Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Your days are full of stimulation, and the stimuli usually elicit conditioned responses. In other words, habitual responses, whether it’s a habitual thought, whether it’s a habitual boilerplate statement, it’s always something that comes from your memory. It is always a past behavior that spontaneously comes into play actually without your even thinking.

Now, everything we are uncovering here has as it’s point—it’s purpose—to move you off of your ingrained tendency to respond out of habit. Because when you’re responding out of habit, you are not responding to the actual moment you are in and the actual dynamics of it. And so, your response can’t ever really be in touch with what the stimuli are calling for.

The fact is, that the underlying ground belief or habitual response or style of habitual response is, that no matter what the stimuli has been, it’s up to you to know what to do. It’s up to you to have the answer. It’s up to you to find out how to cope with whatever the stimulus is. It’s all me … me … me. It’s all orphan … orphan … orphan.

What we are in the midst of promoting transformation about, is that you remember that it’s not all up to you. In other words, that there is a God.

I don’t care how spiritual you are or how spiritual you think you are or how well developed you think you’ve become—spiritually speaking—you very seldom consistently respond to the events in your day from a conscious awareness of your partnership with God. You forget there’s a God. And you forget what the portent is of what God is relative to you. And so you lose, or perhaps, have never experienced the inspiration, the uplift, the inspiriting of Revelation and spontaneous clarity and the ever-present support there is for you to have an experience very different from the hum-drum, repetitive scenarios that unfold in your day, where: Something happens, you respond on your own … something happens, you respond on your own … somebody reacts to your response and you react to their response … you react to their reaction. And there you are in the eddy that we’ve been talking about, caught in just a mental habit of being unconscious.

The whole point is to remember that there is a God and to remember that God is your Father. It’s not that there is a God that created the Universe, and you are enjoying the effect of His Creation. It’s not that there is a God Who somehow maintains an underlying order to things so that no matter how bad they get Creation doesn’t collapse, but you’re just left to cope. It’s that God is infinite intelligence and you, for lack of better words, are the reflection of that infinite intelligence.

This intelligence that God is, is your intelligence. It’s His gift to you by virtue of creating you in His image and likeness as His Offspring. It’s your Birthright to be experiencing the inspiration and inspiriting of this conscious experience of intelligence that goes far beyond your being able to sort and gather data from your memory banks to pull together to respond to life because it all depends on you, and how good a brain you have and how effective your synapses are, and so on and so forth … you unfortunate “hunk of meat.”

You forget that there is a God. And so you don’t reach out. And if you do reach out, it’s generally a reaching out to a sort of blind God that may or may not see you, may or may not hear your plea because He’s very different from you. You are just His manifestation. You are just His effect, an effect of a Movement of Creation far in the past. And so, in your mind, it’s a hit or miss process—this reaching out to God, that’s called prayer.

Now, before we go into the continuation of what we were reading last week, I am going to read Lesson 130 in the Workbook without comment.

The subject is:

… in thanks and gratitude …

As one or the other.

As you go through your day are you doing it in a lazy sloppy way? Things happen that you don’t like and you say, “Well that’s life,” and you do your best to cope with it. Or, are you alert enough and unconfused enough in your own mind that you are willing to look at it and say, “This is not a part of what I want!” Taking a stand, as it were, taking a position on your behalf. “This is not a part of what I want. I want freedom and deliverance. This is unacceptable.”

You will have the experience that you stand on the side of. You will have the experience that will reflect the belief that you stand on the side of. And so it calls for some self-discipline. Your experience will be as fuzzy or as clear as what you insist upon having for your experience.

Now, let’s go into the book. And I’m going to back up a couple of sentences.

And we could say God is still there, although you know Him not. Because it didn’t occur to you to let Him in, it didn’t occur to you to include Him, because you’re so damned busy taking care of all the stimulating events that are going on in your life which you think call for your habitual responses.

… and God’s Being …

You’ve all had moments of inspiration. You’ve all had moments of insight. You’ve all had moments of clarity that let you know that there literally is another way to look at this—another way to be with everything.

Um-m …

Well, you don’t love doing what doesn’t work. And yet you insist on doing what does not work. And to make it even more practical, you insist on doing things by yourself, which has never ultimately worked. You insist on doing things without including anything outside your puny little memory banks and the habitual ways of processing the data that’s there.

Listen to this:

Now, when you’re caught up in looking at everything through your particular biases and your particular interpretations that you’re so absolutely sure of and you are unwilling to gather data from anywhere outside of your memory banks, existence is a struggle. There’s no joy to it, because in one way or another, it’s a constant unfoldment of failure.

And you know that wears you down. You really do know that it wears you down and discourages you—depresses you. But you say, “What can I do?” [slight chuckle] You can remember that there is a God. You can remember that there is a Source that is a Resource that goes far beyond whatever you have stored in your memory banks.

You, each and every one of you, are constantly surrounded by, imbued by, and supported by a love that extends itself to you gladly. And inescapably conveys the gladness to you that causes you to feel inspired. Inspiration is available to you even in your darkest moments, even in your lousiest attitude that you seem not to be able to shake yourself free from.

… the Christ that’s still there, although you know I’m not…

… ah-h . . the joy will come through …

Specifically tonight, we’re homing in on the need for you to realize that when you feel absolutely stuck in a frame of mind or a mental attitude of negativity that seems absolutely justifiable to you, and which, because it seems totally justifiable to you, there can be no escape from … there is escape.

There is escape.

… not Him. And you don’t wait for God, although you say your prayers to God, and then you wait in hopes that He will answer you, as though He might not.

… you wait but for yourself to shift your focus of attention from the past to the now, from memory to the little gap—the place of silence in you—where you are not confirming and reconfirming old bad habits and old thinking processes that accomplish nothing and keep you in a repetitive state of failure.

… your depression, your consternation. Ah-h, your hopelessness.

… or to hold on to this sad world and mull it over and sit on the pity-potty is but your will. But it isn’t the will that’s established in your Being. It’s a will that’s established in sloppy, bad, mental habits.

That is your true will. Because of what you truly Are. It’s not the will of the orphan, but it’s the will of the divine Being that you Are that is being obscured by your preoccupation with negativity.

You share the Will of God with God because all there is to you is God Being all there is to you. But you’ve got to remember this right in the middle of your stimulating day, and your habit of responding out of habit, out of the past, out of your memory, out of what you are so independently confident about without ever asking for a second opinion and turning to God or the Holy Spirit or your Guide or Me, and saying, “How else could I be seeing this? I need a second perspective. And I want a perspective that reflects the truth, not beliefs.” And say your prayer, “I wish to see and experience everything through your Vision, which is your gift to me from God.”

Ask Me to share My Vision with you because that is what I’m here for, not just on Saturday nights, but every moment of your day. Start engaging with Me more consistently. Start asking for Me to share My Vision, so that you might look at everything through It. Why? Because it’s your Birthright to be seeing everything that way, and not to be confused, and not to be depressed and not to be caught in a repetitive eddy.

Clarity of Vision … the Father’s Perspective … the capacity to look at everything from your innate divine sanity is a promise held out to you as long as you’re denying its existence. It is an unfailing promise that stands there to be implemented, or activated by your conscious choice to access it in favor of, or in place of your stupid intent to value whatever your current way of seeing things is.

Now, it certainly is my hope, that you don’t just tune in on Saturday nights and listen for a little bit of inspiring stimulation and then, perhaps, draw from it occasionally. It’s my hope that when you become discouraged for whatever reason, you’ll pick up this book and read what we’ve been talking about. You need the support when your strong habits are in full force. You need to be able to sit down and read something like this:

Now you’re likely to read that and say, “Well that sure as hell isn’t my experience!” But the fact is that you’ve read it. And there’s something that you now are aware of that contradicts what you are so sure of. And you need that reminder to be present at the same time that you are, out of habit, reinforcing your negative frame of mind or your independent stance that necessarily means that your experience cannot be the fullness of fulfillment.

… why? What ultimately could cause you to be as safe from pain as God Himself? Well, the very simple fact that all there is to you is what God is Being of Himself right there where you are. And you were never created and allowed to become a separate independent entity by God. You are always the current inspirited presence of the Mind of God—of the Being of God. And that is why:

You need the reminder that you are not alone. Because your suffering is caused only and entirely by the belief that you are alone, independent, separate, an orphan, a living being set into motion and left to fend for itself all by itself.

… the world about you …

We’re talking about Reality here, the other world, so to speak—one of the two choices that you seem to have available to you. When you seem to be confronted with the other world of pain and sorrow, you can do what you’ve always done and suffer through it, or you can say, “Wait a minute! I have a choice. Not a lot of choices. I only have two choices: I can choose for what I’m experiencing, which is not Real and is a suffering experience, or I can opt for the other choice for that which is Real in which no suffering is going on, no misperception of Reality is going on that seems to hurt.”

… God’s Son …

… all about him, everywhere …

… you …

The moment you let them in—the arms of love—and experience them, you will without thought, immediately let go of the world of pain that you were experiencing because you will have experienced the other option … the other choice. And you cannot see two worlds at the same time. It’s black or white.

That’s how simple it is. And that’s how Absolute it is. But it boils down to your making a choice.

… you …

… continuous, not segregated, not separated into this, that and the other thing that are different from you. This world that you’ve been educated to think came from a big bang and it’s just a matter of physical processes going on, is the Kingdom of Heaven misperceived as that. And so…

That the world is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now, this book uncovers error for what it is and it illuminates the truth. In the process of uncovering error, it can begin to look as though you and your thinking are responsible for all of your bad fortune, your suffering, your illness, your distress, and so on. And it can seem to call for you to get a better hold on your mind. In other words, a call for the orphan to become more efficient in the proper use of his mind, or her mind. And this can create a tremendous burden. And you say, “Oh-h, well, it’s in the Course and so this burden must be appropriate and I must endure it!” And all the time that you’re going down this fantasy lane, you’re forgetting one thing: There is a God.

You see, the orphan has been so used to solving its own problems, and it has been taught that it’s up to him or her to do all the problem solving and to find ways to do it better and better, which has never solved the dilemma of being an orphan.

And so I want to remind you, that although it can become very easy to use what we’ve been reading and everything that’s in the rest of the book to burden yourself with a false responsibility to do things better all by yourself, you must not succumb to it.

You must not forget, that the whole point is to cause a realization in you that there are two vantage points—only two—and you can choose for one or the other, meaning, you can stop choosing for the one that doesn’t work. And you can start choosing for the one that heals, and regenerates, and transforms your perspective, your mind, so that you do come back into your sanity. And then, recognizing that you have a choice, make the choice and be diligent about it. And especially, be diligent about it when you are caught in an eddy, when you are depressed, when you are discouraged. That’s when it’s needed most. And that’s when you feel least like doing it.

When you make the choice for what’s Real—for Reality, for something beyond your memory banks—what responds is love that leads gladly, and as I said, embraces you and imbues you with the experience of that gladness, causing you to be inspired in spite of the awfulness of your perspective that you seem to be caught in irrevocably.

When you are caught in the so-called awfulness of the human condition, get this book out and read. So that even though it seems to you in your current mental frame of mind, that what you’re reading is the furthest thing from the truth—because you know what the truth is and it’s the awfulness of the human condition—you are confronted with an intelligently expressed alternative point of view that makes it easier for you not to believe that your current point of view is the only point of view and absolutely valid. Because that’s the way you undo the commitment that you’re bringing to your loving, to hold to and affirm and reconfirm your awful negative frame of mind.

Well, it has in the past, because you’re not Awake.

But his Son does not return His Father’s Love until he let’s his Father in, until he lets the awareness that he has a Father be present in his mind. If he doesn’t do that, he’s all caught up in self-preservation, his tiny little self having to solve every problem against the greatest of odds and a world and universe that are conflicted and tends to cause suffering and ultimately, death.

… and I would say, is given you …

… what?

All there is to you is what God is Being of Himself, right there where you are.

You know what? When you are as caught up in the fullness of your problems and the arrogance you have to think that it’s up to you to solve it, and that God gave you the capacity to solve it without consulting God, all by yourself, you don’t dream of peace. You’re fulfilling a purpose which is to your credit to fulfill or will be supposedly. And you don’t dream of peace. You dream of conflict and surmounting it. You’re on a crusade and you’re loving it because you know right will win out.

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind…

When something is not fearful, you spontaneously embrace it, you spontaneously welcome it.

… meaning yours.

Put a marker on this page so that you can come back to it because you need the reminders that are here. And come and read it when you least feel like it, when there seems to be no point, when you’re sure it won’t do any good. You might say, level out the playing field by providing another perspective than the one you’re engaged in that is causing your suffering.

It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. And that’s what God, Being Himself right where you are, as what appears to be you, Is. It’s you having the Kingdom.

… the one you made up …

… the world in which you need nothing?

… what?

Not just a matter of fact, so-be-it sort of thing. It’s a …

And again, you’ve got to remember that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind. And so we’re talking about, in the process of waking up, you’re not being the beneficiary of some “out there benefactor,” not an orphan being given the equivalent of an inheritance, you are … it is you coming back into your right Mind where wholeness and integrity and cohesiveness and continuity—unbroken continuity—is your experience.

Now, there are many of you who have, during the last few weeks, been caught in an eddy of negativity—in a circular thought pattern—in which you have been incapable of experiencing insight or revelation or the infilling of the Spirit where it has seemed to be impossible to have any lift, any reason to experience the slightest bit of joy or even let’s just say, pleasantness.

And some of you have said, “Well, after what we’ve been learning in the Course, my orphanhood must be in full blossom, and what can I expect? And there is so much about my thinking that is wrong—that I don’t even know of—that it’s going to be impossible for me to get out of this eddy.” And you use what we’ve been reading to justify staying stuck.

That happens because it coincides with your lifelong habit that you’ve been raised to believe: That everything is up to you and that you are independent and that you do have intelligence of your own and you do have capacities that it’s up to you to exercise. And not only that, if you have to lean on someone else, that is insulting! If you have to be in relationship with someone else or something else, and let’s say, let there be shared responsibility for getting out of the problem, it undermines and disqualifies any hope you thought you had to fulfill your purpose—your so-called purpose to become a successful entity on your own—a false purpose that has been dangling in front of you like a carrot in front of a horse that you have been trying to get, and which you will never be able to get because it’s part of the setup that you never get it. Why? Because if the horse got it, the horse would stop moving forward. And so the paraphernalia is set up so that the horse can’t get it, but it will be just out of range so that it feels like it’s worth trying for.

Please, remember that you have two choices, not just the one you’re caught in and suffering from. And then, do whatever you have to do to make the other choice, even if it means picking up this book and going to his marked page or any other place where you can read about the truth about you, so that you have a “second opinion” side by side with the first. In the presence of the second opinion that is different, the first opinion cannot appear to set there as an absolute fact, and you cannot be duped as easily.

Okay. Have a rousing good time this week challenging your habitual thinking, not by doing anything to it, but by opting for giving your attention to and letting in a second opinion—the other point of view—in whatever way works.

And I look forward to being with you next week.