Teachings of Christ Mind

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

“Our Father … Our Father.” That sort of undoes isolation right there, right?

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done” … where? “On Earth, as it is in Heaven.”¹

That’s another way of talking about translating radical idealism into practical realism. You see? It’s not such a novel idea, after all. But it does stimulate the words, “translating radical idealism into practical realism,” … does render the meaning more meaningful. It stimulates a higher and greater expectation than the words “Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” And it’s important for you to have words to use that stimulate you further than you have been stimulated in the past.

Now I know that this last week some of you did pay attention, not so much to how many times you were open to and conscious of a need for things to be translated from radical idealism to practical realism, and I’m aware that there are of those of you who didn’t even think about it, not really because you were neglectful but because your daily experience engrossed you quickly and got your attention and sucked you in. And you just began to deal with your week out of habit with whatever degree of authority you have brought into play in your life. And actually, it’s right now, as I’m talking to you, that you’re realizing that you missed out on a dimension of your week that you could’ve had.

I’m not scolding you in any way. I understand completely. But this week I’m going to give you the same task, if you will. This week I’m going to ask you to put a note on your refrigerator, or on the wall beside your toilet, or on the dashboard of your car, or on the inside of your appointment book. Put a note to remind yourself because it is going to make a difference if you take the time, many times a day, to look at whatever is going on and acknowledge that there’s more going on than the meanings you’ve applied to everything that’s happening.

There are things going on that are radically ideal. There are things going on that are the Kingdom of Heaven in action because there really is nothing else in action at any given moment. And so, there is something radically ideal right there in front of you at any given moment for you to be experiencing clearly without distortion, without distraction.

Now, guilt and fear and frustration and anger, these are all well-established habits that you’re going to have to break.

You’re going to have to break them because it’s time to Wake up. It’s time not to be ignorant of the truth. It’s time to no longer be suffering from ignorance.

“Oh, gee, I’m not suffering from ignorance. I’m doing quite well, you know. Things happen in my life. I cope with them well. I cope with them intelligently. And as a general rule, I always come out on top and everyone around me is blessed in some way as a result of the principled way in which I handle things and the value I give to principle and love and beneficence, and the fact that I expect to see those things surface and manifest in my life and in the lives of those around me.”

But you know what? You can’t afford to be too pleased with yourselves.

Now why do I say that? I say that because if you are too satisfied with yourselves, if you are too comfortable, you will have a lower level of curiosity that you bring to every moment of your being conscious. And, with a lower level of curiosity, there’s no way you’re going to have the experience of radical idealism being translated into practical realism that is, for lack of better words, miraculous, indicative of the Presence of God, indicative of the Kingdom of Heaven instead of material existence as you’ve been viewing it.

None of you realizes the extent to which that which is less than the best, that which is less than optimal, is valued—and pleasure is gotten from valuing it.

For example: Ignorance instead of omniscience. Omniscience is to know everything. Ignorance is to not know everything … but what? Instead of not knowing everything and being uncomfortable and insisting upon getting back to your Birthright, which is omniscience … what happens? You look at ignorance and you say, “Ah-h, this means there is much for me to discover. Why, I could discover things that will change life on earth. I could be another Galileo. I could be another Newton. I could be another Einstein.”

You find great value in the presence of ignorance because it implies the opportunity for discovery. And you value discovery. You value discovery, why? Because it’s exciting to be involved in discovery. It invigorates anyone who’s discovering something for the first time, even if it’s coming over the crest of the hill and seeing a view that you’ve never seen before.

Besides it being invigorating, if you are the discoverer, you get credit for the discovery and you might get appreciation, and people might value you for it. And at the bottom line, this contributes to your becoming a “real boy” or a “real girl” you see, as opposed to just an orphan.

So who would really want to experience omniscience if it takes away the excitement of discovery, the satisfaction of being the one that discovered it—the ego satisfaction of being the one who discovered it—and if you’re going to lose the admiration of your fellowman, and if you’re going to lose the opportunity to have far reaching benefits to your fellowman? Who would give up such valuable stuff in order to be omniscience, in order to know everything and have no questions? You see. In other words, who would really want to be Awake?

So you value ignorance more than you value being Awake. And as a result, you will not bring into play the curiosity that is appropriate.

You see, things are a hundred and eighty degrees out of sync. You value things. You value ignorance. You value being in the dark. You value being an orphan, because of all the potentials for expansion that it provides you.

But I want to bring out something here: If you were to say, “Our Father Who art in Heaven,” if you would reach out, not just to “a God,” but your Father, and you joined with Him and you let His Perspective fill you because it is your native perspective, because you are His Creation, you won’t need to engage in discovery for your sake, because you will stand with the Father in the holy instant, the instant of Creation. And in that experience of the holy instant, Being is Itself, the action of discovery. Creation is the discovery of that which hasn’t been before.

You think you’re going to lose the capacity to discover things that will make you substantial and important and valuable? No. You’re going to stand in the midst of Creation, involved in the conscious Movement of Creation, by not having a mind held separate from the Father so that you experience the Movement of Being—which is called Creation—with the Father and find yourself at Home … find yourself at Home.

Now that’s the Reality. That’s the radically ideal translated into the practically real for you, when you indulge in and practice the holy instant and you become free of the bondage—the addiction to trying to make a “real boy” or “real girl” out of yourself by valuing ignorance and the overcoming of it.

Now there are many other areas, all of which subtly affect you or not so subtly affect you, and which you practice consciously or unconsciously. For example: Mortality is profitable. Mortality is a big money-maker.

What about life insurance—strange name for it—when it’s “death insurance?” It guarantees a benefit that you will receive when you die. So you get a benefit … well not really … everyone else you love gets a benefit when you die. But in the meantime, your insurance agent gets a benefit for getting you to buy death insurance. The life insurance companies are benefitted and they become part of the engine of the economy of the country, or the world.

If you are a senior citizen—or even if you’re not—and you have a wife and family and you find out you have a terminal illness, and the terminal illness is the result of some sort of abuse that you were the recipient of through employment, let’s say, you can sue the company and make money because of your mortality. And as I’ve brought out before, in many cases the trial goes on and on and on, and as long as it goes on, you cannot afford to have a healing because then you will lose the justification for the benefit.

All upside down, backward thinking. Ah-h … you can even become so sick, as we talked about last week and the week before—demented, confused—that you could come to the conclusion that you’re more valuable to your spouse dead than alive: “Don’t you dare keep a life support system going and eat up all of our savings. I want you to have all the funds available to you that you’re going to need. Don’t you dare keep that plug in. I’m more valuable to you gone, than still here.”

You see, I’m going to say … is that not sick? But I know that there are those of you who will hear what I’m saying and know that I’m not comprehending the reality of the situation. I can appreciate that also.

What I’m trying to point out is, that you have made accommodations for something you shouldn’t be suffering from: Mortality. And you need to stop doing it automatically, unthinkingly, without question!

Oh, you hear mothers say to their children, or their husbands or wives, “You’re going to be the death of me yet!” You’ve heard the statement, “Think to be heard of God and speak to be heard of men.”

You know what? Almost always, guilt is used for two reasons: To make someone feel guilty so that you can control them, or, and, to make points because you are sacrificing on the behalf of someone else—you are doing something that they don’t deserve and therefore, you’re making points with God.

“You’ll be the death of me yet!” which is the curse: “Speak to be heard of men,” but it’s simultaneously in the mind … it says, “Thank you God, you’ll be the death of me yet, thank God,” because if you’re a martyr, you may get to sit at the right hand of God. You may be turned into a saint. You see?

It’s sick.

There’s another way to be. And that’s what we’re talking about week after week. Another way to be means, Be-ing a different way, not just thinking a different way. It means breaking habits! Are you to feel guilty because you have the habits? No, because you’ve been taught to have them. You didn’t have anyone to train you or provide you with a different perspective.

Now a different perspective is being provided. And in the process you’re finding out that you’re doing things that are not practical, that are not helpful, that are sick, that exhibit insanity. But these things aren’t shared with you without equal attention being given to the fact that you have an innate, capital ‘S,’ divine Sanity that could never be taken away from you and therefore, is still present right where you are being the activity of consciousness, or of conscious Being that constitutes existence.

You’re being told that there is a different perspective that is available to you if you can break the habit of spontaneously and habitually repeating the past.

Now, the holy instant is the threshold of escaping the past. It’s the threshold of escaping the habits. It’s the threshold of your placing your attention in a new place: In the Father or Source you didn’t think you had that gives you an Identity that you didn’t know you had.

Now we talked last week about the fact that guilt and fear ongoingly cause frustration, which ultimately cause you to take action because of the discomfort of it. And the action you take is expression of anger.

Again, I need to say that no matter how good your life is going, if you’re not Awake at this moment, you’re still in the realm of anger and its practice, even if it’s only very subtle. And that’s why I say, don’t become too self-satisfied, because the use of anger must come to a stop and it won’t if there is no conscientious effort made.

Now continuing from where we left off:

… meaning the relationships where anger are used for control and where ignorance and mortality are used to supply meaning to life.

The use of anger for control works and so you use it. It’s attractive to you. Whatever is attractive to you, whatever you find useful, draws to you those things that will bring it into play. It’s that simple.

So you have to find something new that’s attractive … like, “What’s the truth here? What is the conscious experience of what is really going on that it’s my Birthright to be experiencing even though I’m not. Father, please reveal it to me, You have my attention, the truth has my attention.”

And we’re talking about special relationships. Special relationships are usury relationships. They are relationships used to get you what you want. And of course, the other one in the relationship is going to be doing the same thing. And so a healthy relationship is one in which you each let each other have what he wants, or she wants, without sacrificing what you think your integrity is.

And so it’s a game. It’s a mutual manipulation, “You stroke my back, I’ll stroke yours, without my ever getting to know you and without your ever getting to know me and without our ever being real with each other.”

“My family will be the death of me yet. By God that one needs that family to be the death of her or the death of him yet because of the kudos—the gold stars—that will be gotten for having endured.” You see.

We talked about the fact last week that everybody thinks the ax is going to fall, everyone thinks he or she is guilty and that sooner or later their guilt will be found out or will be manifested in some sort of lack or bad luck as though karma is being played out. Again, another way of justifying sick thinking.

And what happens when you demand of the other that he sacrifice as well? The other does sacrifice as well, because he was expecting the ax to fall—he found the idea of axes falling, attractive. And thus, when an ax falls, it’s expected and not contradicted, not resisted, not rejected. “Of course the ax fell. It was going to sooner or later. Things couldn’t go smoothly indefinitely.”

How many of you have had that very thought at one point or another? Really, every single one of you has. If things have gone well, you know, it’s like, “Well when is …” (another saying) “When is the other shoe going to drop?” You see.

Now guilt is a wonderful leverage, if you can convince the other one that he’s actually guilty. If you can get the other one to believe that he is guilty or if you can find one who’s willing to believe he’s guilty before you even tell him what he’s guilty for, you have a good stooge—you have a good controlee. And as long as guilt is in place, you have a solid relationship with that one. That one, if you have the goods on him, is not going to do anything to cross you. And so you have a “bonded relationship,” one in which he is in bondage to you. You see?

… which would be the opposite of holding one guilty …

“Why, if I forgive him, [chuckles] he won’t stick around. He won’t be my friend. I’m nobody for anybody to be a friend to. Nobody likes me. Nobody will like me. So if I want to have someone in relationship with me, the only way I can do it is to find a way to make him or her guilty and then convince them that it’s their pleasure to pleasure me—to take care of me, to do what I need in exchange for which I will praise them, but not without holding them to their guilt, you see.

Again …

Now, all of you to one degree or another do employ these tactics. You may not be a beginner in your Awakening and you may not be employing these practices with the diligence or the commitment that you used to, but you must be persistent enough to arrive at a point where you’re neglecting to employ these in any way, shape or form. And that’s what the holy instant is for.

Again …

Remember, we talked about the mind being the place where you can be private, where communication doesn’t occur and that the use of bodies is where communication occurs. Again, a hundred and eighty degrees out of sync.

… to the ego …

See, the only place in which ideas are given a context, an evaluation of such as good or bad, is how effectively those ideas cause bodies to behave together and communicate. And by means of that communication, accomplish the bondage that’s called a loving relationship, a constructive relationship, a good business relationship, etc.

I’m going to ask a straightforward question and I would like each of you in your mind to give the straightforward answer.

Are you loveable?

Or do you have to develop and use skills, whether constructive or destructive, to get people to pay attention to you, to be with you, to involve themselves with you?

Now the question was to you: Are you loveable? Which means, do you believe you are loveable. Do you experience yourself as loveable? The question wasn’t, do other people think you’re loveable. Be very clear about that. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks!

To you, are you loveable? Are you in your own appraisal of yourself, your own experience of yourself, are you worthy of anyone else’s genuine fulfilling attention and affection and friendship?

I know sometimes you feel that you are, and sometimes you feel that you aren’t. But in all cases, the way you see yourself is going to absolutely govern the way you present yourself and are present with others. And the way you present yourself will elicit responses.

What is the holy instant for? The holy instant is for the experience of communication with your Father or, I’m going to say, communication with the Holy Spirit, which is nothing more than your right Mind. And in that communication, experiencing what you Are and who you Are—the truth about you, so that you’re not confused about you and you’re not publishing your confusion about yourself, so that when you’re asked, “Are you loveable?” there’s no question about it, “Of course.” Except when you say, “Of course,” it’s like the universe standing with you, sings in chorus with you… “Of course …”

Again …

According to the up-side-down, backward thinking of the ego, the orphan.

Right now you think you have a thought in your mind and no one else is there. In your mind you think everyone else is “gone.” You see. But in the up-side-down, backward thinking …

… your brother …

… your brother …

In other words, in the realm of bodies he would be gone just like in the realm of the mind you think others are gone. But a shift occurs when you stop identifying yourself as a body and instead, allow your mind to register with you as that context in which the experience of bodies and all forms is occurring. Then the presence of others doesn’t seem to be gone … don’t seem to be gone … others don’t seem to be gone any longer and mind no longer seems to be private.

You are going to have to arrive at a point where you let your brothers go, where you release them from your control of the presence of their bodies in your experience, so that they will stay there and so that they will appear to be a wonderful community, family, whatever you want to call it—a social group that validates every member of the group by its groupness.

Body identification is one of the habits that needs to be broken. And it will be broken when your attention and curiosity shifts from body and what bodies can cause to happen, to Mind.

Idea … ideal … ideals are mental … ideas are mindful. Radical idealism is Mind, is mindful. When you shift from body identification to mind identification, you begin to see radical idealism being translated into practical realism, which means your every experience … now … now … now … today … here … here … here. You see.

It isn’t until you let go of the control of your brothers’ bodies through the use of guilt, that you will find your brothers and sisters to be ever present with you in full communication, because all of you are, for lack of better words, the Father’s Mind Knowing every aspect of Itself. Just as abandoning ignorance and the opportunity that it seems to provide for discovery, just as that puts you in the position of standing at the threshold of Creation, which is Itself infinite discovery forever, your abandonment of your brother as body and a thing to control by the use of body, which your ego says will constitute a disappearance of your brother, will constitute a replacement in which you experience your brothers and sisters infinitely—all at once, with full comprehension and full meaning, full communion, full brotherhood.

And so, what it appears that you will lose is miniscule, is very unsatisfying by comparison with what will replace it … as radical idealism is translated into practical realism.

I’m going to end tonight by simply reading the next sentence. It sounds like an indictment in a way, it sounds very negative. But what we’ve talked about has brought it into focus. I’ll talk about it next week. But right now I want you to be willing to sit with it this week, because you know what? It makes the practice of unintelligence unattractive. And I’ve shared enough with you for you to know that there is something to replace it. And I want you to be with this so that you can see the unattractiveness and not want it anymore.

We’re reading about and considering the holy instant and communication. It’s like the holy instant and the answer. We’re discussing what the holy instant is the answer to. Don’t gloss it over. I want all of you to understand completely what the holy instant and communication is the answer to, so that you might appreciate it fully, comprehend it fully, embrace it uninhibitedly.

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