Teachings of Christ Mind

Welcome back. This is me Paul. I don’t think we’re going to be getting into the book tonight, but He could surprise me.

I just want to say before we begin, to everybody here and those listening on the internet, that I am well. I’ve actually been well, let’s say, recuperated from the surgery since, lets say, March. But I’ve had an interesting experience which I’m not going to go into at any length right now. I’ve had an interesting experience of coming out of it, with a new sense of myself—that I can’t yet explain. Um, things that were important to me, are not important to me. Things that weren’t so important to me are important to me now.

So as to be a little bit helpful, I’ll explain by saying that for one thing, I found myself not really charmed by or interested in wonderful social chit-chat. My habit in the past has been to be a socially-friendly person. AndI can see now that I’ve had styles of behavior when I’m socializing which now, is very clear to me were false. They were there to make an impression. They didn’t express me genuinely. I have been since December, rather private. One of the reasons being that, if I were to get involved with people I would end up saying what I really felt and my Guidance hasn’t said that doing that was appropriate yet. And I believe that it’s because I would be doing it from a place of emotion rather than from a place of quiet peaceful, grounded perspective.

It’s a strange experience to find yourself being differently. And it’s made me think a lot about what Raj has been saying, especially from July on to Decemberof last year when he spent a lot of time talking about me. Because the topic was healing—a great deal of it was about healing and that healing is another word for correction, which the course speaks a lot about. Correction, meaning actually being involved in being changed. And somehow, through the time thatI was in the hospital, change occurred and I have experienced myself as I said briefly, in new ways.

It’s not uncomfortable—I do not find it uncomfortable, but I don’t know how to play my old games well from this new experience of who I am. And so I found myself at a loss, feeling incompetent. I can’t get control of the situation quickly because the me that I am now, doesn’t want the kind of control I used to want. And I only know how to get the control I used to want. And so, situations require me to draw from some new sources. No, it causes me to draw from a Source I’ve been familiar with which haven’t been my old resources. And that’s the key.

I, in the way I find myself experiencing being now, really have to ask Raj, what is appropriate? What does this mean? How do I respond?

In a way, the Paul that Raj was describing that went to Disneyland, disappeared. And I guess what I’m learning is, that just as when we start a Gathering, I say: I allow only for that which expresses the Christ Consciousness, and I allow only for that which is in harmony with the purpose of Being, meaning God, and I continue … in other words, Thy Will, not mine be done. Let the reign of divine truth, life and love, be established in me and rule out of me all self-will.

Those are strong words—sort of like the word “extinction” is a strong word. …and rule out of me all self-will. Wow, Nevertheless, at the beginning of each Gathering, I always said that. And then finished, …and may thy word enrich the affections of all mankind and govern them.

See, I’ve invited His word to enrich my affections and govern me, and it ends by wishing the same thing for everyone else.

Now, I’ve done that at the beginning of each Gathering. Since December, it’s like I’m being required to start every day with that whether anybody’s around to hear me talk or not. It’s like that’s the requirement. It isn’t what I feel inclinedto spontaneouslydo. And I suppose I’m sharing this because I know thatwhat I’m going through is part ofcorrection occurring. And is part of healing occurring. Not healing of what I went into the hospital for—but healing of the use ofmy mind—healing ofthe use I’m putting of my mind to. So that my mind is changed. And as a result of that, my experience of everything is changed. Why is my experience of everything changed? Because I can’t respond to it out of my old habits. So I have to be present without any confidence as to what is appropriate. I have to be present in the experience with an enquiring mind that says, “What is appropriate now?” I have to stand there letting divine truth, life and love be established in me and rule out of me all of my old inclinations to take hold with all of my old habits of being sociable andpresentable and respectable, and never offending anyone.

So, it’s one thing, once a week or at Gatherings to sit down and make commitment to “ThyWill, not mine be done.” It’s another thing to engage in thatevery day. As many of you know, Raj has been saying for along time to me, “Let Me respond to everything.” In other words, I am to turn to Him and let Him respond to the Gas Station attendant, or the grocery clerk, or the friends, or the ones who want to be sociable and meaningless and silly, and so on and so forth.

And you know what? My conclusion here may be false, but it’s my sense thatthere aren’t thousands of people clamoring to listen to Raj because Raj doesn’t please everyone’s egos. Raj puts everyone else as well as me, right on the threshold of being willing to acknowledge that we don’t know what anything means—that we don’t know what anything is really for. And, that as long as we’re trying to behave on the basis of developed habits of socializing, we will not allow for what we genuinely are to come forth. And we will not be out from the Place of Excellence in us that is utterly original, never repetitive.

And so, if one is going to listen to what Raj is saying and implement it, it is going to mean that we’re all going to have to stand in any moment in our day, whether we judge things to be going well or not, and reach for Knowing that goes beyond our best judgments and our best thinking habits. And stand in that vulnerable place where the miracle can occur. What’s the miracle? A sudden shift of perception. A change in our mind. A change in the way we are looking. A change in the way we’re willing to perceive. A being made new.

So, again, since last December, although I’ve had wonderful physical healing, I have had a not-so-fun time of adjusting to not being in charge from my head and of having to dare to step out into the unknown many times during the day, rather than once a week when Raj is going to talk. So it hasn’t been the most fun, but I’ll tell you something: I feel like progress is occurring. I feel changeoccurring—not self-directed change but change that is coercing me in my intention to live out old habits—to abandon them and not operate on the basis of the comfort that they have always provided me.

And so for whatever it’s worth, I can today, which I couldn’t do last November, look at any one of you and say, let it be rough if it’s rough, the only thing that makes it rough is the reluctance you bring into play—the resistance you present to being changed. It’s worth it. And just because it’s roughdoesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means something truly right is happening and your ego doesn’t like it at all! And that’s all it means.

So, I’ve missed these get-togethers and I’m really glad to be together with everyone again. So, let’s take a few moments to be quite and find out what Raj has to say.

(quiet time) RAJ: Good Evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the internet. Well, what a wonderful bunch of bullshit Paul just delivered to you. I say that because who on earth was he speaking to? He was speaking to all you orphans out there giving you encouragement as to what you might experience in the last stages of your orphanhood; and perhaps to inspire you to listen to Guidance a little bit more than you’ve been inclined to, which isn’t a bad point. But he demonstrated what all of you easily get caught in. You get caught in a sense of self that is progressing—getting better and better. And you poor ones who are getting better and better just got a wonderful pep talk apparently from someone who’s getting better and better. Right?

And, as long as you don’t catch that when it happens, you’re stuck in the state of being an orphan. There’s no way for there to be progress. Paul slipped right back into his old sociable habit of being friendly and being nice and saying intelligent things that were couched in language that was, we‘ll say, inspiring.

But he was not in a position to look at what he was saying and describe it as bullshit, which I did in my first sentence. The one who gave the opening remarks is the one that’s getting left behind; the sense of self that this one has identified as Paul, in the past.

And who you presently think what you are is what you’re going to leave behind as you abandon your apparent capacity to speak intelligently and oh insightfully and encouragingly and inspiringly.

You see, Waking up is a matter of abandoning that sense of self–that improving sense of self—the one who’s refined his soul through centuries and lifetimes. You aren’t that. And you haven’t been that. And you can’t get out of being that, because you never have been that.

And so you literally, and Paul was right about this, you literally have to be willing to abandon that at the beginning of your day and as many times during the day as you realize that you have slipped back. But again, this won’t be because the poor little orphan that you are is becoming better and better.

When you go to a zoo it says: “Please don’t feed the animals.” And you need to have a sign on your refrigerator door or on the dashboard of your car that says: “Please don’t feed the orphans—don’t nurture the orphans” just to remind you that you’re not there to spontaneously be out from your best thinking, your best habits, your best presentations.

You’re there to treat each moment as though it is far more than anything you are imagining. You’re to treat every moment as though it is Divine–Sourced from God–fully in that moment, and therefore, a Divinely awesome event which it is your Birthright to be experiencing awesomely.

The reason for having this outlook is so that you will constantly look beyond your best current judgments and interpretations of everything; because if you’re not willing to look beyond–if you’re not willing to be incompetent to understand what’s happening in Its Fullness, you will not be open to the fuller experience of what is going on. Now, we are going to resume reading the Course, but I’m going to ask something. I’m going to ask all of you who are willing–from this night on–to no longer think of yourselves as students of A Course In Miracles. As long as you define yourself as a student of A Course In Miracles, or a student of this, or a student of that, you withdraw yourself from your relationships with your fellowman into a very narrow interpretation of everything. It is as though you provide a sieve that will only let things fall through that are of a certain size, and the rest can’t go through.

“Oh, I’m a student of A Course In Miracles. That means I am not a student of biology. I am a student of this; it means I’m not a student of that.

A Course In Miracles better be, for lack of better words, an adjunct to your being—and please don’t misunderstand me—a human being. I mean by that, an unpretentious, not special presence who experiences certain needs, who knows what fulfillment is, and who exists in relation to other human beings, who also are un-special.

In the lack of specialness, you can relate to each other without falsehood, without pretense, because you haven’t forgotten Who You Are. The minute you say: “Oh, I’m a student of A Course In Miracles,” you’ve forgotten Who You Are and you’re not wholly available to your brothers and sisters.

Now, in the simplicity of Being, you, right now, want to know what truth is. You desire to know what truth is whether it’s called A Course In Miracles, or whether it’s called The Bible or whether it’s a cartoon strip. You want to know the truth, because you care about what’s important. You care about what is of value.

Why do you read whatever you read? So that you might learn how to more effectively be a brother to a brother; a brother to a sister; a sister to a sister, and a sister to a brother.

I will probably offend someone with this statement, but I indeed find many, if not a majority, of students of A Course In Miracles to be consistently unkind to their fellow students of A Course In Miracles, and to everyone, but especially to other students of the Course. This can be equally said about chess clubs, members of chess clubs; any group that might be formed. Here’s a question for you: Can you become still within yourself and hear the Holy Spirit speak to you? Can you become still and hear your Guide speak with you? Some of you can. Most of you can’t. And you know what? Those of you who can’t have no grounds for being arrogant with your fellow students of the Course, or with anyone, because you’re not doing so hot.

What it means is, that, we’ll say, arguing with your fellow students about a point of Truth is more important to you than connecting with that Place of Excellence within yourself—the Altar within you, where your connection with the Holy Spirit is forever functioning, and where your connection with your Guide is always open.

If you’re going to be happy, I want you to be happy for the right reasons, not for reasons that are bullshit—meaningless.

Now, many of you, for the last eight months, have waited for this night. You have waited for Me to return. You’ve waited for Paul to be able to let Me speak. And many of you, when you found that we were going to get together this evening, were overjoyed. Well, you know what? I want you to overjoyed when you hear Me within yourself.

I’m not demeaning your recognition of the value of what transpires in these circumstances, but don’t be happy for the wrong reasons.

Be happy that I am here, tonight, expressing these ideas that put you in the position of having to go within to this so-called Altar that you may never have experienced before. Somebody just told you there was an Altar in the center of your being, placed there by God. Well, isn’t that wonderful! That could be bullshit too, and you’ll never know until you go within with commitment, and with resolve, and with a genuine spirit because you really need to know the truth about something, and you don’t know it on your own.

It’s in that place of vulnerability and incapacity that your desire becomes full enough to get a response, if I may put it that way, because you’re not messing around. You’re not bullshittin’ God. You’re being real within yourself.

When Paul sat down tonight, after eight months of not sitting down on any night, he was nervous. But he had to put himself in that position as he does every time he let’s Me speak, of not knowing, of being incompetent.

He even approached this evening with the attitude, “Well, I’m not going to set a fantastic goal for myself.” This was what he said. And he was encouraged to do this by his son, Christopher. “I’m going to do the best I can. And then I can’t fail, even if Raj never talks, and even if everything that happens is a total flub.”

Let’s get this straight. The orphan will not be able to confidently sit down and connect with his Guide. The orphan will always have doubts. The orphan will be uneasy. In fact, it will never be the orphan that sits down to listen to his Guide. But the orphan will be there as the Real One that each One of you is, sits down to talk to his Guide. And that orphan will kibbitz you and say: “Probably isn’t going to work. Oh, c’mon, you know there really aren’t such things as Guides. You know these people are all fooling themselves, who are in touch with their Guides. Oh, they’re just really just fanatics who say they’re overcome by the Holy Spirit.”

The orphan joins you as you sit down to listen. Because the only one who will sit down, to actually listen, to learn, to connect with the experience of Truth, is the Divine One that You Are, Who is registering in your mind enough to cause you to abandon the instructions that your ego is giving you–to abandon the habits that the orphan, that you had thought you were has been bringing into play, over and over again, that keeps you from waking up.

Now, when you sit down and desire to know the truth, when you sit down and are willing to abandon your best judgments and your social habits of behavior and the costume you have been wearing, and you are present in whatever circumstance is going on, without preconceptions, with a true desire to know how to be appropriate—how to be utterly appropriate and to identify fulfillment in that moment, you will be infilled if you genuinely desire to know. If you are more intent on Knowing than being influenced by the orphan sense of self that you have thought you were, which is kibitzing you and discouraging you. What you bring yourself fully to will open up to you fully. What you bring yourself to in part, in a carefree abandon, in a silly irrelevance, you will get nothing from. Nothing will open up to you.

Usually, that which causes you to desire to know something unequivocally, is an experience of need that has overwhelmed your arrogance—that in you which thinks it can handle anything. Need, that causes you to experience need, rather than triggering confidence that you have, causes you to be Real—causes you to be genuinely honest within yourself.

Unfortunately, need is one of the few things that will cause you to arrive at that kind of inner commitment and genuine honesty. And it’s a shame, but it’s better than nothing bringing you to it. So be grateful when the time comes. Be grateful when you really are forced to lean into and rely upon Something other than your best goddamn sense of who you are in this world and who you have turned yourself into and made yourself to be.

“Well, so you want me to give up everything meaningful? Um, can You make it any more palatable than that, please?” No. You can make it easier for yourself by daring to risk the chance that there’s a God without having to get at the end of your rope, and without feeling need so greatly that you have to abandon any capacity you thought you had to cope with it, and ask for help, while you still think you do have the capacity to cope with it.

You can make it easier for yourself by abandoning the capacity to cope that you think you have, and asking for help—asking for a miracle. Asking for the Holy Spirit or your Guide, or Me, or the Father, to bring about a sudden shift of perception–a changed mind; not at your hand, but at the Hand of the Father. At the Hand of One who Knows who you really Are, and will help change your mind, bringing it into alignment with the truth about you, so that you are strengthened by your own clearer experience of the Real You, and what makes it real and what makes it of value.

You know what? The Course In Miracles is not so great. What’s in it can promote stuff in you that’s great. It can promote in you a capacity to be willing to be with your brother or sister, without arrogance, coming from a simple genuineness of Love within you, that allows you to feel the need your brother has and not discount it. And to want to know what would meet the need, not so that you can escape anything, but so that you can be present, as need is transformed into correction—need is transformed into healing.

Why? Not because you have magic words of truth or well-developed spiritual power, but because you found it more valuable than anything else, to be willing to be present in the presence of the experience of need, and not try to escape it, and wish to know the Truth. Not the Course in Miracles truth, not the Catholic truth, not the Christian Science truth. Truth Itself. Truth. Truth is what God Is Be-ing at any given moment, in any given spot. You want to know the truth. You see, truth isn’t an intellectual string of words. Truth is the experience of what’s Real. Truth is the Experience of What God Is Be-ing. Truth is the experience of what Good is Be-ing right here, right here, right there.

Your brother’s need isn’t going to be met by a string of words, but by an Experience of what is true, an experience of what God Is Be-ing right there in their experience.

And you can have no idea on your own what will cause that miracle to occur—that sudden shift of perception. But you can be the Presence of Love that cares enough to not hold your dear book learning up in your brother’s face to heal him with, but to value what you read there enough to be present with your brother Be-ing the Presence of Love; Be-ing the Presence of the desire to Know the truth that will constitute the correction, by being willing to be a brother or a sister in all the fullness of the Meaning of those words.

The Presence of Living Love that it is your function to be, is very different from being the presence of the capacity to spout words of truth which are only spouted because it’s saving you from having to get into that simple place of genuine genuineness, where you genuinely feel need in the absence of personal capacity to meet the need and reach out for help, because you care either enough about yourself, or enough about your brother or sister to want to Know what will cause change to occur; transformational healing, beneficial, truly beneficial healing, and relief and release.

If you’re spending more time reading a book than you are relating to your brothers and sisters one on one, in a real and genuine way, don’t call yourself a student of Mine, because that’s not what I Teach, and that’s what I’m not here to encourage you to do. I am here to encourage you to do that which heals.

Every single one of you who’s hearing My Voice actually knows enough– actually knows all you need to know in order to justify not getting hung up on words and daring to turn to your brother and sister with care, and with Love—those brothers and sisters who come into your experience, who you find that you’re faced with and have to deal with, in finding them to be all the justification you need for saying: “Father, what do I need to know here?”

“Oh, well it’s sort of a messy situation I’m faced with. Can’t I just go sit down with my nice, clean little book with all the pretty words that are so neatly spaced and they’re not disturbing, they’re so orderly. I get peace just looking at the page.” You’ll only be faced with a messy situation until you stop thinking that you ought to be able to be somewhere else, doing something else not faced with this, not being called upon to get into that situation where you don’t know what to do, and where you have to acknowledge that you don’t know what to do. And then, you have to say: “I ask that Place of Excellence in me—that Excellence of my Be-ing, to reveal to me what will meet the need here.” And stick with it, genuinely, and I’m going to ask you to look up the word “importunately:” I–m–p–o–r–t–u–n–a–t–e–l–y. Importunately, with resolve, and steadfastness, until you get the answer, because once the commitment and the genuineness is there and you really mean your desire, as I said, everything becomes present that is necessary for the situation to bring forth and reveal to you the wholeness that is the answer to the need.

You watch Paul do this every time we get together. I wish I had a bell to ring; a bell that would say to you: “It’s a wake-up call here.”

You need to do this. You need to do what Paul is doing. You need to put yourself in that Void—in that place of not-knowing, and reach into It with commitment and resolve, so that your hand is filled; so that your being is filled with miracles–with sudden shifts of perception, which will inevitably and unavoidably become manifest as things to do in your experience, or steps to take, or places to be at a certain time, in order for wonderful and unexpected things to occur that, I’m going to say, physically identify fulfillment beyond your imagination. So that you can walk through your day and see what you’ve always been seeing, but suddenly you can see God in it. And you can see that everything that you’ve been confronted with has been significant. And it’s been escaping your notice.

So, I’m just encouraging all of you to come down off your pedestals and be real with each other and with yourselves, and do this awful thing—of asking for Help, of asking for clarity, even though you feel perfectly competent to cope with it all yourself.

It’s this self-reliance–this isolated, private self-reliance that effectively blinds you to Reality. And I can’t put it any more simply than that.

Now, I will be back. And I will tell you this again and again, and again and again. Not to improve you, but I will say, to wear down your resistance. To let that which seems foreign become less foreign because it’s more familiar, intellectually.

It’s all right for you to be clearer and clearer intellectually when the clarity is in closer alignment with Truth. Because when you are moving into closer alignment with Truth, you are not moving into closer alignment with your orphanhood and the developing of skill, at remaining asleep a little longer.

So, I love you all and I look forward to being with you next week. And I hope your week has a little rigor to it, rigor that you’ve brought, a strength that you’ve brought in terms of determination; determination to Know the Truth so that you can simply Be the Presence of Love with your brother and your sister without any particular set of words, without a teaching.

How many of you have had a hug from someone who really knows how to give a hug? You didn’t need a teaching to feel it. Concepts weren’t employed. I’m talking about that kind of connection.

And I’ll tell you, steer clear of a hug from a student of A Course In Miracles and steer clear of a hug from a Catholic and steer clear of a hug from an astrophysicist; from somebody who thinks they’re somebody. You see what I mean?

If an astrophysicist, or a student of the Course, or any of these try to give you a hug, don’t avoid them. Just give them a hug. You don’t have to take their structured hug. You can be the one, maybe the first one who hugs them wonderfully and suddenly they feel what a hug from a nobody feels like–a hug from somebody who’s not a Somebody feels like. And they’re touched, and it makes them look at their life a little differently.

Okay. You have the picture. Good night.