Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’re starting a new Chapter. It’s entitled:

See, it’s not the way you would expect it to be. You would expect to turn to God—lean into God—with prayer and with willingness to accept His answers so that truth would infill you and allow you thereby to improve the human condition. In other words, you would bring truth to illusion.

It’s natural that you would have that expectation, because you think that you are in a position of some authority and that it’s incumbent upon you to exercise that authority to improve your living conditions, to benefit your brother or perhaps [chuckling] take advantage of your brother. But one way or another everything falls into place around you—the authority in your life.

Now just because it’s natural for you to think that way doesn’t mean it’s right. It doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because everyone does it that way and just because all of your ancestors did it that way and even though all the books in the world that exist express the same basic modus operandi it doesn’t mean that everybody got it right.

And we have been discussing the truth and getting it right. But it does require everyone to be willing to change. In a way, it’s like every single one of you moving to a country where language is spoken that you have never learned. And in order to exist there you must learn the language and you must learn it now. You must apply yourself to learning it at every moment during the day.

“¿Como se dice house?” You know. You have to constantly inquire, “How do you say this? How do you say that? How do you speak in the past tense,” and so on? You can’t say, “Well, learning a new language doesn’t really fit into my activities. I think I’ll put it off for a while. I can’t learn a new language on the [snapping fingers] spot, while I’m right in the middle of things.” But you have to.

You could say, “Well yeah, I hear you—Bringing Illusions to Truth—I know I need to do that, but you know I can’t do that on the job, I can’t do that when I’m driving in the car, I can’t do that when I’m having an argument with my wife or my son or my daughter or whoever.” But you know what? If you’re in another country where everyone speaks a language that you don’t speak, you have to learn on the spot. You have to be willing. And it can be done. That’s the point. It can be done! If you’re a little spoiled though you might say, “Well, it’s not really convenient right now.” It doesn’t have to be convenient. Make the effort.

Now, let’s go into the book …

Now here’s just pure logic …

If it’s the Father’s Will for you to know Him and the only way you can know him is to be guiltless, then there’s no way to escape the Father’s Will. And that means you have to be guiltless whether you believe it or not. It also means that your brother has to be guiltless whether he believes it or not and whether you believe it about your brother or not.

So, we’ve thrown around the word “guiltless” and “guiltlessness” incessantly for a number of weeks here—not thrown it around, but it’s been used a lot. So if you must be guiltless, and if you must be guiltless in order to know God, then how do you know God? What does guiltless mean?

Well, you know in one of the parables I spoke of the “Bridegroom coming when ye think not”—be prepared because the “Bridegroom cometh when ye think not.” Innocence, guiltlessness is the state of your Being when ye think not—when you are not thinking.

I know some of you were wondering this past week what the experience of “full open consciousness” might be. It’s the experience you find yourself having when you successfully become silent within yourself. You find yourself to be fully conscious without thinking.

Now, as I said before, God did not give you the capacity to think. Thinking is a so-called capacity which you have imagined, which you have created. And in the imaginary act of having thoughts, what happened? The presence thoughts suggested there was a thinker. “Aha!” God didn’t create a thinker, and there really is no such thing as a thinker. But in the process of using your mind to create an experience that you called a thought and then creating more thoughts, you caused a suggestion to come into play. The presence of the thoughts suggested that there was a thinker. And I’m going to be very specific here: there is a difference between a thinker and a knower. There’s a difference between thinking and knowing.

Stay with me here. When you meditate—or through any means that accomplishes the singular end of experiencing silence—you arrive at a point where there is no thinking going on, but you are conscious. In that experience you are experiencing being pure Awareness. The experience of awareness does not really suggest that there’s an entity being aware. It doesn’t elicit a secondary effect. And so as pure awareness you find yourself experiencing everything.

As I said, if you mediate and you arrive at a point of perfect peace—silence within you—you can still hear the breeze through the trees, you can still hear the dogs barking, you can still smell dinner cooking, you’re fully conscious of everything. And I promise you, that in that experience of pure awareness, all of what you have defined as separate experiences are simply the experience of knowing. Pure conscious awareness is the experience of knowing. This is where your innocence is. This is where your guiltlessness lies. When you allow yourself into this experience you have allowed a truer experience of what Being Is. Period.

Now, it is possible through a slight use of will, when you are meditating, to move into the silence and think that the silence is the goal and that you have arrived at some stopping point, if I might put it that way. And so you hold on to the silence. You don’t want to disturb the silence with willfulness, you say. And yet I need to tell you, that the silence is not the end. It is not the purpose of becoming still. The purpose of becoming still is to stop the thinking that suggests that there’s a thinker.

But there is something further that has to come into play. There has to be a desire. It could be called willfulness, but you’ll find that the desire is there without the use of thought. The desire will not be the result of thought and thought will not be used to explain the desire, or to flesh it out with meaning. You will find that the desire will be experienced as a natural gravitation toward love—the experience of love, of being loved, and of being love. Again, of being loved and being love. And there will be a natural gravitation toward peace. It will feel like movement. You will be able to feel the shift. And you will be able to feel the love and the peace. And there will be a natural desire or again, a natural inclination to move toward joy.

As this happens, you begin to accept the fact that these experiences which you did not create, but which you did allow, are really the clearer definers of you than the you, you thought you were by virtue of having thoughts and thinking. Because you will not be reinforcing a so-called thinker, by insisting on thinking thoughts, your awareness will become—I could call it, a transparency for truth, or a transparency for reality—an unclouded, less and less opaque presence, environment, atmosphere, through which the Father can register with you as Being all there is of you.

Now, there is nothing your behavior in the world can do to demonstrate your guiltlessness, your innocence. There are no thoughts you can have that will be so pure that they will create a pure thinker, an ultimate thinker—that in which the Father could be well pleased. Anything that you might attempt to do by virtue of your thinking, is not what will cause your Father to be well pleased with you. It’s when you are willing to be more radical, and in the middle of your daily life learn a new language, find a new way to be even though it’s inconvenient to do it, and you insist upon, to the very best of your ability in every situation, listening for what the truth is here, what the truth is here.

“¿Como se dice house? What is the truth here? What is the truth here? Because I need to know now in order to function where I am. I need to know now in order to function as the guiltless one that I am. I need to know now so that I can relate to my brother, the guiltless one that he has to be right now. And the only way I’m going to be able to do it is to insist upon listening right in the middle of the experience that I’ve been having all along, but thinking it was something else, determining that it was a material universe and world in the process of evolution.” You literally have to be willing to take a radical stand, meaning, determine that you are going to be in a new way here and now.

What is the new way? The new way is to say, “Father, help!” The new way is to make a practice of becoming still and inquiring, desiring to know as an experience of pure awareness—not as a result of conscious logical thinking.

Well, that’s what we’re talking about. What are the necessary conditions for knowing Him? Well, the necessary conditions for knowing Him are to stop valuing thinking, because the process of thinking proves to you that you exist as an independent thinker, who by virtue of his clear, correct, right thinking can become respectable and become real. The conditions for knowing God are that you must abandon doing that.

Now, many of you have had the experience of having life—you say—wear you down, for life to become so difficult that finally you give up, you give up faith in yourself, you give up thinking that you have a capacity to resolve the situation and you let go.

You know, you all, or most of you love this phrase, “Let go and let God.” Well, okay, nice words. But almost without fail, those of you who have experienced letting go and letting God called that a major failure in your life, where you failed at being a success and everything fell apart. And it was only, you say, through the grace of God that you were lifted up out of it and there was such transformation in your life that it changed you forever, and now you really believe there is a God.

Now, when you let go under those circumstances, when you give up truly in those circumstances, you literally abandon thinking and valuing your thinking. And in the absence of any confidence in what your thinking could create for you, you say, “Help!” When you do that you accept the necessary conditions for knowing God.

Now, the point is you don’t have to wait for life to wear you down. You don’t have to wait for circumstances to cause you to abandon the use of your will. You can volunteer to abandon the use of your will.

And I’ve talked at length over many moons as we’ve been going through the book. I’ve talked at length about how you can do that, about having curiosity, bringing curiosity into play, asking, “What is the more of what God is being here than what I’m seeing?” But you know what? I want to encourage you to bring a little bit more commitment to it. You can play with it a little bit. You can sort of have fun with being curious during the day to see more, but let a little bit of real life occur and you will slip right back into being in charge yourself, because you value the self you think you are by virtue of engaging in thinking—using the presence of thoughts as the verifier of the fact that there really is a thinker and that thinker is you. Doing that you are not accepting the necessary conditions for knowing Him.

So I guess you could say that, unlike years past, I’m pressuring you a little, I’m pushing you a little. Why? Because the truth about you is so much more wonderful and the experience of what you really are is so much more profound than what you’re experiencing. And if you continue to play with ideas of truth and practicing having a little bit of curiosity to see the more of God, but not really expecting it. “You know, it would be nice, but if it really happened, well you don’t want to be thrown off base, you don’t want to be thrown off guard, you don’t want to be thrown for a curve. So I’m curious, but I’m not too curious.” And I’m saying, “Okay, come on. Lets treat all of this as though it’s the truth.”

Stop doing what constitutes not accepting the conditions for knowing God. Stop thinking and trying to prove by virtue of your thinking that you do indeed exist as the thinker on your own, in second gear.

If you are claiming to be an independent entity, proof of which is arrived at by demonstrating that you are having thoughts and therefore you are a thinker in your own right, the Father cannot be known, because there’s no Son. There’s no Son being acknowledged by you. You’re claiming to be not His Son. You’re claiming to not be a son of anything. You are the creator by virtue of thinking. And the thinking demonstrates as a fact that there is a thinker and that’s you. And all of your thinking, whether you believe this or not, all of your thinking occurs for the sole purpose of proving your existence as an independent entity.

So, that is the reason that God is obscured.

Now, we’ve talked at length about the fact that even though you utilize guilt and you do value it because you do use it, you used it to motivate yourself. You use it to motivate your brothers and sisters and they likewise practice it on you for purposes of control. Even though you do this, it’s just like no matter how much you think it doesn’t prove or demonstrate that there is a thinker—an independent entity. And likewise no matter how much you employ guilt, it doesn’t mean that you have become guilty. But it does mean that you are deluded. It does mean that you are confused and as a result cannot experience your Birthright, cannot experience what it means to be truly Sane.

And although you get a lot of invigoration from this tense existence of trying to make something Real that can’t become Real, you haven’t succeeded at doing anything. And therefore you are not guilty. And because you haven’t accomplished changing what you are, you still are what you were created to be. And therefore, you can experience transformation. You can experience, without process at all, slipping back into the experience of full open consciousness—the experience of guiltlessness, the experience of being pure awareness.

Now, just getting into the silence is not all there is to it. In the silence there needs to be a very gently expressed wish/desire to have your Father reveal to you the Mind He placed in you—to have your right Mind uncovered to you. That’s the way you undo the isolation—the so-called independence that you thought you could create. And when you do that, you accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him.

In the abandonment [careless freedom] of behaving as though you are guilty, even though you can’t possibly become guilty, you find that the experience of Knowing that comes when you are experiencing pure awareness is lost because you’re so busy creating the static of your thinking, which you believe is going to create the proof that there is a thinker there—you—that is real.

That’s a plea.

Do you realize that this is how Atonement happens?

… God …

In other words, anything you thought up about what God is, isn’t the truth about God. It’s just the truth about you engaging in thinking for the selfish purpose of demonstrating that you exist all by yourself.

How did you throw yourselves away? And how did you value God so little? By becoming consumed with proving your existence as an independent thinker.

Now you know what? We could get into lengthy conversations about your good thinking and how you’ve used your thinking in beneficial ways. And you could have another ten thousand lifetimes without waking up. You don’t need to prove or demonstrate good thoughts and good thinking habits. You just simply don’t any longer have to try to demonstrate your validity and value, by virtue of any thoughts you ever had, any more than your worthlessness could be demonstrated by the poor thoughts you’ve had and put into practice. You see?

The necessity is to do something really very simple, that every single one of you can do. You can stop thinking. Just stop it. Get into the silence. Learn how to value it so that it’s easier to stay in it even when you’re in the middle of activity. So that your experience of activities is a result of pure awareness of being present with, without thinking about anything that’s going on. Because it’s in this way that what God is Being, that what Reality Is—in all of these activities that you’re aware of—can register with you without the distortions introduced by engaging in thought processes and evaluations, and on and on and on.

Your innocence lies in your not employing that which, we’ll say, brings guilt into play. And what brings guilt into play is thinking. What brings guilt into play is behaving as though you are an orphan and valuing your orphanhood and using all of the sad details of orphanhood to justify grabbing for your good—as though you didn’t have it—and proving that you’re worth having it all by virtue of excellent thoughts and the development of an excellent self image.

I’m going to say: as you’ve determined it to be by virtue of your thinking…

… as you have determined it to be by virtue of your thinking …

You see, while you’re enjoying being in second gear and while you’re enjoying proving your independent existence, by virtue of thinking, so that you can prove that there’s a thinker, all that time you are holding yourself apart from Him—proving your own independent existence.

… the Father’s Love

Perfect gentleness, in the quiet, peaceful love and joy, which becomes yours as you value and move into the silence. There, you can give a blessing in perfect gentleness. And just your very conscious awareness of everything will be the blessing in perfect gentleness. It won’t be an independent action that you’ve said, “Okay, now I’m starting to send a blessing to you.” And then, “Okay, the blessing is over.”

Would you want …

Want to. Wants to …

That’s the Father. And that’s you when you’re in the silence, in the love and the peace and the joy of being pure awareness. As pure awareness, you are present with and in full acknowledgement of what everything Is, without the coloration of your distorted thoughts and perceptions. And so you co-create. You join with the Father in Creation, which is the giving of your full open consciousness, your attention, and knowing that that is your function in its entirety. Your mind is not there so that you can think. Your mind is there so that you can Know. So you can know what? What you’ve figured out? No. So that you can Know everything as the Father is Knowing It, and in the act of Knowing It, Creating It.

… You, everyone …

Sin: the missing of the mark, the attempt to be what you cannot be, the attempt to create and demonstrate your existence by virtue of independent thinking. Right now it feels normal to you. But as you begin to abandon it and have frequent experiences of not engaging it, you will begin to find it less and less comfortable to engage it, and what had been a carrot you chased after, will no longer have appeal to you.

Has denied it how? By insisting on creating a sense of identity by virtue of more and more excellent thinking processes.

That’s interesting isn’t it?

Not the true skills, not the true nature, not the true gifts that he has, but the true condition of the Son of God—peace, love, joy and more that emerges when silence is allowed, when silence is nurtured, when listening in the silence is valued more than thinking.

Again, you can make this shift right in the world today, just as you can learn a new language in a “foreign country,” where no one speaks your language.

Again …

That’s what I said. As you allow yourself to be in the peace and you experience the love and the joy that emerges, those experiences become that which define you—not the thoughts or the skills or anything else that you might engage in.

… the Atonement …

The …

… Who remembers who you Are and what the Father Is.

Well, I’ll tell you, there aren’t a whole lot of blocks, unless you want to count all the different kinds of thoughts that you engage in. There’s really only one block that stands between you and what you know of the truth of you. And that is, again, the static that is created by your insistence upon thinking, for the purpose of proving that there is a thinker, and you are it, and you are therefore real all by yourself. That’s the only block there is.

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

… with all of your thinking. If you remember the self you have been working so hard to create by virtue of your thinking …

… the Holy Spirit …

Now, there’s your radical thinking. No, there’s your radical truth.

… the Holy Spirit …

In order to demonstrate your guiltlessness and in order to illuminate and demonstrate your brother’s guiltlessness, you must be willing to abandon who you think you are. You must be willing to abandon the definitions you have created of yourself and then impressed everyone else with. And you must abandon the pride with which you hold yourself in such self-esteem. You must be willing to see yourself as something far more than anything that you could have created by a stream of thoughts. And so must your brother.

And if you want to wake up, if you want to know the truth, if you want to become free of the illusions you’re suffering from, you must be willing to consider yourself in a different language—not the language of thoughts you have about yourself, and not the language of the thoughts you have about your brother or your sister, and not the language of the thoughts that your professors and teachers and so-called enlightened ones have added to your repertoire of thoughts.

It’s not awful of me to illuminate the nothingness of nothing. It’s not unkind of me to illuminate the lack of value in that which has no value, especially when I am providing, at the same time, an understanding of how to get to the experience of what is valuable, the experience of your Sanity and the fact that it is all waiting for you—in a bright package, you might say of wholeness—simply awaiting a few moments of silence when you’ve relinquished the attempt to reinforce your self-image and prove your existence by virtue of all the thoughts you could possibly think.

You are guiltless because you couldn’t possibly be a thinker. And you are guiltless because right now, even though you’re not conscious of it, you are the divine presence of pure conscious awareness, which by virtue of being awareness knows everything infinitely, sharing the knowledge of Reality with your Father.

Now, you can make this claim for yourself. You can describe yourself to yourself in the words I just used about you. But don’t get hung up on declaring it because then it just becomes another thought to rehearse, thus proving the presence of a thinker, thinking better. But what I just said, is of value because it can contribute to your letting go—letting go of the attempt to demonstrate your validity by thoughts. And by letting those words cause you to have greater peace and less fear as you let yourself into the silence, and learn of your being from the experience of the silence, the silence and the emptiness that seemed to be are already full of Reality, awaiting you to experience It in Its language.

So we’re not bringing truth to illusions. We’re not bringing the truth to your mind to add to your repertoire of thoughts that will do nothing but continue to demonstrate your independent existence. Were bringing illusions to truth by abandoning illusions. We’re bringing you to truth. We’re bringing you—returning you—to that which is nothing more than your right Mind, which is the Holy Spirit, the Voice for Truth, the Voice for God.

It’s not too hard. You just have to begin to engage in it. Start learning the new language. And start learning it no matter how inconvenient it is, right in the middle of your (to your sense) very human unspiritual day, right in the orphanage, if you will, so that you might have the experience of the transformation of the orphanage into the Kingdom of Heaven—which you had been missing because of the definition you had applied to it.

You are assured of success because that which is divinely sane never successfully became insane. Reach for your Sanity by shutting up, becoming curious and listening. And do it, do it, do it, throughout your days.

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