Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’ve been covering some extremely fundamental important points in this last chapter and even though we’re moving on, I encourage all of you to bookmark this chapter—the one we’ve just completed—and refer to it often. Might I say, study it, refresh yourself, because as you may well have noticed, it takes everything we’ve been discussing up to this point and translates it into behavior—not just a head trip, not just thoughts, not just a thought system, not wonderful ideas to mull over, but to embody.

If the truth that you are learning about doesn’t become embodied here, now, today, in your life, then you’re missing the point. And I’m not going to let you miss the point. Either truth means something practical, tangible, relevant to your life now, or it is useless—it is meaningless. And if you are not insisting in one way or another upon bringing it into your daily experience so that your experience is transformed, then what are you doing? What’s it all about?

“Oh, I study the Course. Oh, I’ve read the Course three times and it says this and it says that and it says the other thing.” And many of you can talk the Course at length. But you know what? Until somebody starts talking about the inner shifting that has occurred, until transformation that has been experienced begins finding voice rather than just a rehearsal of ideas and quotes, the function and purpose of the Course is lost—isn’t tapped.

Now, there was a significant statement in what was read last week:

It is very important for this statement not to be misused.

I want all of you to be willing to consider the degree to which you have adopted an attitude of lack with a wonderful positive sense: “I’m not a millionaire. I don’t earn a lot of money. I struggle … but you know what? I’m happy. I have found a way to be content without having everything. I can be comfortable in a relative state of lack. Why gripe about it? It’s the way it is. I know others really go out there and strive to get … get … get … and acquire wealth and acquire substance and acquire respect as a result of it! But I’m not fooled. I know that’s not where it’s at. I know that where it’s at is learning how to be at peace with whatever life gives me, with whatever God decides I aught to have or not have.”

Then there are others who adopt the life of an aesthetic and consciously renounce—get this—renounce the things of the world. It’s a religious act. Lack has become “holified,” justified, and “not having” becomes the possession that gives the aesthetic worth, because he is doing something worthwhile. You see how crazy it is?

There are others who live their life on the basis that less is more. Minimalism would describe that frame of mind. So that you only have around you essential things, so that you get down to “essence.” And essence does not include clutter.

Do you see that to one degree or another, all of you have a basic mindset in which unlimited abundance holds no promise for you. And not having unlimited abundance doesn’t bother you either.

“Oh, I don’t need those trees. I don’t need to have a lawn in my yard. I don’t need the stars. I don’t need a beautiful view out my window.” You see, it’s a process of denial of everything. “I don’t need this. I don’t need that.” It even gets to the point of saying, “It’s all illusion anyway.” It’s a process of discounting everything and somehow finding peace and satisfaction in the emptiness—except that it’s not called emptiness, it’s just called bare essentials.

It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. ² Nothing of what the Father is has He withheld from His self-expression—meaning you and all of Creation. Abundance, wholeness, the absence of lack is characteristic of Creation, it’s characteristic of Being, it’s characteristic of existing.

So, let’s not honor lack and let’s not tolerate lack.

Well, this sort of brings me to the second point I need to bring up. And that is: What do you do when a problem confronts you? What do you do when an illness presents itself? Do you just say, “Well, I’m going to turn this over to the Holy Spirit … well, I’m going to turn this over to the Holy Spirit … tch, tch, Oh, I’m going to turn this over to the Holy Spirit.” Do you think you have no part to play? Even more important, do you think you had no part to play in the situation you find yourself in, that’s called illness or abuse or depression?

If you find yourself experiencing a pain in your side, does your mind immediately go to work at the level of thinking and imagine what it might be or what caused it? Do you behave as though you’re an orphan—just a hunk of flesh, a body having no source but evolution and a sperm and a egg? And then do you doctor it, medicate it, treat it through diet—in other words, manipulate matter with matter?

After all that we’ve been learning, it should be becoming clear that you have something to do, and it has nothing to do with your imagination or your thinking. It has to do with your taking steps to abandon the orphan mentality—the frame of mind that makes up things and then believes what it has made up and then binds itself to whatever the rules are that became involved in the making up of the situation.

Now, we’ve been reading that there are two worlds and one excludes the other. Well, if the world you’re operating in is orphanland, and you’re going around in orphanland, and every Saturday night you tune into the fireside chat here, and after it’s over you go back to orphanland and bring with you a little bit of inspiration that makes you feel good but hasn’t caused you to abandon the mindset, then why did you tune in? … why did you come … why did you listen in the first place? “Oh, well, if I do something, that’s going to be an assertion of my will. We can’t have that, because that just reinforces the ego—the orphan mindset.” And so, you sit there immobilized—stuck.

When you find yourself immobilized through fear or depression or abuse or an event that has shocked you and insulted you, then you may know that there is a call for you to get your ass in gear. It is a call to do something. Just as a nightmare is a call for you to rouse yourself up out of the dream, and wake up in your bed so that you’re free of the nightmare. Your immobility is the same call for you to bring, I’m going to say this very carefully: The force of will into play on behalf of the truth about you.

Just because willfulness is a characteristic of the orphan mentality and it is not an act to engage in if you want to wake up, the will that is in you that was placed there by the Father—that will being His Will, forever His Will, not one that becomes your private possession to deal with as you choose—that Will is there for you to act out from, so that when you are depressed you have the capacity and the willingness to put forth the effort that it takes to what? Change the situation? No. To abandon the orphan mentality.

And how do you abandon the orphan mentality? Simple. By choosing for your peace.

Now, if you find yourself ill, so ill that you can’t engage in any activities, what do you do? Well, even thought it’s inconvenient and it affects your job and it effects your family, you go to bed don’t you—and you rest and you nurture and care for yourself kindly in that way. Well, likewise, when you are confronted with something that is immobilizing you, you must stop your other activities and sit down and choose for your peace. You must sit down and actively meditate. You must sit down and do whatever works for you to get you into the Silence.

Whether there is a throbbing pain in your tooth and jaw, or whether you’re overcome with grief because someone has abandoned you, whatever it might be, the call is for you to shift and abandon the orphan mindset—abandon the isolation, the privateness and the great personal authority that you’ve thought you had … and what? Reach out! “Oh-h, well, it doesn’t do any good” Well? “Oh-h, I’ve been in bed for five days and I’m not getting any better.” See, the argument doesn’t stand up either way. Do it like an orphan does and go to bed, and maybe it doesn’t change right away, but as an orphan, you’ll persist.

Well, as a divine Being, you need to persist in choosing for your peace. Because until you get into your peace, you know what’s absent? The one thing that’s causing the problem: Love.

When you’re in pain, when you’re in grief, when you’re in shock, when you’re in depression, always the same element is there: You don’t feel loved. Love is absent from your experience. Your attention is drawn down to the one focus of whatever the problem is, and in spite of that fact, if you stop and think about it, you have had broader experiences in which you know Love has been present and you know you have expressed Love. Wow, at this moment Love is nowhere around … Love is nowhere around for you to receive and certainly you don’t feel like being the presence of Love. And that’s the problem. That is what is causing the hurt.

Now, I haven’t said this before, but orphanland is a loveless land. Privacy, autonomy, is the antithesis of love. Love cannot exist in that environment. Love doesn’t exist in that environment.

Well, don’t you suppose that if you are bothered by whatever the circumstance is, to the point of being immobilized, willing to take no action and even justifying taking no action because obviously it will be an exertion of will, don’t you think this is exactly the time in which you need to light a fire under you on purpose, and begin to rouse yourself to a different point of view—starting with peace and it’s Silence?

Of course, in order to do that you have to abandon your knee-jerk response of self-protection. But again, self-protection is an isolated shielded circumstance in which love can’t be given and love can’t be received.

Now, the reason for becoming clear about the miserableness of the orphan mindset is so that you will have the justification to get a fire under your ass and do something about it! Again, not in the manipulative way that orphans do, but in the simple step of abandoning the isolation by choosing for your peace first. And then reaching out. Because until you reach out genuinely, you will not experience the influx of Love that flows to you and through you and beyond, forever, uninterruptedly. And until you feel that influx, you will not be able to extend It. And that’s the threshold that has to be crossed. And that is, for lack of better words, the one right use of will that exists.

What? To choose for your peace and reach out and ask for help:

“I wish to see and experience everything through your Vision, Jesus, which is your gift to me from God. I want to abandon the narrow, tiny, selfish orphan mindset that blinds me completely to the real world, which is going on right where something else seems to be going on according to me.”

And then you persist.

The immobilization is nothing more than a mesmeric state of mind—an obsession with being stuck. And when you’re in it, pay attention. All that goes on in your mind is a rehearsal … a rehearsal … a rehearsal of how bad things are. It almost becomes automatic, so that even if you give your attention to something else, the words continue on in your mind in spite of the fact you’re trying to think about something else.

You’re not going to break an obsession with immobility by not doing anything about it. “Oh, well, gee, the Course doesn’t say anything about making things happen?” Really? What did I say? Listen. Go into the silence. Reach out beyond your tinyness—your tiny frame of mind—and listen. Listen, learn and do. I promise you, that not anyone who is Awake, not even God, is going to step in and change your mind for you. And you are having exactly what you’re choosing to have.

Doesn’t the Course constantly talk about “The call for correction?” Oh, oh dear, that means something’s gotta happen: Correction. Something is going to happen, something is going to change. But I promise you, it’s not going to change if you don’t make a choice for it.

And what engine or source of energy or power do you have for making a choice? The power placed in you by God, by virtue of His Being all there is of you. And when, even though you think you’re still a private orphan, you set your mind to a commitment to joining with the Holy Spirit or with me, or with the Father, you’re making a choice and it’s an act that is perfectly consonant with the will of your Being that God has placed in you by virtue of His Being all there is right where you are.

And so you had better bring it into play. Again, not to change the world, not to change the pain in the side, not to change the abuse, not to change the depression, but to change the way you’re looking at things—to change the point of view. And if you don’t do that, you will be caught in an eddy, and you will stay there … and stay there … and stay there … until finally you do do something that wrenches you free. So don’t waste time.

I’ll tell you something: Whether it’s a feeling that comes over you, or a negative attitude that just seems to pop in, or a pain in your side, whatever it is—listen to this—whatever … however it presents itself, it’s an invitation, not a declaration. A pain in the side is not a declaration of a fact that you’re ill. It’s an invitation to believe that you’re ill or that there is an actual physical problem in a physical body that orphans have because they’re just mortals. And you’ve got to challenge that when it happens and decline the invitation.

First of all, be willing to acknowledge that it is not a declaration of a fact. It’s an invitation to believe something. And then, decline the invitation. And then, immediately find ways and means to get into your peace. And once in the quietness of your peace, ask for help—not plea—but simply let the need be known.

Say, “I need help!” And then expect the resolution to present itself. And then be willing to act on the basis of the resolution that has happened, instead of saying, “Wow, that was wonderful but it was a fluke, cause I’m still a mortal and I still have a physical body and some other physical declaration, which is really only an invitation, can present itself.” You see?

And so you have to be careful. You’ve got to let everything that we’re talking about budge you off—move you off your confidence that you’re an orphan, that you’re just a human being, that you’re just a body, that you’re just an organism—so that that is no longer the bottom line basis for all of your reasoning and thinking and the way you behave, and the way you respond.

Now this is very important. Because you know, I see very little movement—I am not addressing specifically, those of you here or those of you listening—but generally speaking, I see very little actual movement occurring as a result of the study of the Course. Very little inner transformation. Why? Because no choice is being made for inner participation in and willingness to acquiesce to the correction that will follow a genuine request for help.

“Oh, well I didn’t know that that was what I supposed to be doing … Oh, I didn’t know that that was the way it worked. I thought if I sort of submerged myself in the sentences that I was reading and the truth and bathed in it, that that would do it. You know, and I could walk through the orphanage at peace experiencing my divinity.”

I’m sorry, you can’t walk through an orphanage experiencing your inseparable oneness with the Brotherhood and with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your right Mind. It’s all about leaving the orphanage. It’s all about abandoning the definition—orphan. It’s all about abandoning the mindset and all of the mutually agreed-upon definitions that have been established and which you keep in place. You keep them in place by doing nothing to contradict them at an inner level within you, not intellectually but, for lack of better words, in your heart, in your Being.

And so how does this apply to lack, and how does this apply to, you know, not needing your world? And how does this apply to asceticism, and how does this apply to satisfaction with “little?”

Well, any experience of lack is not evidence of the Father’s Will. Therefore, it is not evidence of your Birthright. And you should not be happy with it, and you should not assume that there is no other choice. And you must begin to see it as a call for correction. And then, instead of justifying lack, instead of rehearsing in your mind all of the reasons for lack, even the lofty reason that God knows what you have need of and you don’t have need for the things you think you do, all these things are a call for correction. Which means getting up on your haunches, disagreeing with the presentation, the invitation that you spontaneously take as a declaration of fact, and then reach beyond it.

Waking up, coming back into your right Mind, is a call for a change in your mind. Not you changing your mind according to already existing criteria, but you willing to be mindful in a new way—a non-isolated way. No matter how extreme the justifications seem to be for maintaining that isolation, the fact is, that the more extreme the inclination to be isolated, the more will it takes, the more conscious intent it takes on your part to wrench yourself free from it by reaching beyond it—by choosing for something that seems totally unreasonable in the midst of what seems to be happening. That one first thing being, choosing … choosing … choice … choice for your peace, letting your peace be more important than the pain or the hurt or [said in strained voice] the lack of energy to do anything at all.

You have to participate in changing your mind by abandoning the use you have been putting your mind to in favor of putting it in the place of joining from your peace. “Oh, it doesn’t work. I’ll just go to the doctor and they’ll take out whatever it is and I’ll be done with it!” Well, that’s a really insane statement isn’t it. I mean, after all, does everybody go into the hospital and come out on their feet … alive? “Oh, well, no … no … no … but …” You’ve got all kinds of silly justifications. But it’s what everybody does. It fits into the mutually agreed upon definitions of how to cope with being a physical body.

Again, there is another way to look at this. There’s another way to respond. There’s another basis upon which to act. But until you adopt that other basis upon which to act, and then act, I promise you nothing will change.

And when you do, everything will change—correction will be embodied. Or, correction will be revealed where the false picturing you were practicing had seemed to be overlaid upon the visibility and tangibility of your individuality, which is called your body, and renders visible and tangible the Movement of God because it is not material, it is all divine.

How much lack are you going to continue to tolerate without doing anything? Meaning, without taking steps to abandon the very thing that is causing your misperception of your body and the Kingdom of Heaven, which is that you think you are an orphan. You think you are a human being and that a human being is very different from a divine being, like angels and ark-angels and Sons of God.

There’s always one element present in all problems and that is, immobilization. You don’t feel like challenging it, you don’t feel like having a different point of view than the distressed one you’re having. You don’t want to stop thinking about how awful it is, and how poorly treated your were and how thoughtless everyone is and then, like I said, the underlying single element: The absence of love.

You know what? It’s a lot more work to try to be an orphan, than it is to be Who and what you really Are. “Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s real easy being an orphan. I’ve got it under my belt. But oh, being in my peace no matter what’s happening, now that is not normal—that is not natural … at least not to me.”

Well, you just made your choice didn’t you? Make a different choice … make a different choice. Until you make a different choice, correction cannot occur. And, nowhere in the Course can you find a place where it says that correction is not necessary in order to become free of the dream. What does that mean? It means that correction is a promise sitting in front of you if you choose to do what opens the doors to your receiving a new way of seeing things—a sudden shift of perception, a M-i-r-a-c-l-e. It’s a promise. It’s the way it works. When you’re in your right Mind, everything looks good because it is. When you’re not in your right Mind, everything looks bad even though it hasn’t changed from being what it divinely is: Good.

Now, tonight I certainly haven’t said, “Get off your ass and whoop the world.” No. I’m saying, get a fire under your ass in your motivation and willingness to make commitment to doing what? The only thing you have available to you to do and that is change from the orphan mentality of isolation and autonomy to that of joining—letting yourself feel your need for the trees and the stars and every good thing without limit. And most of all, your brothers and sisters—each other.

And in order to let that need be fulfilled, you must ask for help from the Father or the Holy Spirit to wash the scales from your eyes, the cobwebs from your mind so that you may clearly see what you have been unclearly seeing, and experience correction. Wake-up, in other words.

Now, there are those of you who may say, “Well, Raj isn’t saying what the Course says, therefore, I’m not going to pay any attention to what he’s saying.” Fine. Your choice. Is it the only choice you have available to you? Nevertheless, you will do what you choose. What I’m trying to make clear to you tonight is, that you are suffering from your choices. And you can be relieved from your suffering by making new choices or a new choice, that of abandoning your isolation, your autonomy, the power you have imagined you have gotten and created for yourself, and let yourself blend in with your brothers and sisters, the trees, the world, the Universe, so that there aren’t sharp distinctions between you and everything else—not only where you feel blended, but where you can also feel that every little thing is essential to your wholeness and you need it and you shouldn’t be justifying doing without it.

Minimalism is a form of having only that which is essential, which means having very little and that which clearly expresses perhaps even beauty, but not beauty that includes much of anything. I’m talking about absolutely everything that exists being essential, essential to your wholeness, essential to your being, and more correctly put, essential to Being—existing.

Creation, infinity, eternity is essential to Being—existing. It is inseparable from you. It is identical with you. And you are identical with it. Let this fact sink in. And then, watch the use to which you put your mind, or we could say, watch the use which your … you might put it this way … which your mind falls into through lack of attention on your part. And suddenly … oh, you don’t know what happened but you’re depressed. You don’t know what happened but you’re pissed off. Nothing looks good. You don’t know what happened but suddenly you feel unloved, and there’s no reason for you to love anything.

That’s a result of a careless use of your mind, a practice of inattentiveness and a forgetfulness of the fact that there’s a word that you can’t afford to forget. And that word is: Choice. And making a choice is an act of will. And the words I’ve just said only have real meaning when it comes down to your making the choice between two things alone: The Voice for truth, or the voice for fear—the orphan mindset, or the joined, embracing awareness that is consciously being nurtured and practiced on purpose.

Making the choice for orphanhood is not an act of will, but making a choice for Waking up is. And that act of will is in perfect consonance with the Father’s Will which He has placed in you. And it’s the only act of will that will correct everything.

Don’t ever be a passive student of spirituality. Choosing for peace without correction, or not choosing for peace because what’s the point? Whew! Choice … choice … choice … choice … choice … an act of will … an act of will … an act of will … an act of will … an act of will on your behalf to get you out of the eddy, to get you out of the mesmerism, to get you out of the obsession with a stupid use of your mind.

In the morning, as a child, your mom or your dad came in and said, “Wake up! Wake up!” Don’t talk about waking up anymore. Wake up! It’s a choice, it’s an act and it takes a commitment on your part. Make the commitment, act, and your day will open up to you. Your good will open up to you. It is a promise already set in place—an irrevocable promise. A promise that is an act of love that surpasses anything you can imagine.

[Addresses the audience] You are loved … you are loved … you are loved … you are loved … you are loved … you are loved … you are loved … you are loved … you are loved, too … you are loved. And everyone watching or listening, you are loved. The promise is already in place for you and has been sitting there, pregnant, we’ll say, with your release ever since you decided to pretend that you could look at things your way and have things your way.

So, let this love in. Oh yeah, now I don’t mean, “Ah-h,” sort of bask back in a chase lounge [sighing] and let the love in. Bullshit. It’s not gonna come in until you make the choice to let it in, until you make the choice to want it, until you make the choice to let correction happen within you so that you are a new man and a new woman by comparison with the miserable orphan you thought you were.

So, enough said. I look forward to being with you next week.