Teachings of Christ Mind

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

The experience of being afraid is an unpleasant experience. It’s an experience that everyone does everything they can to avoid.

The experience of a brother, in other words, someone other than yourself being afraid, is an unpleasant experience. And the tendency is to want not to have to be confronted by the other’s fear and his reactions and his behavior. But to avoid a brother because he’s afraid, or because his behavior is erratic or charged or aggressive, is not the answer. To avoid it at all cost only allows for the fear to stay in place and for the behavior to continue.

Now I want you all to remember something: Quite sometime ago I talked about the fact that you cannot prove your innocence. You cannot prove your own innocence. It is foolish to try to do so. It requires another to be an advocate for you to prove your innocence; to illuminate your innocence.

Well, you don’t like that [chuckling]. “I can’t prove my innocence? You say I don’t have the capacity? Then you’re saying that I’m vulnerable—just flat out vulnerable.”

But if I say to you, “It’s your function to look at your brother and remember God.” Oh-h…now that pleases you—that’s a worthy endeavor, one which if you are successful at it, will speak well of you and your ego is happy.

You see how you can be conflicted within your very own self and like and dislike the same thing?

I know that I have been monotonous. And the Course is monotonous because it keeps saying the same thing:

The answer to your problems, your salvation, lies in your being willing to not be distant from your brother, but to be involved with your brother or sister and to look into his eyes or her eyes and wish to see the truth (to care enough to stand with that one, to be present with that one in an involved way for the purpose of uncovering the truth that’s there, uncovering the truth about them to them) because in doing that, you reduce their fear.

And in the reduction of their fear, their behavior changes. And as their fear becomes replaced with peace, because you have been revealing the truth to them, you find them apparently being redeemed. And in the process, you know that you played a part in it—you, being involved with them persistently, were inseparable from the healing.

To look into your brother’s eyes and remember God does not mean that you get to look into your brother’s eyes and you get to have a remembrance of God regardless of your brother (in other words, you could use your brother as the catalyst for you remembering God). No way! In remembering God you find God right where you’re looking—in your brother. And in finding God in your brother and knowing that this awareness has come through you, in-filled you, you learn about yourself. And that is the method, the mode, the manner, the way of Awakening.

Let’s go into the Book because we’re going to be reading about the means of releasing guilt.

In other words, there’s only one way to be released from guilt. I’ve just described how you can participate in another’s release from guilt. But, in order for you to do that, you have to let yourself be released from guilt.

How do you do that? You find an Advocate—an Advocate for you. “Well, where do you go to find such an Advocate? I don’t see them advertised in the classifieds.” Well, you go within. And I will tell you right now that I am your primary Advocate. Your Guides are your advocates. We stand ready to disclose the truth—uncover the truth about you to you and encourage you to dare to believe the truth about you in as many ways as we have to for as long as we have to, in order for you to set aside your fear and your bad behavior and the suffering that is inseparable from it.

God stands as your Advocate. God is Being you at every moment. God is Being you anew every moment and informing you of what you really Are by being you at every moment.

So, what it boils down to is that you have to engage in an invitation to have an advocate. This means inviting someone to help you abandon all the things you’re so sure of. Not so that it’s just an experience of loss, but so that it makes room for you to be in-filled with the, for lack of better words, glorious truth about you; the wondrousness of God right where you are.

Release your brother from guilt as you would be released by doing for your brother what your Advocate does for you.

In other words, if you want to look within and see the light of love shining in you, as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son, you, you’re going to have to engage in this practice of looking at your brother and wishing to see the truth about him; wishing to see God’s truth about him.

Not wishing to see the human explanation: “Aw…he’s a bastard, he’s a liar, you can’t ever trust him, he will never do this, he’s got a history of that; blah…blah…blah.” That’s not the truth about him.

… YOU …

… YOUR FATHER.

As long as you have believed that you are independent; that there may or may not be a God, and there probably isn’t and if there is, well, He created you way back and left you free to grow and refine your soul and be an independent entity not having to acknowledge your Source because it wasn’t pertinent to your independent self-authorized life. Even though you may have done this, adopted this attitude, you haven’t stopped being your Father’s Son or Daughter. God has not stopped Being you in every moment.

And so, as I’ve said, you have always been in a partnership with your Father; with your Source. Therefore, what is true about you, is that you have always loved your Father. Even though you temporarily blinded yourself to the experience by saying, “I don’t have a Father, or if I have a Father, He abandoned me way back and left me free—and I’m so glad He did—left me free to chart my own course. He left me free to be my own man; He left me free to be my own woman!”

Now, when you illuminate the truth to your brother by caring enough to look in his eyes and remember God there in him, you illuminate in him what is true about him to him whether he’s willing to accept it or not at the moment. And you have fulfilled your function. Your function was not to look at him and condemn him—render him guilty and extract a penalty from him. That’s not your function. And when you’re engaging in that function, you’re keeping yourself from what? Looking within and seeing the Light of Love shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son; loved you.

When you’re not fulfilling your function you are denying yourself the experience of seeing the light in you and you are delaying your brother’s capacity, your brother’s ability to look within and see the light there in him as well.

If you are fulfilling your function, no matter how poorly it’s received, you have made it a little bit easier for your brother to look within and see the light. He’s heard about it, he’s heard the truth about him. You have taken time to share with him capacities that he didn’t think he had with a confidence in you that makes him stop and listen rather than reject it outright and completely. Even so, he may not embrace it but you’ve made a little chink in his confidence.

Now …

Remember I said last week that fear and guilt are inseparable, they’re partners. You can’t have one without the other.

But …

Again …

Remember, we also talked about the fact that you are afraid to look within because you are absolutely convinced that if you do it genuinely, you will find out just exactly how awful you are and how truly undeserving you are of love or of freedom from guilt that you’re experiencing.

And so you neglect to look within with great commitment because you don’t want to have to be convicted within yourself unequivocally by an awareness of how awful you are.

But …

… the one you divinely are …

… even if you have temporarily denied Him …

… what? Not how horrible you are, but to see …

Now, if you’re honest with me, although each of you knows that you are fundamentally good people, you do know that you have done things that have been bad. You have done things that have left others at a disadvantage and hurt them. You know you have done things that you, if you brought them out in the public eye would force you to have to pay a penalty—to be convicted and pay for it. You’re absolutely sure of that.

And so I’m here, being for you what you need to be for your brothers and sisters; what you need to be each other. I’m here to tell you that you are not what you believe you are; that you cannot be held accountable for fear that has caused you to behave toward your brother or sister in a way that is apparently harmful. You’re not accountable in the sense that you can actually cause your brother harm, and that you have actually caused your brother harm.

What it amounts to is that you have been afraid, because you don’t understand who you Are and you haven’t had an Advocate telling you the truth about you that allowed you to love yourself or like yourself more easily. And so your behavior has reflected your confusion and your feeling of guilt and the presence of fear.

And so, in your fear and your confusion, you have behaved in a way that has caused your brother, in his fear and his confusion, to become aggravated and retaliate. And as a result, you have been in a state of conflict using guilt to try to bring some level of order into the confusion which has only aggravated the situation further.

Now, I’m telling you that if you look, just like the Course is telling you, that if you will dare to look inside you in the very depth of your being, you will not find a crass ugly black hole; filthy, unlovable. But where you think that is, you will find Light—effulgent light—living light—pulsing light. And the substance of that light is Love. And it is there in the very center of you. And it is there and radiates out from you and you deserve to be experiencing it. You deserve to become free of denying it and blocking it out of your sight because you have been fooled into believing that right where It is, is the ugliest of ugliness that you can’t dare to look at.

And so I’m being an Advocate for you, saying: “Go into that Place—go directly into that Place and abide there with a curiosity to see what I’m telling you is there rather than a convicted fear that what you believe is there, is there.” And I stand here to tell you this over and over again and over again until you are able to screw up enough courage—gather together enough courage to do it and have this wonderful discovery. And since this is the way you are released from guilt, it is the way your brother is released from guilt.

Now you could say, “Well, all of us have Guides. So I’m going to let John’s Guide do it for him and I’m going to let Peter’s Guide do it for him and I’m going to let Penelope’s Guide do it for her.”

It doesn’t work that way.

The way it works is, that I help you do it for your brother. And if your brother or your sister is left out of the equation, no Movement of Awakening will occur. No transformation will occur. No healing will occur. And you will not have fulfilled your function. Your function is to be the Presence of Love that transforms illusions by dissolving them; by evaporating masks that you have held in front of you hiding yourself from each other; hiding yourselves from each other, so that you might enjoy the real experience of Brotherhood and of your Sonship and Daughtership, and of course, there’s the Father’s Place in it all.

Such a beautiful short sentence.

That calls for a couple “Glory Hallelujahs!” [Chuckles]

If you cannot BE as you believed you were, you never have been as you believed you were. And What you have really been has escaped your attention. And the uncovering of what has escaped your attention is My task. And your uncovering what has escaped your brother’s attention is your task. Because that’s how you break the bondage of isolation and orphan-hood and isolation.

Your guilt is without reason. It’s not without belief though. You believe you are guilty and you believe your brother is guilty.

But …

… and your brother’s guilt …

… and your brother …

Now, for some of you this may sound too religious. It’s spiritual words that roll off of ministers’ and priests’ lips, but they really do mean something.

I shared with you a statement from the Course that Paul has turned into a prayer for himself sometime ago, “I wish to see everything through Your Vision, which is Your gift to me from God.” The prayer is addressed to Me, the Christ. It is a prayer that should be on everyone’s lips, “I wish to see through Your Vision, Jesus, which is Your gift to me from God.”

So when it says here …

… see this is not ethereal spirituality …

I’m not ethereal. The Christ is not ethereal. The Christ is actual. And I’m telling you that when it says …

I am talking about a Vision that you are supposed to be asking to experience, because it is My gift to you from God. We’re talking actuality here. I have a gift for you. I have always had this gift for you. As long as you have been pretending to be an orphan, I’ve had this gift for you. And it’s an actual gift. It is real. It is true Vision. It’s My Vision, but not Mine. It’s My Vision, which is My gift to you from Me? No, from God. God’s Vision is your Vision. That’s the way you were and are created to be.

I make the gift to you of My Vision, which the Father gave Me to give you. If you accept it … [chuckling] it sounds like “Mission Impossible,” doesn’t it? If you accept this, you will be able to give that gift to your brother. Not the gift of your personal vision, but the gift of God’s Vision that was given to you because that’s My function; and which you give to your brother because that’s your function.

You get it? You see this?

… reason …

Meaning, your brother and your sister. And by virtue of your seeing it in your brother and sister you will know it’s in you too. This is so simple but it is so important. But as long as you let yourself get caught in the loop of justifiable guilt and all the emotions that accompany it, you will not find yourself able to want to see the truth in your brother. And you won’t. And you will demand justice, until you have justice “up to here.”

And you find that when your life is crammed full of justice, you aren’t happy. And it hurts. And you are ill at ease. And you cannot ignore the fear that is consuming you. And then you will buckle. You will collapse. You might say, you’re having a nervous breakdown, but it’s really a breakthrough.

It’s a place where you will finally say, “The way I’ve been doing it isn’t working. And I no longer have the luxury of enough ease to fool myself into believing that the way I’m living my life is the way it’s supposed to be lived. And therefore, I do want to find another way. And I will reach out wherever I have to reach out, to connect with something beyond my poor thought models—my concepts.”

And of course, the minute you’re willing to reach out, you break the isolation. And you will end up leaning on your brothers and sisters. And you will end up remembering that there’s a God. One way or another you will be reminded that there is a God that you actually have a partnership with. And there will be a willingness to let Him in.

But you don’t have to do it the hard way. You don’t have to do it the hard way, you can just listen to Me or your Advocate, who is available to you when you go within; who will point you in the direction of your salvation—which most everyone is surprised to find is his brother or his sister, his fellowman. And he will point you in the direction of your fellowman, with the purpose of illuminating your capacity to be an agent for change in your brother’s life, because you are willing to look beyond your poor thought models or concepts about everything and about your brother. And you’re willing to look for the Light that is in him that you now know about. And you will have taken the first step of waking up. So you can do it, willingly or unwillingly.

The point is, that if you will accept that you have an Advocate who is here to uncover in you the utter good in you, the Godness in you—God in you—you will begin to experience such transformation that it will pour out and bless your brothers and sisters as well.

Uh-hh … if you think through your list of acquaintances, you won’t really be able to say that you can do that. Of course not if you’re using your current definitions, the current meanings you’re applying to everything.

But you know what? Back up. When that happens, when you find yourself being reluctant to extend yourself, back up and ask yourself, “Do I need an Advocate? Do I need someone to remind me that I do not have to behave out of fear? I don’t have to be experiencing fear. I don’t have to live in a constant state of guilt. Do I need an Advocate?”

Some of you may say, “No, I’m doing quite well, thank you. I’m staying on top of the heap. I’m managing the struggle pretty well.” Okay. I won’t try to force you. But those of you who are willing to receive, I will stand with. Those who are willing to receive from you, be willing to stand with them, because that’s your function and because they deserve it.

And you know what? All of you really do know that at the bottom line, none of you are what you think you are, that you’re better than what you think you are and you deserve better by Birthright, not because you’ve earned it. And all of you know that in spite of the greatly distorted behaviors that you and your brothers engage in because of fear, it is a behavior that doesn’t reflect your nature or you. And your brothers and sisters do not need to continue to behave as though this is “just life.”

In other words, it says …

What I’m saying is, that at the bottom line, you know that they do deserve to be loved equally and that you can do it. Um-m, but it’s like the alarm clock going off in the morning. You know it’s time to get up, but you hit the snooze button, “Five more minutes, please.” You know that you can love your brothers equally, “But please, can I have five more minutes before I have to engage in all that hard work?” [Chuckling] And of course, it looks like hard work because your definition of them is “awful.” [Chuckling] And so you have laid out for you by virtue of your definition—your “awful” definition—a horrendous time consuming job. See?

It’s like you’re saying for your brother, “If I go down into the very depths of you, I’m going to find this ugliest of ugly black hole, and I’m going to be convicted with your awfulness. I’m going to be convinced of it.” You see? “And that’s going to make it very difficult for me.”

But the fact is, that if you will let yourself into the very center of your brother just as if you will let yourself into the very center of you, what you will find is Light; as I said, pulsing, effulgent, living Light, the substance of which is Love. That is what you will find.

And whatever effort it takes on your part to get past your reluctance, it will be worth it; because when you see the Light there, you’ll be remembering God there. And by virtue of the remembrance, which you know will not have come from your own thinking and your own reasoning, but will have come from My Vision which you’re seeing through, which is the Father’s gift to you; you will find equality being experienced relative to you and your brothers. And although it may be an experience with one or a dozen of your brothers, you will know from that experience that it’s true about the millions of brothers and sisters that you’ve never met yet; which is a great promise of joy and pleasure as you look forward to meeting them.

See, only the guiltless will be worthy of your love. Who are you going to withhold your love from? “Oh, the guilty!” Oh, so you still value guilt, I see. You think guilt is a valuable tool in your backpack of paraphernalia for coping with life. And you’re still holding on to it. Okay, well as long as you’re still holding onto guilt as a thing of value, well, you’re going to find if you look a little bit further in your backpack, fear, because guilt and fear are inseparable.

Wow! As long as you value guilt you will impose it on everyone and you will keep yourself bound to it and the fear that always accompanies it.

… the relationships …

You see? That’s why I invite you to accept God’s gift to you, which is My gift to you, which is My Vision, which is the Father’s perspective.

What is love like? It’s like you being totally absent of fear. It’s like you being in, as well as, being the presence of Joy. It’s like you experiencing unchallengeable fulfillment, because there’s nothing unlike fulfillment that you are valuing, and it’s more.

And yet, you, being guiltless in the peace of God, is what the experience of love is like. It’s what the experience of love is experienced as. It’s your Birthright. So if …

Then one who sees himself as guiltless in the peace of God does not engage in condemning his brother—finds no value in it. And therefore, finds total value in, we could say, confronting your brother, but we’ll say it in a gentler way, reflecting back to your brother the wonderful truth about him that is the truth about him.

And so when he behaves out of fear, you will stand there with your brother and express the truth to him that helps him to see that fear is not his Birthright—that fear is an illusion and that if he sets it aside, life and the Universe will not collapse around him and he will still be safe. And if he does not hear it, if he does not want to believe it, if he cannot bring himself to believe it, you stand with the perfection of the gift that you have extended and you let it rest with him. And you do not try to force him. And perhaps you step away for a while. Perhaps for a while it will be someone else’s task to step in and reflect back to him the truth about him.

I want you to understand that to see the truth about your brother is not a way of controlling or coercing your brother into a better frame of mind. It is not a new and higher means of control.

I must constantly invite each of you to embrace the truth by sharing it with you and then leaving it up to you to reach out for it, to take it in, to make it yours. And that’s your task as well.

And I’m adding: Even though he is.

… which is the state you’re all in …

… when you look at yourself …

What does that mean? Without all the chattering of your mind, without all of the arguing in your mind that your innocence and purity is a bunch of crap, it’s just imagination, because you really aren’t innocent and pure.

… in the absence of all that noise …

… look upon your holiness …

… your Father …

No guilt has ever touched you. I’m saying that to you.

Imaginations have never been able to affect a single thing. Not a single animal on the desert has drowned from the illusion of water that appears to be there on a hot day.

… your brother …

God’s …

… your brother …

See, this is a description of what I do all the time. And it’s instruction for what you need to be doing all the time.

Oh, Uh-oh, uh-oh! Wait a minute, “You mean I don’t get to look upon him myself with great beneficence and offer him the great gift that I’m able to give him of unconditional love? What, if I look upon him together with You, well who’s going to get the credit? This is unprofitable for me.”

But, of course, that’s the illusion—the illusion of orphanhood; the illusion of separateness; the illusion of isolation. And the discomfort of such an idiotic insane belief is, what we’re leaving behind.

So …

… your brother …

When you and I join together loving your brother, what happens? Your guiltlessness gets uncovered to you, while his does as well. That’s the only way you can release guilt.

Again, please do not hear these as religious, spiritual words. It’s like:

… Dad…

… me or the purity of my brother, your other Son.

… Dad…

… of your most unaltered, undefiled Son…

The key words to that sentence are: I thank You …

I thank you Dad …

… impeccably, unaltered, undefiled offspring, Son, my brother …

I care. I care. I’m involved. My heart recognizes You in my brother and that he is my brother and not just some other odd ball on the face of this planet that I can relate to or not related to. Even if I’m not relating to him at the moment, he’s my brother whom I have feelings for and thank you…more feelings. Thank you Dad. Thank you Dad for not withholding from us all of the excellence of You.

Still you talking here, this is your prayer.

This I want you to say and feel about your brother.

… brother …

… my brother …

… yourself…

Not just nice words. They’re My words.

Please abandon the fear you have that when you love your brother he will hear you not—he won’t hear you.

What is it that is whole here?

… your lovelinesses …

When you look at your brother and you recognize God there, it is an awesome experience. It is a magnificent experience that causes you to spontaneously express praise for it that gets shared with all of Creation.

Now I’m going to stop here, because if I stop here it means that we start out next week with the word “Praise” and with an expression of gratitude. And that’s a wonderful way to start out a gathering.

You’re supposed to be happy. [Addressing each one in audience] You’re supposed to be happy. You’re supposed to be happy. Even you are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. And you are supposed to be happy.

All of Creation is geared toward your having that experience. All of existence is geared toward your having that experience. Everything that exists is meant to fulfill that experience.

In order for you to have the experience you’re going to have to abandon the great confidence that you have as to what everything means. Because what you think everything means at this moment is an environment in which suffering is normal. And in which the attempt to overcome suffering is normal, if not the purpose of life. And it’s not true.

The slightest willingness to look at your world with an expectation to see it reflect back to you that it’s your Birthright to be happy, will cause change to occur; in the way you receive what appears to come to you from your world and in what you give back.

We’re coming up, sometime in the next two or three weeks; it’s only on the next page but we’re coming up to a section called:

That’s your Birthright to experience the Guarantee of Heaven. To be utterly happy, without your happiness being subject to threat. That’s the Birthright that your brothers have, which it’s your opportunity to share with them—share with him, so that he can begin to look in a new way if he wishes.

You are your brother’s savior and your brother is your savior. Embrace your brother with Love whether he returns it or not.

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