Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Now, it might seem strange to say that we’ve arrived at a very important part of the book, A Course In Miracles, but the fact is that we have.

Julie is a monster worker And it’s especially important because there is a sentence which I dictated to Helen that does not appear in the first or second edition. And without that sentence, it becomes almost impossible to glean the full meaning of the portion that we’ve been reading last week and that we will be reading tonight.

This one very important sentence is: “The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind.” ¹

This is a very key sentence. It is a very key teaching. Because without it, as we read in this portion of the Course, it would be very easy for you to think of the Holy Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—something far beyond you. And yet, you could say the essential teaching of the Course is that “The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind.” Or we could reverse it and say, your right Mind is nothing less than the Holy Spirit.

Now, we spoke last week about first gear, second gear, and third gear. First gear is where you are listening to the Voice for truth. Second gear is neutral, where you think that you have a mind of your own—a place for you to simply be—and from which you can shift to first gear and listen to the Voice for truth or, from which you can shift from neutral to third gear, which is the voice for fear. And of course, fear and guilt are two sides of the same coin.

Now, one can read the Course and think that the Course is about learning how to be in neutral without engaging guilt or fear—without yielding to, or giving your attention to the voice for fear so that you might always be in a peaceful place in neutral, in second gear. But as we discussed last week, the voice for fear and neutral are illusions.

You do not have a place from which to be on your own. That’s an illusion. And a capacity to listen to a voice for fear only seems possible if you insist upon occupying this invalid and unreal position called “neutral” where you’re not connected to the Voice for truth, where your divinity is not a part of your awareness of yourself, where you are not yielding to anything except your own self-developed expertise at being an independent authority. And loving it!

It would seem that to improve one’s self in neutral, one has to learn not to be governed by the voice for fear—as though that’s the improvement needed in order to wake up—and hopefully, as you read the Course, to desire to listen to the Voice for truth which you’ve learned is available to you in the Altar in the very middle of you. But it’s very possible for you to imagine that the Holy Spirit that is available to you in the Altar in the very center of your being is still the Holy Spirit, part of the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

If you cannot abandon that unreachable and different definition of the Son and the Holy Spirit, you will not be able to wake up. And you will not be able to embody what the Course is teaching!

You can see that this is very important. If you want to wake up, you have to abandon the orphan mentality; the sense of self that has no source, no father/mother, but is somehow self-existent or a product of a physical movement in a physical universe—evolution.

But you want to wake up. You want to become sane again. And so this is going to require not just abandoning the voice for fear and from neutral position listening to the Voice for truth, the Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind, you are going to have to be willing to abandon neutral gear and let that which is nothing more than your right Mind, be you. It cannot be put anymore simply than that. That is the Gospel. That is the Good News!

The self that you think you are in neutral, is never going to be improved to the point of waking up. It is ultimately going to be abandoned because you have come to a point where you are willing to commit yourself—invest yourself fully in letting your right Mind replace the sense of a mind that you have developed from a vantage point in which you have conceived of yourself as being an independent entity separate from a God—something set in motion and given the option and task of self-governance. That belief will keep you dreaming. It is what needs to be abandoned. And the sentence that does not appear in the first and second editions of the Course is what makes utterly clear the truth of what I’ve just said: “The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind.”

So again, we’re not talking about improving your puny little self or helping others improve their puny little selves. We’re talking about shifting entirely from a mental frame of mind in which you independently and autonomously govern yourself and your affairs, and where you are willing to re-embrace the only Mind that is yours—that Mind which is in perfect balance, perfect harmony, perfect sanity—that Mind which you must let take you over—that Mind which you must let supersede the mind you imagined you have.

Let’s go to the book.

See, that means something quite different when you know that the Holy Spirit that God gave to you is nothing more than your right Mind. It has a very different meaning than it would if you think of the Holy Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity that is vastly different and distant from you, although it embraces you lovingly.

… you …

It makes sense, doesn’t it? The Father has given you that which is nothing more than your right Mind to replace the mind that you have imagined; that you have filled with illusions and misunderstandings and errors. God has given you your real Mind—your right Mind—to replace a mind in you that is suffering from its own false beliefs, from its own illusions.

It is impossible that your right Mind will fail in its purpose to unite you, to bring you back into a whole awareness of yourself. You could say, to bring you back into Unity consciousness which would of course be infinite consciousness—all inclusive, where nothing of what the Infinite Mind that is God is—where you are the fullness of what God is.

You know, if the Holy Spirit really were something at a distance in a holy position with God and Jesus, it would be easy for you to imagine that maybe the Holy Spirit couldn’t reach you or maybe you couldn’t reach the Holy Spirit. But if you understand that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind, it becomes obvious to you that it’s actually impossible for you to be separated from It even if you are ignoring It. And therefore, the inevitability of what I’m going to call reunification, becomes clearly possible and reasonable as well as inevitable if indeed the Holy Spirit functions as the, I’m going to say, embodier of God’s Will. Therefore, any temporary insanity that you pretend to be in will necessarily be temporary. Necessarily. And the truth of that becomes obvious to you when you realize that the Holy 
Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind.

… and I am chuckling because Paul understands fully what I am speaking about because the Holy Spirit’s Voice is one that he and all of you will resist from time to time even though its nothing more than your right Mind.

… first gear or third gear—Voice for truth, voice for fear, whichever voice you choose to listen to…

That is why you can’t pretend to be insane forever, permanently. You cannot establish it because God did not establish it.

What God is Being, right where you are, is the only thing that can Be right where you are, no matter how creatively imaginative you might become.

… God …

God is the Establisher.

… God …

You might not have thought about it, you might not have taken an overview of your experiences of guilt or of fear, but if you will observe the next time you are experiencing either guilt or fear clearly, that the experience is mesmerizing. You even have a phrase: “Caught in the grip of fear!” And it becomes difficult to set it down. It becomes difficult to ignore it. It becomes almost impossible to imagine that there can be reasonable justification for shifting your attention from it—your compulsive, addicted attention—from it and give your attention, instead, to your peace—the peace that is part of your being; that is the nature of your being which is inescapable.

Remember, we spoke last week about the fact that there seem to be two powers at war with each other and one of them is real and one of them is unreal. And your escape from the conflict lies in your willingness to identify one of the voices as unreal and therefore not an actual power or force that can accomplish anything. And in that awareness you are released from the imagination that there can be conflict that can impact you and injure you or hurt you or demean you, actually. And in that realization, you will find yourself free of the invitation to fear. Free of the mesmeric, hypnotic invitation to justify the experience of fear and then attempt to overcome it.

See, it’s the one in neutral that would hear the voice for fear and become enticed into overcoming the voice for fear. And that’s where the mistake is. And that’s where the clarity [snaps fingers] has to come into focus so that you realize that it’s not the overcoming of the fear that’s called for but the abandonment of second gear from which you are observing fear and guilt entice you and engulf you. And instead, turn to the Voice for truth in you.

Invite the Voice for truth in you to reveal the truth about you. Invite your right Mind, which is utterly and ultimately divine because it’s the Presence of the Mind for God, to reveal to you the truth about you that has nothing to do with a second gear called, “neutral” or a third gear called, “the voice for fear.’’

God …

It’s your environment. It’s the environment of your being. And the environment of your being that was established by God remains forever unchanged and therefore, forever available to you.

God …

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

Your sanity is forever on hand reminding you of the truth of you always. Always it is present with you reminding you.

So when you shift your attention from third gear, the voice for fear, and you abandon second gear, neutral, and you let first gear be fully you, you will be allowing what God has set into place for you to do what it’s supposed to do. And you will call it, “Waking Up.” You will call it, “The end of illusions.” It will be an experience of joy.

And so, no matter what problems you’re faced with, no matter what the nature or character, no matter what its unique peculiarities are, no matter how seductive they are, you must remember not to take the bait. And even if you do take the bait, you must recognize it and remember that you must give your attention to first gear knowing that it’s not pie-in-the-sky Holy Spirit, but ultimate Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your right Mind whose function it is to replace your misunderstandings and your confusion and illuminate your infinite sanity and return you to your right Mind.

That’s important. It’s not going to bring your right Mind to you here in second gear, it’s going to return you to your right Mind.

Now, continuing …

Here in the Kingdom of Heaven that you are calling the human condition. Here in neutral.

And I will say, hopefully you learn what to avoid and what to seek. What you need to become aware of is, that what you call life—which most everybody is living out from neutral—is not something to be lived out forever in neutral. It is an experience from which you’re supposed to learn and not stay in. You see?

… to one who’s living in neutral seeming to sit with the Voice for truth on his left, and [chuckle] the voice for fear on his right, while he remains innocently playing with one and the other as though it doesn’t make any difference. And that’s life—nothing to learn, just, you know, use Spirit to overcome evil and watch while evil tries to overcome Spirit, so that you can have this thrill of overcoming this dastardly voice for fear, you see. No. You’re here to learn.

Now that doesn’t mean that there won’t be trees or flowers or individualities. Those aren’t differences. But a “bad person” and a “good person” or poison oak and a rose do seem to be differences. They will disappear, but not Creation.

Why? Because you won’t need to be further convinced of what you want and what you don’t want.

Listen to this:

The Voice for truth is nothing more than your right Mind. Truth comes to its own. Truth comes to you of its own will because of the absolute unalterable integrity of you, of Being, of Creation.

Truth will not illustrate differences. Because you will no longer be confused and attracted to that which is not true without realizing that you’re supposed to learn something from the uncomfortable experience and stop doing it. You see?

Again …

See, this is again the yielding to the Holy Spirit, letting that take over you, which is nothing more than your right Mind and is therefore a sane and intelligent thing to do.

Well…

… and aren’t just some little entity sitting in neutral that can, um-m, take a little bit of truth from the Voice for truth and take a little bit of fear from the voice for fear and sort of mix them up and work them around and have a little bit of excitement; and then finally lean a little bit more toward the Voice for truth so you have a breather, some peace, you know.

When you’ve learned that you belong to truth and it’s not a thing for you to employ…

It won’t be hard to hear the truth.

In other words, fear not that the Holy Spirit will use contrast in a way that would cause you not to learn what you need to learn. Do not be afraid that the Holy Spirit will use contrast in any way other than the way that will trigger Awakening and graceful growth, graceful learning, because its function is to return you to your right Mind, in which there is no confusion and therefore no suffering.

You see, you cannot escape… there is no way that you could have gotten outside of the will of God. There’s no way you could have gotten outside of your right Mind. The only thing that you can seem to have done is to have drawn a little circle within the infinite Mind that you are. And then say that this circumscribed part is all there is of you. Well, it isn’t all there is of you, but it is you. It’s the Presence of God viewed in a limited fashion.

Your right Mind undoes the boundaries and reunites that which is all of you to you.

… and this is it:

Why does God will you to be in Heaven? Because God didn’t create any other place for you to be. It’s that simple. And because of that nothing can actually keep you from it or it from you.

What?

They are meaningless.

God …

That’s like saying your salvation will be experienced. You in your right Mind, will be the only one left—no orphan among orphans, just the real You, the Son, the Daughter of God—embodying willingly what God is Being right there where you are; because you were willing to abandon all of the rights and privileges you thought you had as an orphan to be your original self on whatever terms you wanted to make up. But, because that put you in a position of disconnection from what you divinely are—which we’re calling second gear, neutral—you immediately created the third gear to cope with, because in your separated state it’s impossible for you not to experience fear and guilt simultaneously. You see?

This should be becoming clearer and clearer to you. The clearer it becomes to you, the easier it will be for you to comprehend making the choice for the Voice for truth, which you can safely do because you’re making the choice for that which is nothing more than your right Mind, not your tiny little self’s right mind, but the Presence of what God is Being infinitely right where you are, from which He has withheld nothing of what He is.

Here again, this could be misunderstood. What is the communication link which God Himself placed within you? The Holy Spirit. Mind you, the Holy Spirit came into existence, we will say, when you decided to become imaginative and get a divorce from your Father and try to be an independent entity.

When you did that and circumscribed the infinity of you by a smaller circle and said, “This is me,” did you annihilate the rest of the infinitude of you? No, it’s still there but you’re ignoring it. And that is what is called the Holy Spirit, the allness of what God is Being right there as you is now divided by your active independence into the Holy Spirit and the little orphan in neutral gear.

So as long as you maintain this little circle and say, “What’s inside is all there is of me,” the Holy Spirit, everything outside it, is present and pressuring, pressing against the boundary so as to break it.

Again …

… what?

As long as you’re in neutral, you are going to be dealing with the actuality of the voice for truth and the illusion of the voice for fear. And the two will seem to be in conflict. You will and do call it “The human condition.” And you think the human condition is life, that it’s the ultimate and that you must make the best of it and that’s your task. And you have even imagined that there are reincarnations so that you might learn better and better how to be in this fashion. But I’m telling you, the answer is to get out of neutral, abandon neutral and the voice for fear.

The communication link, which God Himself placed within you—joining your minds with His—cannot be broken. And so you can get back. You may believe you want it broken, you say, “Oh, I’d rather struggle a little longer, it’s pretty exciting. I have a lot invested in what I’m doing right now. Let me see if it is going to fail before I yield to what you’re suggesting.” You may believe you want it broken—the connection—and this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication which God would share with you, is known.

What does that mean—His channels of reaching out? You, every aspect of Creation are His channels of reaching out, of extension, of expressing love, of embracing and blessing with all that He is.

In other words, God.

You say, “I don’t have it now. I haven’t had peace in a long time. And even when I had it there was never any stability to it, therefore it couldn’t have been real peace.” It’s all bullshit. You have it now. Why? Because you couldn’t have second gear or third gear, if you didn’t have first gear. You can’t have an illusion of nothing. You can’t have a distortion of nothing. You can’t have a false experience of nothing. It’s that simple.

… what?

The key here is, that you must do something new that you haven’t done before. You must stop trying to improve the human condition. You must stop trying to improve everything by using the definitions you have given to everything; by using the value that you have placed in everything. You must abandon that and cultivate the curiosity to have revealed to you the value God has put in everything, which will reveal to you His Purpose behind this or that or the other thing, or embodied as this, that or the other thing. You see?

Now isn’t it wonderful that you can no longer think that the Holy Spirit is something high in the sky—the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind…

God’s Will.

Now, you might be listening to what I’m saying and be thinking that, wow, this is like a giant leap that I’m talking about. I’m asking something of you that is humongous, impossible. And it’s not. I’m just asking you to recognize what the answer is. And the answer is not you, in neutral, trying to improve the human condition by working the good and the evil better, or by being independent better, as though you could be independent without the voice for fear accompanying you absolutely.

Again, I know the ego thinks that sounds like control. But when you realize that it’s your right Mind which wills to teach you of your integrity and your indivisible wholeness you will realize that it’s not control, it’s really sanity.

… here it is learn, supposed to be learning.

God watches over you and light surrounds you.

… well it seems as though you can.

Oh again, what is this that has been placed in you that is a glad call to waken and be glad? It’s the Holy Spirit. God has placed in you, that which is nothing more than your right Mind, and there was no way for you to abandon it actually. It is the glad call, if you will but abandon second gear and third gear, realizing that in shifting your attention and embrace to first gear it will dissolve second and third gear and return you to your sanity. And you will be glad.

… you …

Why? Because they’re one and the same thing—your creation by God was an eternal creation. You in your right Mind are an eternal creation. And because of that your temporary confusion can only be that—temporary.

… reality is yours …

But remember, what we’re talking about is making a shift to your right Mind, which is an act of integration and therefore an action of integrity and one that can be embraced without fear and with commitment.

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

… and that word “learned” should be in quotes—everything that you have taught yourself from second gear.

In other words, that what you have created from second gear, which has been created from a vantage point of fear and guilt, that it must be able to be brought to a point of being real—absolutely as real as God’s Creation.

You see, that has to do with manipulation from second gear of the things in third gear and somehow, making what’s going on in second and third gear become equal to what is going on in first gear, which is Reality. That’s the reconciliation that the ego would have you engage in. And it’s the reconciliation that I mentioned at the beginning tonight, where if you don’t know that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind, then you are likely to engage in your spiritual path from second gear using the elements of fear and guilt because they are inseparable from second gear, and thereby never accomplishing your awakening, because you’re trying to reconcile the wrong things—improve the human condition.

Now listen to this:

… taught yourself …

… what? …

And there it is as clear as a bell. The reconciliation has nothing to do with dynamics between second gear and third gear. The Holy Spirit’s reconciliation for you is helping you to abandon second gear and third gear and succumb to, yield to, be overcome by, be overwhelmed most beautifully by the Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your right Mind. That’s the reconciliation. And that’s what, as you read this Course, you must understand it is pointing you in the direction of.

The Holy Spirit …

… that which is nothing more than your right Mind …

… it’s a reconciliation with Him. It’s a reconciliation with everything outside the tiny circumference that you’ve placed in the middle of the infinity of you and claimed to be all there is of you.

… accomplish …

… or accomplish …

What is the ego? The voice for fear—third gear. Third gear will never accomplish anything because it is an unreal power.

Now, during this coming week I’m going to invite you all to go over what we read last week as well as what we’ve discussed this week. It is incredibly invigorating, motivating and contributive to sudden shifts of perception—miracles.

And I look forward to being with you next week.