sure it’s just plaster and nails or a living organism, that you don’t let go, you don’t let yourself stand ready to experience what you’re not expecting, because you are so sure of what’s there. And your assurance of what everything is, is what constitutes your being in a constant state of denial of Reality. Not because you want to be denying it, but because you don’t know and you haven’t thought that there was an alternative.

You think you’ve always been an orphan and that life is a state of living in an orphanage where you have all of these mutual agreements with each other: you know, the dangerous ones that all of them are, because they’re not any more dependable than you are, and you’d better protect yourself and you’d better negotiate with them carefully so as to ensure the greatest amount of peace. You see. None of this is going on. But twenty-four/seven, this is the way you are living.

Now, some of you orphans may have already trudged off back to your room because what I’m saying is so depressing—twenty-four/seven uninterruptedly? “I’m not doing well? There’s something more I could be doing? I can’t take this.” Well, that’s the impression of being an orphan. That’s doing the impression [lowered sympathetic voice] of a poor mistreated, misunderstood orphan … poor thing … bye-bye … when you feel like coming out of your room, I’ll still be here loving you, [resumes normal voice] and pointing out to you that you are not who you think you are and you are not what you think you are and the orphanage you are in is not an orphanage and those who occupy it are not orphans because it’s all the Kingdom of Heaven, just as Disneyland was always Disneyland, even though for five days Paul [resumes sympathetic voice] went off to his room and hung out in the past, in his head and forecast a miserable future in his head and occupied himself with the tension and misery of such a mindset.

But you see, you have what it takes to grasp that Paul was out of his mind. That what Paul was experiencing wasn’t valid. It was temporary insanity, we’ll say. Likewise, it is very valuable for you, if you are not experiencing in your day that which is awesome, to assume that you might likewise, be experiencing a form of insanity, which you are preoccupied with and committed to because it’s hard to believe that there’s really anything else—really any other way of seeing and experiencing everything.

Now, you could toy with the idea of exercising a little bit of positive thinking even though I have pooh-pooed the power of positive thinking. You could dare to say, “Wow, if there really is so much more for me to be experiencing, I’m going to become a little bit conscientious about getting into that little gap between the past and the future—between memory and imagination.” You see, it’s easy for you to see that imagination is not memory, and memory is not imagination and so that they never could possibly connect.

Now, if everything and everyone in your experience every day is there for the purpose of having its divinity recognized, then you could reasonably say that you’re here to be a healer. You are here to engage in the healing of whatever is imperfect. Now, to ego orphans, that sounds great. “Oh, put up my shingle, I’m a healer, ‘Hey fellow orphans, hey fellow orphans, I am dedicated to healing you.’” No, remember Disneyland doesn’t have to change in order for Paul to experience it as it truly is and the Christ’s that are your Brothers, and the Kingdom of Heaven that you are actually in, do not and does not have to change in order for you to experience it without flawed perception.

So where does the change lie? It has to lie in your willingness to abandon the way you’re using your mind. And without getting terribly psychologically complicated, the one thing, the one basic thing that you’re doing that constitutes a wrong use of your mind is that you think you know what everything is.

Now, if that is false, that you do not know what everything really is, then all you have to do is to bring one thing into practice: Curiosity, a simple solution. But curiosity about what? To get the goods on your Brother, to know the truth about what’s really going on in his mind or her mind, what they’re really up to, like a psychic, so that you understand the motivations that are causing him to behave so poorly, or to engage in activities that are illegal so that you can be one jump ahead and get’em into prison because you’ve been able to psyche them out? No.

Remember, every one and every thing that comes into your experience, comes in to your experience for the purpose of having its divinity recognized. Why? Because all that is actually coming into your experience is the Real Disneyland or is the Christ that your Brother is, is the Kingdom of Heaven that is what really is. It invites you to see it for what it is. And in your willingness to see it for what it is, you dispel by your will to see the truth, your willingness to see beyond your present sense of sight and leave your insanity behind.

But you’ve got to remember, not only that you’re here to recognize the divinity of everything, but to actually engage in attentiveness. Instead of getting back in your mind where you’re rehearsing all of the known facts about so and so or about such and such. Known facts are memory. They are not facts. Facts are always experienced from the little gap between the past and the future in the now.

[addressing an audience member] So, you’re leaving shortly to visit an aging step-mother, are you? And are you going to see her in “an old-folks home” with plaster wall boards and paint, dead inanimate matter put together in an attractive way? Or are you going to move through the Kingdom of Heaven to see someone who is the perfect expression of God, with an insistence not to be sidetracked by your memory or even hearsay about the current situation from other orphans who also do not know to look for the purpose to recognize the divinity of a thing? Your trip can be transformational for you and inspiring for you and likewise for her, if you will be willing to let something more in than what you’re confident about already, and what the past has proven to you.

Each of you, if you’re going to work, or to the grocery store or into the kitchen to cook, can ask yourself if all of the feelings and ideas you had associated with that activity is what’s really going on, or is there something awesomely more significant there. You’re going to, in effect, have to express some intent to Wake up. It’s so very easy to just continue down the road that memory has laid before you, predicted for you, because that’s what everyone does and you don’t really know of many people who are doing it differently and most of all, it’s your habit. And even more than that, you think that its more than a habit, you think that it simply is life. And it’s not! It’s not! It’s just a mindset—a frame of reference like a pair of glasses, colored glasses that lets you see only one color—even though the full spectrum is out in front of you to be experienced.

So remember, you could identify with what Paul went through, because from time to time, you have become that focused as an orphan, I’ll say. And then from time to time, you’ve been more flexible and more open. But what I want you to understand is, that whether you’re sleeping at night or awake in the daytime, you are in a mindset, you are in an eddy at the edge of the river, circling around constantly rehearsing what has been before, where you have been before.

I want to point out something though, this movement in a circular motion in the eddy, you aren’t even responsible for. Whatever motion there is, is the effect of the river. And so you, even when you’re in the eddy, are not free of or independent of or separated from the movement of Being—Reality.

Please, let there be growing dissatisfaction with repetition. Let there be growing dissatisfaction with the awful perceptions you’re having about your life and your world. I know, I said that when you look out at the Kingdom of Heaven, it doesn’t seem to report back to you that it’s the Kingdom of Heaven. And you turn on the news and it’s obvious to you it’s not the Kingdom of Heaven and the news is distressing. Well, what do you expect? It’s news about orphans, put on by orphans who lack the Vision necessary—the Vision that I was talking about that has answers. And for you to listen to what’s coming over the media, the news media, and believe it and get upset or depressed because of it, is not the gift built into you that you have to give.

Don’t get upset or depressed about it. As I’ve said before, put a thing across the top of your TV that says, “Today’s best perception of Reality,” so that you’re reminded this isn’t Reality, it’s just a perception. Just like Paul’s perception that he kept in place between him and the experience of Disneyland.

Whatever is coming across that tube or that radio or that newspaper or that magazine, is an invitation for Vision, which it is your function to be providing because of who you really Are. But you’re going to have to start acting like what you’re really are and stop behaving and doing the impression of an orphan.

Great statesmen throughout history have changed the course of history it appears, because they didn’t accept the status quo and they didn’t believe the stories that those in power and distress were telling—the sob story, the sad story about the injustice between this country and that country and their behavior and their ideologies and on and on and on. They had a Vision. And because they were diplomats, they found a way to express the Vision in which those who were in distress could see a new way.

What’s needed today is Vision—inspired perspective that blesses everyone. Well, how can inspired perspective bless everyone if that perspective doesn’t arise out of one—meaning any and all of you—who dared to step off the wheel of history, abandon the past and the future and be present in the “now” with the desire to recognize the divinity, the Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven that is actually going on.

“Well, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And what can I do? I can’t do anything.” Poor little orphan, tch, tch, tch, no power to do anything. I guess you’re just gonna have to be sad in your orphanage, miserable and die out your days until the bitter end so that by dying you can prove that you actually lived. It is insane, isn’t it? Yes, just as Paul was the only one who could do anything to change his experience at Disneyland, each one of you is the only one who can do anything to change your experience of the world. And you have the capacity built in. It’s already established as your function. But as I’ve said, it’s going to mean that you’re going to have to use a little bit of self-discipline and not just willy-nilly, follow like sheep along with that which all of the other orphans are putting forth, and which they don’t have the capacity to see beyond.

Everything we’re talking about is full of promise, not false promises, but real promise. Because everything is uncovering to you capacities, they’re not even latent capacities, they’re full blown capacities which at the moment you’re consciously and conscientiously choosing not to employ. Why? Because you are consciously and conscientiously employing the orphan mindset. Because at the bottom line, in one way or another, you really do think that you came from, let us say, a physical explosion marking the beginning of physical development: when a sperm entered an egg and conception occurred. A physical thing occurred. And therefore, you can’t possibly have any other source and therefore, you must of necessity be a lonely isolated physical entity sprung up in a physical world that has nothing to do with you and which you must cope with.

That’s the story. That’s the myth. That is the myth. Reality and the Kingdom of Heaven, which everyone thinks is a wonderful and potentially real myth that will be fully realized after you die, that’s where the flaw is. That’s where everything’s a hundred and eighty degrees out of sync. And that is where what is not true is taken as truth. And that is where insanity sets in. And you don’t need to be committed to insanity. You don’t have to be. No-one is holding you to it.

I’ve said so many times: Be willing to look at everything with innocent eyes. Well, [chuckle] don’t just be willing to do it. Do it! Because you deserve not to be suffering from ignorance.

Let’s go into the Book. The new section is entitled:

Love is what spontaneously flows from you when you’re in the gap. When you’re in time, fear is what you experience and what you broadcast, what flows from you. Paul’s miserable experience was a result of fear and fear was secondary to his commitment to his own definitions of how things work and what is important and what isn’t important. And the minute he or any of you gets caught in that mental trap, fear emerges and it governs behavior.

If everyone and everything comes into your experience for the purpose of having its divinity recognized, then your function is to recognize it. And so you extend that recognition. And the extension of that recognition is the act of Love. The Love is changeless but it gets exchanged between that which is eternal and that which is eternal.

In exactly the same way, that in a large crowd, each member of which has a candle, if one person lights his candle with it, he can light the candle of the person next to him without his candle going out. It’s the same light. It’s the same energy. And by exchange, it is extended and increased.

So when you hear that everything about God is unchanging, and therefore, any kind of change that you’re experiencing must be an illusion, recognize the falsity of that thought. Because through the exchange of that which is changeless, it is extended and it increases. And the increase can best be described by the word, Movement.

Now that’s the description of one of the two emotions.

And you’ll recognize this as you remember Paul’s experience.

You see. Paul can be obsessed with things associated with his work. You can be obsessed with entirely different things. But …

Do you think while Paul was at Disneyland, the sites that he saw were the actual events, or his biased perception of them? Or the sounds that he heard, were the sounds really happening? He even got to the point when there were live bands playing for the enjoyment of everyone, to have judgments about the kind of music that was being allowed in Disneyland. It was not enjoyable to him. He was not hearing the sounds that were being made.

You see, in order for something to have meaning, it has to be something that not only can be shared, but is shared. Can’t share if you’re insistent upon being absolutely private—solitary, separate, different.

[chuckling] And believe it or not, Paul was surrounded by thousands of people for four days, not to mention his wife and family. And yet he wasn’t with them. And he was alone. Literally, the experience was a lonely experience.

The one we make up—you make up …

Why?

… in other words, memory …

Each of your memories, even of the same events, are different. Why? Because you depend upon not a direct experience of the event, but an impression you got from the event. [whew!]

What makes them not whole? The fact that there’s not any connection between the one perceiving them and the one perceived. That’s why its not whole. There isn’t wholeness without connection. And there cannot be connection between orphans because orphans are holding themselves as uniquely alone and it is absolutely necessary for their aloneness to be unaltered else every effort they make, or every effort he makes to prove his existence will not be pure and therefore will not be absolutely valid.

If any part of one’s worth is gathered from some other source, then his worth is not pure and he cannot have succeeded in demonstrating that by his own effort that he could create himself and prove his existence.

… the images …

… ha-ha …

You perceive someone … Paul perceived members of his family at Disneyland as those who aught to be able to communicate with him on the level and in the nature of his distorted mindset because it seems so obviously reasonable to him. And so, when he talked to them about the meaninglessness of being where they were, and they couldn’t agree, and even extended Vision of what was really present to be experienced, he did not hear that. He heard himself speaking back saying, “You are misunderstood Paul, you are not appreciated Paul. They do not understand the gravity of the disobedience you’re engaging in by not honoring the work that you’re doing.” And following along with them because they were tired and needed a break. You see. So no matter what was said, he heard what he wanted to hear.

As long as you’re operating on the basis of your definitions of everything—your best definitions of everything, and you are not allowing for there to be more, and you’re not curious for there to be a larger picture to experience and to be open to it—you will see what you’re projecting and you will not be able to see beyond it. You simply won’t.

Paul’s apparent judgment upon Disneyland itself, and all of the beauty there and all of the creativity there and upon those who were with him, were really an attack on his undeviating choice as to how to see them, how he chose to see them. And so he was attacking himself, not them. He wasn’t even in touch with them. He had no capacity in his moment of insanity to even be able to appreciate the joy that they were experiencing and the sense of family and brotherhood and togetherness that they were experiencing. He wasn’t in their world at all. And his insistence upon sticking to his guns and judging them, constituted a judgment upon himself which is what made his misery. It is what makes your misery.

Now what this world needs now is you willing to have and desiring to have Vision, which can be experienced only in the now, in the gap between past, memory (and of course its your memory) and future, imagination (and of course is your imagination). So its entirely a head trip, its entirely private and its entirely yours. And you’ve got to break the isolation in order to become free of your insanity, in order to become free of your miserable and demoralizing imaginations.

I’m sorry orphans, but I must say this.

You hold yourselves in a miserable state. A state of birth, growth, aging, death, struggle, and on and on. You hold yourself in that apparent process because you are not willing to get into the gap and dare to look with innocence. In other words, without preconceptions—without the past and without an anticipation of the future. A capacity each of you, perfectly, already has.

… and indeed Paul’s behavior was not pleasant for those around him …

… in other words what’s really within …

And why can they cannot see the reality of their brothers? Because they’ve not known or have forgotten that it’s their function to recognize the divinity of everything that comes into their experience. And so rather than engaging in acknowledging—recognizing a Brother’s divinity, they are engaging in condemnation of them. Why? Because they remind them of something from their past that they’re stuck on. And so they respond from their memory, totally avoiding the opportunity for connection in the now.

… if you see your own hatred, if you see your own distress, if you see your own bitterness …

… or as your world …

Yeah, Paul sure did. Susan was very loving, firm at times, objecting to his behavior, but nevertheless, truly loving. His daughter and his grandson of course, were constantly being present in a loving fashion and inviting participation in the fun. And yet he reacted with fear to it. Which means that he reacted to it based upon the fear he was embodying because he was choosing not to be present, and to rehearse and stick with the dilemma that his past that was presenting, of his falling short of everything that he needed to be doing. And couple that with the fact that his absence from attending to that was going to cause for him a more horrible future, he responded to the love with fear.

Oh yes, and you don’t know how many times he went out on that balcony and withdrew from the group to have his private time of misery in which he did approach me, he did approach me, but he wanted to know how to correct the problem of his having to be somewhere that didn’t fit his preconception of what was principled, orderly, productive and truly Meaningful.

Not really so hard to understand. Paul embodied it perfectly. Paul felt, with all righteousness, that his not attending to the important aspects of the work he was doing with me, which was causing him to be fearful, was an act of love because he was giving honor to that which no-one else was. You see? So he saw that his dilemma was a result of real love that he was intent upon expressing, wanting to express, wanting to share. That’s how it can happen.

Now there really is no good place to interrupt this, and so we will interrupt it now and continue next week.

Now, such words again cannot appropriately be used to judge yourself, condemn yourself, or depress yourself. You haven’t known you were doing it. And you haven’t known that there truly is an alternative. And even though we’ve been talking for many, many months about alternatives, it isn’t until now that it could be brought into clearer focus for you so that you could see just exactly how you do it. But once you know that there is an alternative, and once you could see that hey, yes, you really do do this, until that happens, you’re not in a position to change your mind.

And so this information is here to confront you with the fact that you can change your mind and have a new experience. Not because your mind is powerful enough to make new experiences for you, but because your mind, not used incorrectly, is a mind that’s in the gap. And the gap is part of infinity, is part of eternity—the wholeness of you. And so you have a point of escape. It’s wonderful. It’s simple. There is a point of escape from dreams, from illusions, and it’s in the now. And the act that you are called upon in order to make that escape in the now, is to remember that everyone and every thing comes into your experience for the purpose of what? Your making a gift. Ah-h breaking the isolation. Making the gift of acknowledging the divinity of that thing. You do everything else. You always have been doing everything else instead of that. Because the simplicity of it hasn’t been made apparent to you.

So, I’m not saying to everybody: “The orphanage you’re in is an evil place and you orphans are evil things.” What I’m saying is, that the building you are calling an orphanage, and the individuals you are that you are calling orphans, are Christs and the Kingdom of Heaven—part of the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s all the Glory of God—the awesomeness of Creation that you’ve missing the experience of because you’ve been so sure of what everything is.

Now, your assurance is being weakened. And as it is weakened, light-bulbs are going to start going on. Insights are going to start occurring. And instead of attempting to change Disneyland, instead of trying to change everything you’re experiencing—the Kingdom of Heaven in other words—you will catch the mental habit of insanity and let it be dispelled by bringing your attention into the now with the conscious desire to recognize the divinity of each and every thing. Make the gift of the willingness to join in acknowledgement of what is true, for your brother and for every thing in your world.

[addressing an audience member] You have a really wonderful trip, one that you weren’t anticipating going on. And all of you have a truly wonderful week by letting something more than what you’ve been anticipating in.

And I look forward to being with you all next week.