Teachings of Christ Mind

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

You know, when everything gets resolved down into a single simple point, it puts everyone in the difficult position of having to shit or get off the pot. When everything is brought down to one simple point, there can’t be any further wondering about what might be true, contemplating what the answer might be, attempting to analyze everything to come up with a plan to get to the ultimate point.

And you know what? We’ve arrived at that place where it’s simple. We called it last week, “the two-step.” But even earlier than last week, it was said, “I of myself can do nothing.”¹ And, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”² And, “It is not I that doeth the works, but the Father in Me.”²

All this book is doing is bringing you to the simple point of realization that you of yourself can do nothing; therefore never have done anything; that you therefore, are not a personal accomplisher; that you’re not an independent entity capable of authorizing life or life situations, that in other words, there is no you there with power of any independent sort. And that this doesn’t render you meaningless. It renders you meaningful on new terms. The new terms being the original terms—the terms of Creation itself, which is, that God Moved and the Movement was Creation. And God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was Himself, it was verily God—it was very good.

And what was Creation? Creation was the movement and the evidence of the movement of the experience of being conscious! That is Life. Mind being conscious is Life. And it is the meaning of Life for absolutely every aspect of Creation. Every aspect of Creation. Not any aspect of Creation is too miniscule to not embody the whole of what God is Being; to not embody the wholeness of Mind. Mind that is not divided into tiny parts, but Mind, the conscious experience of Being. That is what constitutes the presence of even the most miniscule part of Creation.

And so, the miniscule part of Creation embodies the whole of Creation. It embraces the whole of Creation—all of Creation is present there consciously. And this applies to you too.

Do you want the drama and the mystery of life to be over? So that you’re not hanging out in the not-knowing place where suspicion can arise and doubt can occur and jealousy can blossom and hate can find expression because of the insecurity of it all?

“Oh, but you know what? I’m a member of this group—and we’re studying the Course and we’re only half way through the book.” Or, “You know, I’m a member of an esoteric group and we have been learning these specific conscious steps to practice in order to arrive at a place where we can be joined and become effective agents for change and we’re only a quarter of the way through that. Well what will I do if I don’t have any reason to go to meetings? What will I do if there’s nothing to learn? How on earth could existence be vital and interesting without mystery?”

And really, at the bottom line, what you’re all saying is, “How could existence be meaningful if there aren’t any situations or circumstances that I can take hold of and improve or help or bring about constructive changes that will prove that I’m a valid and valuable and a meaningful presence. How will I be able to prove anything at all about me if there’s nothing to be done except to be still and listen for the impulse of the Father’s Will in me, which I’m told is really my will, but I don’t believe it. How could my will be a will that doesn’t start with my initiating a movement of some sort and effecting change of some sort—or creating something that never existed before by myself through the use of my capacity to originate ideas?”

So you know what? We’re at a point here where like I said, you either have to shit or get off the pot. Either take on the task, without grousing about it, of doing the two-step whether you think you have the capacity or not, whether you really want to or not, and do the one essential thing. Because anything else you do that you think is accomplishing something, is a farce. And you are believing a farce. You are indulging in a belief, not a fact—not truth. And your involvement with that process is absolutely blocking your capacity to cut through beliefs and arrive at the experience of knowing, or knowledge, as we spoke of last week in this chapter which is called, From Perception to Knowledge.

Now, I’m going to bring up this unpleasant subject that we were talking about last week and that is the importance of need.

Many of you think that you are successful, whether you’re a metaphysician, or whether you’re a student of religion, or an agnostic or an atheist. You think that success is arriving at a place where you are insulated from need, or I’m going to say, insulated against need. You’re successful if you’re able to pay your bills every month without difficulty and you’re able to engage in your activities without distractions of an unpleasant nature.

You may arrive—you may struggle to attain that insulation, and you might arrive at your senior years, if we can put it that way, and everything is the way you would want it. You can meet all of your needs—you’re even healthy. But a family member begins to have a problem—a need. And you’re there observing it and you’re even called upon or invited to participate in the correction of the need and because of the circumstances it’s difficult to ignore the need. “My God what happened to my plans? I had arrived at a point where I was insulated against need and need crept in and is disturbing my senior years. This is not fair. It’s not fair for someone else to be in my experience in a way that I can’t ignore when I had arranged not to be able to be in this kind of a dynamic.”

Well, that’s how you find out that you had a plan and you had a definition of success and that the definition of success was not to be confronted with need but always wonderful fulfillment. Well, what did fulfillment mean? It meant that you had blinders on, it meant that you succeeded in getting a wall built around you thick enough and tall enough to block out needs—to block out your awareness of needs.

Is that success, is that fulfillment? No. That’s you becoming more and more unconscious. That’s you crawling into a smaller and smaller hole separated from life. That’s not success and that is not fulfillment no matter how pleasant you managed to make your hole, and ultimately, no matter how lovely the coffin is.

“Oh,…” and Paul has this feeling sometimes, “I have something important to do—I have a wonderful work to do. I don’t have time for these distractions. I don’t have time for this because it keeps me from doing my good work.” Another way to insulate against being attentive to needs. Why? So that you can do the two-step. So that you can step back from your own self-confidence about how you thought everything was to be and you say, “Father, what is the truth here?” Not what is the truth about the lie—not what is the truth about the problem. What is the truth that is the answer to the problem—what is the truth that is the correction to the problem? Not the correction to the person, not the punishment to the person for the stupid things he did or she did.

But what is the answer that resolves the problem and, as it necessarily must be, uncovers the dignity and integrity of the individual who’s having the problem so that the correction is experienced as Love moving in their lives that unmistakably blesses them and unmistakably identifies that there is a God and that God is not far off from them but is at One with them and Loves them.

Now, it says here in the book …

… meaning the sudden shift of perception …

… meaning which has no function in Heaven …

Suffering and need is the evidence of misperception or as it’s put in the Course, perception itself. Perception as opposed to knowledge.

Without it, how could you possibly discover that you are now and always have been, smack dab in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven and missing it completely?

… in other words, right here where you are …

What is unreality? It’s perception. What is unreality? The definitions you have made up about everything, which you are applying to everything. Like pinning the tail on the donkey, you pin your definition on something Real and you call it a new name.

Again …

They can still be seen because no matter how encrusted everything has become by the definitions you have applied to them, it hasn’t changed what they are. Therefore…

… still …

… and, as you are willing to do the two-step, they will replace aspects of unreality—they will replace the definitions.

… where?

… in this world that you call a “material world,” in this world that some of you call, “an illusion.”

… or I’m going to say, “the Kingdom of Heaven…”

Why? Because it is all the Kingdom of Heaven and never stopped being it. It has been present—it has been ever-present, available to see, for what it is.

Again…

Now we talked about that last week in different words when we spoke about the fact that God will take the last step.

You could say, that when you pull off the last tail that you pinned on the donkey, and now the donkey can be seen for the donkey it is, or reality can be seen for what it is, suddenly God is in your face and you can recognize God.

You thought you could make an ass of God by pinning a tail on Him. And, in that act, usurp His position by becoming the creator of the definitions of reality that you wanted to believe. And when you undo that last tail—when you remove that last tail and the last vestiges of a definition that you have applied to God, applied to reality that made it look different—when that is gone, suddenly what it is will hit you. Because you will have abandoned an intent and a desire to alter reality by virtue by some unique capacity you think you have or thought you had to be creative on your own.

As I’ve said before, all you could succeed at doing was torquing your perception—or torquing your knowledge and creating a perception which was always a misperception. And misperceptions never changed God or the Kingdom of Heaven, or you.

Now …

Well, let’s stop there for a moment. Almost all of you are familiar with the words, “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; or the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And for the most part, that’s been interpreted to mean, the Father—God, the Son: His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost—the Holy Spirit. Three; a trinity. It is called the Trinity. There’s the Trinity, and then there’s you in your orphanages sitting there doing everything you can to make something of yourself.

Well, part of shitting or getting off the pot involves taking this Trinity and neglecting to project it out there somewhere away from you. Now that we’ve been doing since we started reading this Book. The Father, God, the Mind that moves and experiences its Movement as the conscious experience of Being in His Movement causes what could be called, Creation. It causes something to be experienced. And it’s called Creation and you are that Creation. And every ant is that Creation and every butterfly and every leaf and every tree-trunk is that Creation and each is totally conscious as I was describing earlier. Each, no matter what size it visually appears to be, embraces the whole of Creation as a conscious experience of Being.

So, the evidence of God is the Son of God—you and everything. So now, God and you are inseparable. The Father and the Son are no longer being projected out there as part of the Trinity different from you. And Jesus Christ, the one you had been told was the only begotten Son and therefore was the Son referred to in the Trinity, Jesus Christ says to you, “You are my brothers—you are my brothers and sisters, we are family. We are all Sons and Daughters—offspring of God equal in meaning and function and source and fulfillment.” And the Holy Spirit, as we’ve unmistakably read, is nothing more than your right Mind held in trust while you dally with the ego—while you play around at being an independent private authorizer, creator in your own right, separate and apart from God.

Now, part of shitting or getting off the pot involves, specifically, getting the Holy Spirit off of the pedestal of the Trinity together with the Father and the Son. But specifically, it’s getting the Holy Spirit off of that pedestal as separate and apart from you and daring to re-own it—to reclaim it as your right Mind which you have not been accessing because you have been insisting upon doing something it is impossible for you to do: to be the creator instead of God and to deny any indelible or unchangeable bond with the Father.

You must dare to let that Mind be in you which was also in Me—which is also in Me. And that Mind which is also in Me that is in you, that you must let be in you, is the Holy Spirit—your right Mind; that Mind which Knows what God Knows. That Mind that doesn’t need to constantly go to groups and constantly engage in courses of study that will bring you closer and closer to something that it’s not normal for you to have, but which you can attain.

It’s time for you to stand in the face of need—not insulate yourself against it, not turn your back to it, but face the experience of need and do the two-step; enquire of your right Mind. Inquire of that place of Excellence in you that we’ve talked about. It is useless to sit and think the wonderful thought—that there is a place of Excellence in me—a place of Excellence in me. (chuckles) If you don’t know where it is, what difference does it makes whether it’s there or not? If you don’t look for it, how are you going to find it?

If you don’t persist in looking for it because you’ve been told that it is there and it’s worth finding out whether that’s a lie or not, you will remain stuck. And you might have to read the Course three or four more times. Or you might have to take the Course over again. You might just miss the point a little bit longer. It’s uncomfortable. Sort of like learning how to swim and having your class at 8 o’clock in the morning when the water’s cold and it seems so unfair to be forced to do something you just know you can’t possibly do anyway and especially to have to do it when it’s so damned cold. And so you argue against letting go and learning how to swim. Discovering your capacity to swim.

You’re being told that it’s time for you to pay attention to needs and to look at them squarely and instead of thinking what you would automatically think about the needs, to step back, to shut your mouth, to stop your mind from thinking and say, “Father—Holy Spirit, what is the truth here that will be the resolution of the need and the reestablishment of that individual who is having the need; the reestablishment of his integrity or her integrity in his or her mind. What will constitute healing?”

Well immediately your ego will jump in and say, “You don’t know and there’s no way for you to know. This is an unfair demand on you!” Well, it would be an unfair demand on you if you didn’t have the capacity to do it. You don’t think you have the capacity and at the bottom line you’re strongly conditioned not to want to think you have that capacity because it means you’ll have to abandon your well-fought for independence—your capacity to make choices and makes things happen all by yourself. And you don’t really want to abandon that capacity or invalidate it by engaging in something that will be called “a miracle—a healing!” which you can’t take personal credit for.

You don’t want that, or you’re strongly inhibited in that direction by your conditioning. And so, like the child who doesn’t want to stick his foot into the cold swimming pool to learn how to do something he doesn’t think he can do, you are going to have to let yourself be in the position of looking squarely at need with the desire not to go through all the thoughts you would have about that and decide to hang in here until the resolving answer is revealed to you.

That’s where we are. That’s where we are in the book. That’s where we are in the learning. You know, how long did you think you could go along just learning interesting metaphysical intellectual points? It’s time now to translate those into transformation in your life. And it means, as I’ve been saying, daring to confront need rather than running away from it so that you might find the blessing in it. The blessing in it lies in the fact that it moves you, if its understood correctly—the need—it moves you to a place of abandoning your habitual response, which is to come to conclusions all by yourself on your own. And instead, do something entirely different: Abandon the isolation by joining with That which Knows—That which doesn’t perceive: God, or the Holy Spirit, or your Guide.

But I want to emphasize tonight, the Holy Spirit. Because no longer can you hear the words, “Holy Spirit” and assign It a definition of something outside of you. The Holy Spirit is clearly “nothing more than your right Mind.” It’s the real You. And you must be willing to turn to the Holy Spirit, that which is nothing more than your right Mind, and hang out in what for you, would be called, “the not knowing place.” The not knowing all by yourself on your own, and abiding with the frustration, the frustration of not-knowing, as quickly as you think you would know, if you could depend on your own best thinking.

Oh, you could have the answer right away and you could resolve the situation whether it corrected or not, and be on your way, and be out of the vicinity where need could confront you.

Be ready to be frustrated. That’s like the child must be willing to endure the cold water. The cold water isn’t going to kill him. It’s not that cold. It’s not a mountain stream, it’s just a swimming pool that isn’t heated. And the frustration you will experience won’t kill you either. It’s no reason not to persist in the one thing that will reconnect you with your right Mind. And in that reconnection, allow for a sudden shift of perception where the resolution of the problem or the need can come forth.

And you know what? The resolution of the need will always come forth as that which shows that the need never was really real but only seemed to exist because of some simple ignorance that you were suffering from. That’s important. You’re never overcoming real needs. You’re always replacing an ignorance of truth with truth.

Now, continuing …

And I’m going to add, that apart from the Father and the Son who has gotten a divorce from his Father, the Holy Spirit has no function. The Holy Spirit only came into play when one said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.” “Father, I’d rather do it my way.” And disengaged or imagined that he or she disengaged and separated himself or herself from the Father to begin to act autonomously. At that point, as I’ve said before, the conscious experience of what that individual really was, fell to the back burner and what took its place in the foreground, was the sense of self—this imagined sense of self that was the determiner of things now.

When you come Home—when you wake up—there will not be a Trinity, there will be a singularity, the Father Being the Son and the Son not objecting. So that all that the Father is, all that the word God truly means as an experience, becomes your experience, and the ant’s experience, and the tree-trunk’s experience and the caterpillar’s experience, and so on.

In other words, what God was Being as you in the Movement of Creation, He never took back, even when you insisted on being imaginatively independent. And when you re-embrace your Self, what He shared of Himself as you in the Beginning, is what you will once again find being shared with you now.

The Holy Spirit …[Raj didn’t read “He”]

… God …

… the Holy Spirit’s message—the message of that which is nothing more than your right Mind…

Why? Because right now you insist that you exist in time and in space and you’re moving forward inexorably in time and, oh boy, what a definition you’ve applied to that—that means, you’re getting older—and that means that you’re going to sooner or later deteriorate and fall ill and die.

Now, that’s awful! That’s insidious! That’s cruel. And you are all suffering from it. And you know what that circumstance is called that I’ve just described? It’s called, “a need.” Well, does the Holy Spirit run off and insulate Itself against need? No. It speaks of timelessness in time. It addresses the need by disclosing the Answer that resolves the need by showing that the concept of time and all of the beliefs associated with it are currently held ignorance in the mind of a Son or Daughter of God, that that Daughter or Son of God can abandon. But that Daughter or Son of God will not abandon it if the Holy Spirit does not speak of timelessness in this place you all think you are.

In the same way, you do the two-step relative to others who are in need, so that you can speak of that which uncovers the fantastic nature of the need that they’re experiencing. And when I say fantastic, I mean it in the sense of fantasy, that it’s not actual, it’s not real, it cannot actually bind that one.

… the Holy Spirit’s …

It addresses the need with that which dissolves the need. And I’m going to say again, in a way that the one holding and practicing the ignorance can let go of it without any experience of condemnation or criticism, where no call for guilt remains after the correction has occurred—after the healing has occurred. In other words, where the integrity of the individual is uncovered right along with, let us say, the timelessness of eternity that was being experienced as the bondage of time.

… the Holy Spirit’s …

… and let’s be clear on this now …

… is not the Holy Spirit’s reality. The Holy Spirit is an accommodation to your choice to imagine that you can be an orphan. The Christ is not an accommodation and is eternal, just as you are.

… the Holy Spirit’s …

The Holy Spirit is your right Mind. When you finally yield to the Holy Spirit, when you finally yield to the Place of Excellence in you, it is not the Holy Spirit that will become your mind, it is God that will become your mind.

When you said, “Father, I’d rather do it my way.” “Father, I would rather define things,” and you seemed to create a distance between the two of you, there came into play between the two of you, the safety deposit box in which the true knowledge of yourself as God Being All, could be held. It constitutes a bridge—the Holy Spirit constitutes a bridge—between you and your conscious experience of unity with God. And when you let in the Holy Spirit fully, it will not now be God and you and the Holy Spirit, or you as the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit as you.

When you make that final yield to the Holy Spirit, this thing that came into existence between you and God—your experience of Oneness with God—will disappear. That’s where it will seem that God takes the last step. And the experience of Oneness will fill you.

That Mind which was in Christ Jesus, which you are invited to let be in you, was not the Holy Spirit. The Mind that is in Christ Jesus, that is to be in you, is the only Mind there is, it’s God.

Now, if you want to think about it, you have plenty of grist for the mill.

If you want to do the two-step, you have an infinite void in front of you to be willing to hang out in, to be present in and let consume you, which you must allow yourself to be in with curiosity—interest. And if you do that, that’s the two-step.

If you do that, and you do not have immediate answers to needs that are confronting you, don’t, like the child who needs to get into the cold pool, complain and fret and fuss and say, “This isn’t fair!” or, “If this were truly the way, it would be harmonious and easy and I would be naturally drawn toward it.”

You won’t be naturally drawn toward it because you are convinced that it’s part of the integrity of you to do things independently and find solutions yourself so that you can get credit for it and maybe, even be an “Albert Schweitzer,” or an “Einstein,” or someone who through exceptionally clear thinking, sets mankind ahead in a quantum leap, thus proving that man as a species, truly is superior to the other animals in the animal kingdom. Because you have demonstrated a capacity to be more than the animal kingdom is capable of being.

Bullshit! None of this is about proving your integrity. None of this is about making you important.

All of it is about waking up so that the idea that you’re some piss-ant mortal, some little inconsequential nerd that must make something of itself and can make something of itself, so that that can be abandoned, so that that can be found to be false, so that that can be found to be a temporary ignorance to be replaced, not by a better perception, but by knowledge—by the experience of Knowing the truth revealed by God.

Again, above all else, want to see everything through My Vision, which is My Gift to you from God. That’s the two-step. That’s the motto on the inside of the shit-house door. Get off the pot. Shit or get off the pot.

Now, how many of you are thinking right now, “Gawd, does he have to use such course language?” (chuckling)

Here’s another sign that could be on the inside of the shit-house door: “Let’s do it!” Oh, that pleases you. Well, it pleases you for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t offend your sensibilities—you delicate sweet little metaphysicians you, and you, you know, proper students of the Course in Miracles, or whatever it is you’re studying.

You know, let’s do what works: SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT! And you know what? YOU CAN DO IT! It’s a capacity all of you have and I hope this coming week is full of miracles for you. And if it isn’t, I hope it’s full of the miracle of your neglecting to be frustrated and getting upset about it! And expressing your frustration because all the time you’re doing that what is it? It’s all you expressing yourself and there’s no two-step to it.

Aren’t you glad I’m not couching this teaching in mysterious language? I couldn’t be any more utterly clear than I’m being. And it makes it simpler for you.

And with that I will say good night and I love you all.