Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Well, establishing order is pretty much the order of the day isn’t it, every day, because without the establishment of order, nothing will work out right. You won’t be where you need to be when you need to be. You will not be able to coordinate behavior, activities, appointments, etc., etc. And mostly, you won’t be able to protect yourself, because of course, life is threatening, life is divided, life is unsafe.

So, because you all value order and because you all believe that order must be established by you, you very seldom, as the saying goes, “Let go and let God.”

When you are experiencing inner turmoil, dissonance, fear, worry, you can count on it that it is because you have made an assessment of your environment—of your life—that has concluded that there is danger of one sort or another, to one degree or another. And further, I promise you that you can assume that you have already engaged in the practice of control—the practice of establishing order.

If you are experiencing dissonance, you are already unjoined, you are already feeling your isolation, your scary independence as an orphan. And you’re not doing anything to object to and undo this state of orphanhood, which is the one thing that would establish order, although not order by your hand.

Interestingly enough, if you’re in your peace, if you’re on vacation at the beach and you’re relaxed, it’s relatively easy for you to let go. It’s relatively easy for you not to be holding yourself in a state of readiness to take hold if the occasion calls for it. And in that space, you are able to feel your peace and good things are able to happen spontaneously—not at your hand. You love to go on a vacation because the unexpected meets you. Well, the unexpected would meet you every single day if you didn’t abandon your peace.

The very circumstances where your peace is needed, the very circumstances where the correction to this inner turmoil needs to occur is primarily when you become involved with each other. Like I said, if you’re on a beach enjoying the sunshine, not knowing anyone around you, you feel safe. You feel relaxed. You enjoy yourself. The experience of joy can penetrate.

But when you become involved with each other, you immediately become defensive. You immediately become self-protective. And those are the places, those are the times where the practice of the two-step is essential—where, instead of spontaneously responding with old habits, you stop, you hesitate, (that’s the first step of the two-step) and you ask, you enquire. You say, “Father” or you say, “Holy Spirit” or you say, “That which is nothing more than my right Mind, what needs to be known here? What is the next step? What is the appropriate response? What allows me to be out from the excellence that is in the middle of me? What allows excellence to manifest in my relationships where I feel a spontaneous call for self-defense or at least a readiness for self-protection?”

Because you tend to feel unsafe with each other, you tend to forget that you’re not an orphan. You tend to forget that you do not have to be with your brothers or sisters alone, autonomously. These are the times to remember to bring God along with you. What does that mean? Does that mean that you’re going to have the power of the Universe standing with you and behind you in anything you do? No. [chuckles] It means that you are willing to be present in a situation or in the relationship without claiming private autonomous status, which includes a feeling of vulnerability and habits of self-protection.

It means being willing to stand with your brother knowing or remembering who you Are by remembering to let God be Present with you. By letting God be Present with you, you are saying, “I am the Son or Daughter of God. I am not an orphan. I am not here alone. And it’s not only my Birthright but it’s my very nature to behave in a manner that will, in biblical terms, glorify God,” which means, that will identify the perfection of Being in this circumstance or in this relationship that will manifest as healing, if healing is called for.

You see? That’s what it means to go into relationship with God. It means to be present with the willingness to let your mind be free of your misperceptions, to let your mind be free of your theories and your confidences about how things work that you have made up. It means being willing to be in the circumstance or in the relationship with innocence—fresh awareness—fresh eyes, a capacity to see what is truly Present and not get sidetracked by what you believe is present.

Being … Being Itself is orderly. Its order escapes you when you operate on the basis of a belief that existence—life—is polarized and is in a constant state of tension, where the two poles constantly pull against each other almost in an attempt to undo each other so there is, what could be called, a constant battle.

But it isn’t true. That is not the way Being is. And so, everything that we’re talking about, everything that we have been talking about is to be brought into play right in the places where, out of habit, you are not inclined to let go of the attempt to establish order by hesitating and then refusing to act autonomously as though you had an actual capacity to act separate from your Source. You see?

And so, in a sense it’s not easy. As you go through your day, you go through all the situations which call into play your well-established habits of self-protection and you forget that you don’t have to play out those habits. You don’t have to play out those habits and thereby incarcerate yourself in all of the emotions and all of the assumptions that automatically come into play that bind you and convince you that your bondage is legitimate.

Bondage … I’m not talking about being tied up. I’m talking about becoming so preoccupied with your habits, so enamored of them, that you forget that they are just patterns of behavior that you don’t have to engage in, patterns that could be replaced by other patterns or could be replaced by your letting yourself into the patternlessness of Being that doesn’t function on the basis of patterns but functions on the basis of the movement of creativity, which arises out of purity, which causes what comes forth to be absolutely and forever original. That’s what it means.

Waking up is a matter of cutting through habits, remembering that you don’t have to go down this road—this pattern—that you’ve gone down so many times before. And not only can you be free of that pattern, you can be free, like I said, of all of the associated thoughts and feelings that seem to confirm the rightness of your being on that path, going through that habit again and again and again.

Now, I’m going to back up a little. I’m going to back up a whole paragraph.

That would describe your days wouldn’t it? Moments of lucidity and moments of insanity. And more moments of insanity than lucidity. And it’s confusing.

Why? Well …

And that’s the thing that’s difficult to grasp. That’s the thing you don’t really want to grasp because you think that if you grasp it and behave according to what it means, you will become vulnerable.

But again…

In other words, it isn’t actually the answer to the problem.

You see, if you’re going to establish order, you have to have a context of measurement so that you can easily determine what order is and what chaos is.

Now, if order is the nature of Being Itself, then it is absolute and all inclusive and there cannot be gradations of any sort from chaos to order. So, if you have some sort of a measuring stick that you’re using, that you’re applying to a situation in order to bring correction to the situation and establish order, you are having to use a measuring system that you have made up out of whole cloth, out of pure imagination that actually bears no relevance whatsoever to Being Itself—the state of existing.

Can you see that if you’re using something to establish order that bears no relevance whatsoever to anything actual, you’re accomplishing nothing? You are engaging in something that is not the answer. And that’s the thing that needs to be realized, that nobody wants to realize and yet it is what will bring you the relief—the Awakening—the Atonement that you wish.

So …

True. You have no basis AT ALL … AT ALL for ordering your thoughts. It’s a useless expenditure of energy. It’s one of those things, that after you wake up you will discover never happened.

Again …

Now, the Holy Spirit teaches you this lesson. It is Its task to reveal to you those things which have no part in you, actually. Those things which are valueless and useless and your realization of their valuelessness and uselessness will be what will allow you to release them, to let them go and not practice them anymore. But you will have to be willing to listen to make the lesson easier. That’s the key.

If you want the lesson to be easier, if you want to learn more gracefully, then invite the education. Don’t force the education by kicking against the pricks. Don’t force the education by doing something that is inevitably going to be uncomfortable. Because one way or another, you have to come to the realization that doing what doesn’t work is useless. And uncomfortableness conveys that message real well.

The only thing is, that many of you are bull-headed. And when you have this learning presented to you, that what you’re doing doesn’t work and it’s causing discomfort, you say, “Ah-h, here is my opportunity to prove my strength, here is the opportunity for me to exercise my control more efficiently than I have been so that I can overcome the discomfort because of course, the discomfort shouldn’t be present at all, it’s just there to provide me with the opportunity to exercise my authority better. It’s giving me the practice I need to get over this hurdle—this limitation of not seeming to be able to do this [chuckling] without being uncomfortable. You see?

The same response to every call that is a miracle, is simply you doing the two-step, or having done the two-step, where you hesitate. You don’t spontaneously act based upon old habits and confidences based from the past and an assessment of the situation using this measuring system to determine the difference between order and chaos and what degree of control it will take to bring it into the realm of order.

No, the miracle is what happens when you hesitate and do not act without joining, without saying, “Father, what needs to be known here?” “Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than my right Mind—what’s the reality here, because I want my responses to be based upon what is Real and I do not want my responses to be based upon my interpretations (worst or best) or my friends’ interpretations (worst or best).”

The miracle is the response that comes from the direct experience of truth. And so, rather than there being a declarative exercise of control, there may well be a gasp of awe or its equivalent—something so unexpected, something so out of context with the current mindset of the one having a problem, or the situation that’s presenting itself, and even your own spontaneous assessments. It will be so different that it will catch you off guard and you will unavoidably abandon your habitual response and joy in the truth that you experience.

Does this mean that in the parking lot at the grocery store, where the call came, there will be choirs of angels and hosannas and trumpets and fan-fare? No, not likely. It’s more likely to be a shift: A shift of momentum, a shift of attitude, a shift of behavior, a shift of feeling where everything turns right, where everything just melts into an awareness of perfection and everyone moves on from that moment blessed by it, carrying forward with them the blessing.

Again …

What is it? It’s a call for the two-step. It’s a call for checking in with God. It’s a call for saying, “What’s really going on here? What of the Kingdom of Heaven is happening right here in front of me, aside from what I think it is?”

So …

Whether it seems to be louder or greater or more important or less important, it’s just a call for the two-step.

See, [chuckling] the ego always wants to spontaneously and immediately make it very complicated, “Well, answer me this, how can I who am still bound to judgment be asked to do that which requires no judgment of my own? I would like to know the answer to that.” See … could take a day or two or ten thousand years to get a satisfactory answer. But that’s not the answer.

Insulting isn’t it? You see, the love of establishing order in your world and doing it in a way that blesses everyone so fantastically that you become the greatest figure in history, this type of mindset finds it difficult to find value in experiencing order and harmony that is utterly profound, that wasn’t at your hand, that occurred because, you might say, you let someone else do it. You let God do it. And you were willing to say, “God I acknowledge what the source of the Movement of Being is, and it’s not me. And that’s okay with me.”

I’m going to read this again:

See, not that you have the power of you in you, but you have the power of God in you. Why? Because you’ve abandoned orphanhood. You’ve reneged on your divorce from the Father. You’re no longer saying, “But Father, I’d rather see it my way. But Father, I’d rather do it my way. And I’m going to.”

It’s the witness to the fact that you did the two-step. It’s the witness to the fact that you did the two-step in the hardware store. It’s the fact that you did the two-step on the freeway, while you were driving on the freeway. It’s the fact that you did the two-step when your wife said something unkind to you. It’s the fact that you did the two-step when you felt like being short-tempered and justified in expressing yourself that way.

Who would withhold the blessing of a miracle? Who would be using a measuring stick to say, “You deserve a miracle. You don’t quite deserve a miracle yet, but check back with me tomorrow.” You see.

When the two-step happens, what follows is inevitable, what follows is spontaneous, and what follows is always the same. It is a response that arises out of a direct experience of Reality, whether unreality seemed to be presenting itself or not and calling for a different response than the two-step.

… except when it isn’t given.

… unless in the movement of the giving of it, you say, “Hell no, I’m not going to do anything for him, he doesn’t deserve it!” And what you’re saying is—regardless of the him that doesn’t deserve it—you perceive “that him” as not deserving it, you perceive him as having violated in some way this code that you use to determine whether something is chaotic or orderly, whether it is acceptable or unacceptable. And so you’re going to be God in reverse of God, because God always gives help, you might say, and you playing God, always withhold help.

Hey, if you’d rather see things your own way and you get a divorce from the Father, then your behavior is going to automatically be unlike the Father. Well, all it could be, would be to be the denial of the Father.

Now mind you, keep in mind that the only thing that would keep you from making the gift of love—which it is your function to do—would be that through your thinking you have determined that something other than that is appropriate. And so your thinking stands as the culprit that obscures truth, that obscures God from you and through you.

Now either you are stuck in a quagmire of stupidity and you’re going to continue to suffer from it, or you’re not actually stuck in it, and it’s a matter of choice that you’re in it. And you can make a different choice. And I’m calling for you to make a different choice. The Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—is calling for you to make another choice. And it’s calling for you to make the choice right in the middle of your very mundane daily activities and involvements with each other, all of which would seem to call forth habituated responses. How can I say that? Because your responses that you habitually give to each other are not the same responses that Joe across the table from you gives, or Mary down the street.

All of you are responding to your circumstances from the paradigm you grew up in—the family attitudes, the family values. All of you started somewhere, learning. And even if you have managed to shake off a lot of whatever the training was, so that you weren’t responding to life automatically, but as a result of truly being connected with life… the point is, that no matter how much of what you learned has been shaken off and released. You, until you are awake and totally free of these mental and emotional habits, are still bound by them. And you are living out your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents family-established values and systems, together with what the pressures of society have added.

The establishment of order is, at the bottom line, what all of this training and teaching that you got from your family and society … again, the point is that what you’ve learned is not of value in waking up, because your allegiance is with the source of your training, which leaves God out. Oh, there may be religious training that came along with the family and God isn’t left out of that. And there is an understanding of God. And there is a learned behavior toward God and learned attitudes about how to get into heaven after this life and so on. But it’s still all conceptual. It’s still like book learning.

It’s like someone learning how to drive a car. And having found that in order to make a left turn in the car she was in, or he was in, you turn the wheel two and a half times to make a left turn—a ninety degree angle. And so, that person gets into another car that has a different steering ratio, gear ratio in the steering system, and they go to make a left turn and do it two and a half turns and they run into the fire hydrant because they weren’t turning the wheel with a connection to the actual environment. They weren’t turning the wheel because they were experiencing a living relationship with what was present. They were having a relationship with an idea about how many turns of the wheel it takes to make a car turn ninety degrees to the left. You see?

When you’re responding to your day with the theories and the feelings and the emotions and the values of generations past, it’s not you being connected with your brother now. It’s not you being connected with your environment now. And I’m going to carry it beyond just the human sense of a relationship with someone or an environment. You are not responding with an inquisitiveness to see and have a clearer experience of the kingdom of heaven right now, in the environment, in what you call the environment. You see?

Now the call is to break these habits—these habits, by means of which you try to establish order over chaos.

I’m going back. It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering your thoughts. It may be hard, but it’s not impossible. And it’s what’s got to happen. And it’s the whole point. And you do it by engaging in the two-step—hesitate before you act out of habit, hesitate before you try to establish order in a situation that doesn’t call for order because if you will look at the situation with innocent eyes, innocent of your family values, and your family training, and societies training, you will be able to see the Kingdom of Heaven there in all of its profoundness and have an awe experience, which causes your behavior to be entirely different. Why? Because you’re in touch with what’s really going on and not trying to work on automatic.

A perceived lack, which is called a need, is always answered. Why? Because the lack is a perception. The lack is a misunderstanding of something that is whole. And when the misunderstanding is abandoned, when it is devalued, it no longer blocks the experience of the wholeness that was there all along. That’s why …

Now, as you proceed through this week, I am going to encourage each and everyone of you to be more diligent to bring into play what we’re talking about more consistently. To truly recognize that it’s right in the middle of your active daily relationships, that the abandonment of the attempt to create order must occur. You must dare to abandon the automatic establishment of order, which really means the automatic establishment of self-protection and not love. That’s exactly when it’s called for. A miracle is called for exactly in the place where a miracle isn’t happening. And usually the place where a miracle isn’t happening is a place no one wants to be. Which is why everyone immediately brings into play the exercise of control for the purpose of establishing order, because everyone knows that order couldn’t possibly simply happen.

I’m going to tell you that it’s the constant practice of establishing order where order doesn’t need to be established that chaos is created. And waking up amounts to the abandoning of what creates chaos. And it can be scary as hell. Because in the abandonment of the personal exercise of control, your habit is to believe that you will truly be vulnerable. And you’ve got to dare to find out that it’s not true. Because that’s where the joy awaits you, in not the realization that it’s not true, but the experience of the fact that it’s not true.

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