Teachings of Christ Mind

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

We’re reading from a section called, “The Reward of Teaching.” What do you think the reward of teaching is?

The reward of teaching is joy. And you might say, “Joy for whom?” Joy for the teacher. And why does the teacher experience joy? Because the student has learned. The teacher teaches, the student learns. Light-bulbs go on. Acknowledgment occurs. Acknowledgment of what was being taught. And that light of recognition where there had been darkness before—ignorance before, you could say—makes it worth everything that the teacher had to do to cause the illumination to happen.

The student gives the teacher joy by confirming the teacher’s function—that the teacher’s function was successful.

Now, how is it that the student learned? The only way the student learned was by virtue of his or her abandoning resistance to the Knowing. Abandoning resistance to what’s being illuminated—letting it in. The student learns by listening. Simple. The two-step: One hesitates, one enquires, “What is the truth here?” and one listens.

And if one listens without resistance, without reluctance, revealing occurs. The light-bulb goes on and the student has learned. And what happens? He experiences awe, he experiences joy and that is what he teaches—that is what he is teaching. I’m going to put it this way: That is what he finds himself teaching.

It’s not a plan. The student didn’t say, “I’m going to consider very carefully here what my teacher is saying, so that I might grasp it’s full meaning and have an ‘ah-ha’ experience so that I might light up with the biggest smile that has ever crossed my face so that my teacher may know that he or she has succeeded.”

No. That’s not teaching. No, when the learning actually occurs and the joy is felt, the experience of joy and the act of joy that happens spontaneously becomes the teaching.

If the teacher is having a bad day that day, he or she may not notice it and may not experience the joy. But the point is, that the teaching has occurred. And the biggest point is that the teaching wasn’t planned. The teaching wasn’t calculated. The teaching wasn’t something that the student was trying to do.

What am I trying to say here? I’m trying to say that because everyone is emerging from the orphan mentality where life is a matter of doing things that cause credibility to be associated with the orphan, then there is going to be an automatic assumption that when I said, “Listen, learn and do,” that the doing will be something planned, the doing will be something calculated and methodical toward a certain end, not an uncertain end. And yet, the doing—the only doing that means anything and is the meaning embodied in that statement, “Listen, learn and do,”—is the spontaneous lighting up of your Being, the uncalculated expression of awe. That’s the doing.

Well that isn’t quite so satisfying to the orphan mentality. That isn’t quite so satisfying to the ego. Because of course, if the meaningful teaching is going to occur spontaneously without any plan, without any form of control being exercised, there’s not going to be anyone present to take credit for it and to be justified as a credible, valuable individuality, which is of course, as we’ve been discussing, the whole point of life for the ego.

Now, if I say, “You don’t know who you Are … you don’t Know who you Are,” you’re likely to say, “Well, who the hell does he think he is telling me I don’t know who I am? Of course I know who I am. I can show you my credentials, my pedigree, as it were.”

But now let me say it a different way: “You don’t Know who you Are … you holy Son of God … you holy Daughter of God.”

“… Oh, that’s what you’re talking about … um-m … well, that’s nice talk and well… what if I am the holy Son of God, really. You know, maybe I am, but I’m not going to explore the possibility, I’m not going to try to find out that it’s really true and actually let myself be changed so that my actions embody my holiness and make it obvious.” You see?

The very fact that you would be reluctant to embrace It demonstrates the fact that you do not know who you Are. And yet, I must tell you that you are not the orphan you think you are. You are not the independent agent you think you are. And you are not just a happenstance—a fluke a nature—something that just popped up out of nowhere because of a sperm and a egg, that will live for a time and wither and die, never to be seen again.

Someone has to tell you that you are a holy Son of God or a holy Daughter of God, and do it so persistently and so matter of factly that you will finally decide to let go of your resistance—like the student, to learn … to learn something new … to be changed by the learning. I must do it.

You are … you are, right now, the Presence of God. You are right now what God is Being … I’m going to say, right where you are. Even more appropriately, you are right now that Mind, that conscious awareness which is inseparable from God—not different from God—including all that God knows, and therefore, all that God is, you Are. You and your Father are One. And God is that One. Your Father is that One.

Now, the biggest learning that is occurring right now, the main lesson that’s being taught right now is, that it is your function to be a teacher—a teacher who fulfills his capacity as a teacher—by being the student, by listening humbly and with uninhibited curiosity. Why? So that you might be filled with what God is filling … being with, that is called Creation. So that you might stand in awe of It and so that your joy at the experience of It lights up your Being and teaches everyone else while everyone else finds themselves also teaching involuntarily the conscious experience of what God is Being that they are having … that they’re having. Why? Because they have neglected to hold themselves apart, trying to be independent, trying to have their own ideas, trying to have their own agendas.

Your function as a co-creator with God is to be that presence of Mind which is undefended—not side-tracked by agendas of its own—which stands ready to see what God is going to do next, so that whatever the expression of awe is that comes out at that moment because of the experience of Creation that is being had, will become the teaching that everyone learns from, while at the same time being the joy that one could say is heard as the music of the spheres—universal harmony, the full expression of joy and love.

Now, I realize I’m speaking in very grand, large terms. But all of this is encapsulated in the idea of the two-step.

So you want to be a teacher … so you want to be a do-er? Then become receptive. Become not masculine and assertive, but feminine and undefended and receptive and inviting of life.

Be willing to be a humiliated orphan. And in the absence of any capacity to take credit for anything worthwhile, be the womb in which Creation occurs. You’re not being the place that causes Creation, but you are being the place where you allow Creation. And by virtue of the allowing, experience it in its totality with the fullness of Meaning that God is Being in it.

What you find yourself experiencing and acknowledging is you, for lack of better words, creating your recognition of God there … there … there, is your creation. It is your part in Creation.

God unrecognized is non-existent.

Now, what happens if you decide to do something all by yourself? If you decide to play, “Let’s pretend I am going to be an authority. I’m going to pretend that I can create things on my own. I’m going to stop fulfilling my function of recognizing God there. I’m going to do things so that I can say I recognize myself there … and I recognize myself there.”

Well, do you think that what you truly Are stops being what it is while you play “Let’s pretend?” You think that while you’re playing Let’s pretend, your pretensions become actual, and what you really Are [chuckle] sort of evaporates? Absolutely not!

And so that’s why it seems like there are two selves. The moment you decided to dally with the ego and an ego-sense of things, all that you truly were—and I’ve said this many times before—became held in trust by the Father until you decided not to play “Let’s pretend” any longer. And this Self, held in trust, has been called the Holy Spirit … the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Now there’s really only the Father Being the Son—the Movement of Creation. But the moment the Son decided to play “Let’s pretend” and ignore what he really Was … ah-h … at that point the Father made a Gift. That’s the simplest way of putting it. The Gift was that your divinity—your holiness—was held in trust, untouched by your imagination, and it was called the Holy Spirit. And so, there’s the holy trinity.

The moment you remember who you Are, the moment you stop resisting the conscious experience of who you Are, the moment you become a true teacher by being a forever student, it will no longer be the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It will be the Father, Who’s Son is that which acknowledges and recognizes his Source: The Father, in all of Creation. And although this is not accurate, it’s the Son’s place to put his seal of approval on the Father’s Act of Creation. And that’s what makes Creation Real. Everything you put your seal of approval on is your creation—your confirmation of what it truly is. And your recognition of the Father in each and every thing is essential to Heaven, essential to Reality.

Now, how many of you since we last gathered two weeks ago, did spend time doing the two-step more frequently than you had before?

And I’m going to ask two things: How many of you, if you’re being honest, found that you didn’t really like the idea? How many of you found you still resisted it? You did it but you did it with your teeth set on edge. You did it but you’d rather not have done it.

Now, it’s good to know that. Because most everybody thinks they would love to be enlightened, that they would love to be Awake—that Salvation would come for them. But the fact is, there’s much resistance to it. And the reason there’s resistance to it is this need for a fix of self-importance.

So what’s the learning in this? That you found that you were willing to do it but you surprisingly enough, weren’t happy about it.

The learning in it is, that you’re going to have to be determined. You’re going to have to persist in the face of a conditioned reluctance. And you’re going to have to persist because the conditioned reluctance which you think is going to save your credibility for you, is actually going to deny your experience of your holiness—of who you truly Are as the holy Son of God and not an orphan and not a fluke of nature.

You’re going to have to persist.

I encourage you not to waste energy fussing about it—grousing about it! It will just take your energy away. And all you have to say is, “I’m not going to do that. I don’t have to react here. I don’t have to be upset about this. All I need to do is keep moving forward in the face of the suggestion that I’m going to lose something essential to my being, because that suggestion, that I’m going to lose something essential to my being, is a lie.

This takes practice. This takes self-discipline.

Now, how many of you in the last two weeks listened for Guidance and were willing to ask yourselves the question: “How much am I willing to risk? How much am I willing to chance that there’s a God? How much am I willing to risk letting go of, to see if in fact, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand … to see if in fact, a sudden shift of perception occurs that’s called, ‘a Miracle?’”

How much of a risk are you willing to take to see if something incredibly beyond your present sense of things is available for you to experience?

Now, let’s say, that within reason, you said you were willing to do that. And so, you joined in the two-step process and listened. Paul did that starting the day after the last meeting. And we talked more than we had in quite awhile—at least more frequently. And I guided him. When he asked, what was appropriate here? I shared it with him. Not only did I share with him what was appropriate, I shared with him the feeling, the motivation, the energy around carrying out what was appropriate.

This caused him to experience himself as being a little bit more aggressive than he usually is. In some ways, a little bit more pushy in certain circumstances, where it was appropriate to encourage someone else to move across their threshold, to act when they didn’t feel like acting.

Paul tends not to put himself in those kinds of positions. It’s a position best described as involvement.

There were things that it was important for someone to do. And Paul knew it and Paul felt the importance of it although he did not know why it was important. It was just appropriate for him to be the place where the feeling and the ideas were expressed of the appropriateness of taking an action that the other one lacked confidence to follow through on.

Now, one might say, “Did Paul have a problem with that?” Or “Why would Paul have a problem with that?” Well, first of all, that is not his manner. Like I said, he tends to be involved in very uninvolved ways, where coercion very seldom comes into play where he, being a force for movement of some sort, doesn’t happen.

So that caused some uneasiness. But he had said and felt the willingness and the commitment to risking for the sake of his good, for the sake of everything that I’m teaching, and everything that’s coming out of his mouth with all of you. And so he did it. But here’s (and many of you will recognize this) here’s the clincher, the old habit, the engrained habit: He said, (and here was his reluctance, here was his conditioned resistance) “This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing … this isn’t my holy work.”

The smile on his face is as much his as it is mine. He feels the humor of it as fully as I do now. The involvement that he participated in had nothing to do with spirituality. It had to do with a very practical mundane sort of meeting of the need.

“Well, he wasn’t getting the transcript up on the website! Well, he wasn’t contemplating what had been discussed in the last meeting. Well, he wasn’t reading the section of the lesson from the last meeting that I suggested everyone read once a day.”

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to be doing this!”

Now, it’s important to know this. Paul’s not the only one who’s had this experience. Many of you have too. And if you’re not careful, you could find yourself abandoning the two-step entirely so that you can dutifully take care of things you have been conditioned to believe are your actual holy work, even though your holiness is something you’d like to keep quiet.

Now the point is this: The Guidance that you get when you listen, whether it’s from your Guide or from me, is identically the same Guidance you would get from the Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—because we all have the same function, because you all have the same need.

And the need is for you to be reintroduced to and become reacquainted with your Self—the One that Knows the truth, the One that’s held in trust while you dally with the ego.

If you are not willing to do the two-step and enquire, “What is the truth here?” and be, what I would call, “Full open consciousness, totally non-resistive consciousness,” ready to let in truth in its totality, you are not going to be bringing with you any filter or any groove, so to speak, or plan for the truth that you’re going to be receiving to fit into.

If you want to Wake up—which you do—you’re simply going to need to be willing to listen for what you’re not expecting and to listen for that which, for lack of better words, doesn’t add up to the criteria of your orphan-mindset.

Paul went through the week after the last meeting caught up, you might say, in a Movement—the breeze we were talking about, that we have talked about, the Movement of Love, the Movement of Creation. And in allowing himself to be in the flow of It without exercising control based upon previously learned criteria, he behaved in an entirely new way that didn’t make sense to his previous standards. It was utterly original, utterly spontaneous and yet totally genuine.

And this is the kind of experience you will have. It will be unexpected, uncalculated. You will say, “Why am I doing this?” But you will also have the accompanying push, the accompanying support for being perfectly consistent with the Movement so that your behavior is utterly appropriate according to some standard of appropriateness that you haven’t embraced before.

And as a result of Paul doing this, each day right up to the end of the week (last Saturday) when I told Paul we would not hold the meeting, “Oh, I’m not supposed to be doing this I’m supposed to be having A Course In Miracles Study Group, where I let Raj speak.”

Oh really! Your guide would say to your comments of that sort, “Oh really! Oh really? You got God locked into Saturday night doing exactly what you expect to happen? Maybe God will be being you in a different way as part of the Movement of Creation, and maybe in the process of your letting it, your allowing it, you will learn something.”

What did Paul learn? He learned how dedicated he was to his concepts of what is right and what isn’t right, of what fits and what doesn’t fit. And yet had he successfully bound himself to his preconceptions, the numerous miracles that happened during that week would not have happened.

And I’ll tell you something else: When you do the two-step, when you yield and when you let yourself be guided by the Holy Spirit or by me or by your Guide …

Paul: Just a moment.

… you will come to an inner realization of just how futile and foolish and unproductive it is to listen with a bias, to listen with an agenda, or to think that you know how things ought to be.

“Thy will not mine be done.”¹

Now let’s go into the book. And I’m going to back up to the middle of the first sentence of the paragraph.

the Holy Spirit …

God’s …

… the Holy Spirit …

the Holy Spirit …

What was God’s answer to the separation? The Holy Spirit … and it became the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God held in trust all of you while you chose just a little bit of what you are in your Totality and said, “This is me! This is me! This little piece here is me. And everything I believe about this little bit is to do about the way things are.”

So …

mind you, up to that point you were being the Presence that recognizes God in the Movement of Creation. And your recognition of the Movement was your creation—your part of the Creation. It’s that simple.

God …

You see? “Oh no, I’m not the holy Son of God. I’m a human being. I’m a powerful human being.” Or, “I’m a human being and I am going to become a powerful human being.”

the tiny little stuff … the tiny little self-definition …

your creations—all of Creation, in which you had uninhibitedly recognized God IN, before you decided to be an orphan.

Do you see how important this is? There is a Self you do not know. And it is Real and it is actual at this moment while you pretend it isn’t and can define yourself as a physical organism, the result of millions of years of evolution—a physical presence and that’s all.

The Self that consciously participated in the Movement of Creation, fulfilling Its place, is still present … has gone nowhere … is not unconscious of any of Creation. You might say that you’re experiencing a split-mind, in which there is this little self that you made up that you’re giving total credence to, and the Self that you Are that hasn’t changed and is present and functioning fully in Its God-given capacity at this moment.

Do you catch what I’m saying? What I’m saying is, that you seem very sure of who you are. But there is a You that you are not conscious of that is actual and is Real and is united with the Father consciously at this moment and everything about It is insinuating Itself into this tiny self-identification that you’re holding on so tightly to.

We’ve talked before about the fact that you’re accompanied by mighty companions—you’re accompanied by the mighty companion that is your Self right now. It isn’t something you have to grow into. You see? It’s fully present. It’s fully developed. It is Whole right now. And It is loving you. It has been constantly loving you and being an invitation to you to come back into your right Mind. It’s a mighty companion because it’s the Presence of God, you holy Son of God, you holy Daughter of God.

Now, because your orphan mindset is such a habit, you are going to have to develop some discipline and some determination. Because you will find that you won’t necessarily, or life will not necessarily give you time to sit down and meditate your way into the Kingdom of Heaven. You’re going to have to start making the choice to want to know what the truth is here … and here … and here… right in the middle of the stresses and activities of daily life. You’re not going to be able to manage to get a little vacation from life to consider the really important spiritual things. And you’re going to have to not grouse about it and react to it.

It would be nice to be able to sit down and meditate and get into your peace, and a lot of the time you can. But let’s abandon the idea that it’s essential. It is going to become increasingly essential for you to be in the middle of the dramas of life, “listening” so that you might hear the appropriate things to do that identify the miraculous, so that the miraculous can happen. Why? Because you “listened”—you were a student and you learned and you’re being lit up with the recognition of It. And you did, you taught, you were that presence that caused another who is being a student, listening, to learn and become lit up with the truth and rejoice in something that never would have occurred in your daily life if both of you had tried to be dutiful teachers of the truth—the truth that everyone has already known, the truth that’s written down in this book or that book, the positive thinking that everyone has said would make a difference. You see?

Rehearsing the old does not involve learning at all. Rehearsing the old means there’s no student present. There’s someone trying to be a teacher, trying to be a damn good teacher, an effective teacher, so that they might get promoted to be principle of the school.

No learning … no learning and none of the genuine behavior that comes from the humility involved in being a student and the learning that causes the ability to teach without credentials—to teach with the Spirit of God.

Your creations …

See, that’s part of the meaning of being accompanied by mighty companions. You’re accompanied by your creations, which are intent upon re-igniting your awareness of the Presence of God in them that you saw before, which is what caused them to be your creations and which caused you to know Who you Are.

You know, when you’re willing to look at a thing, whether it’s a flower or a clod of dirt or a hang-nail, when you’re willing to look at it in an undefended, innocent manner, you are inviting an experience of illumination, you’re inviting an experience in which whatever it is you’re looking at is seen anew by you, where you’re able to recognize that it’s not just a physical thing but that it’s, for lack of better words, energy. And it’s the energy of Light and the energy of Love and it is divine energy … you holy Son of God … you holy orchid of God … you holy glass tabletop.

And when you experience it as Love, you have the inescapable experience of being loved by It and everything else around it, everything else around you takes on this meaning or you let it in more fully and it expands and you discover that everything that you thought was just matter, is the Presence of God wholly and loving you. You realize how embraced you are by that which is Love, because that’s what Love does, It loves you, It loves everything.

So, this mighty companion, your Self that is always with you, is loving you right now. The integrity of your ultimate Being is present and active right now in this moment. And fortunately, that’s the only other choice you have available to you to experience. Of course you have the choice of the orphan mentality that you are constantly reinforcing. But you only have this one other choice. So it’s not complicated.

You have the choice to shift your consciousness, to shift your attention. You have that capacity. That’s all that’s required. And all you’re doing is shifting your attention from a deluded way of perceiving to the true clear-minded awareness that it’s your Birthright to be experiencing … you holy Son or Daughter of God.

Your creations.

Again, it will seem more and more clear to you at an experiential level that there seem to be two selves in this same place where you are. And you are going to have to make a choice for one or the other … you are making a choice for one or the other right now.

It’s going to seem like that. And that’s why you’re going to have to become determined and disciplined to choose for the Holy Spirit in you, rather than your current mindset. And you’re going to have to constantly ask, “What’s appropriate here? What’s appropriate now?” …regardless of what you think is appropriate.

You’re going to have to care to inquire of Something that Knows beyond your present-limited-perception of things. And what is that going to mean? It’s going to mean that you’re going to have to trust, more than you have ever been willing to trust in your whole life—as you think of your whole life. Because the simple fact is, that in your orphan mentality your distorted perception says that nothing is actually trustworthy. And that is why you must exercise maximal control.

You’re going to have to arrive at a point where you see that that is just a style of being that you have adopted—it isn’t true—so that you might with determination choose to listen for the Voice for God, the Voice for Truth in you now … now … now … now … now … now.

It might mean that you’re going to have a week that never would have happened in your life before and two weeks and a month and a year and an eternity, where you never go back to thinking you know anything and that you are capable of acting on your own.

And I’m going to add: Even though it will seem that you are.

God …

what? …

all of Creation. That’s what that means, all of Creation.

Now this might not seem understandable if we hadn’t talked about the things we’ve talked about tonight.

“Oh, wait a minute, you just said that I am an orphan.” No, you think you are, but right along side this imagination that you’re an independent agent, the Self that you Are has continued to be Itself fully. You’re just blocking it out. So you have taught this. The Self that you Are has taught this uninterruptedly.

What does that mean? It means that all of your creations, which are as far flung as the universe …

Do you see the integrity of Being, and you see how you couldn’t possibly arrive at any other point than Awakening, simply because God is All and nothing else can prevail?

You know what? Nothing else really is prevailing. You just have an imagination that something else is prevailing. And imagination is flimsy, insubstantial.

So your Waking up is not difficult. It’s a matter of where you’re bringing your attention and how consistently you’re keeping your attention there.

the gratitude of your creations …

To strengthen your, we’ll say, presently limited faith in what the Self that you Are, taught.

Is it beginning to sink in that there is a Real You, a Self that you Are right now that you have been unconscious of, that is being the full Presence of God, that constitutes a mighty Companion—a Companion far greater than any puny little fears you experience—that is standing on behalf of your abandoning these flimsy imaginations that seem to bind you so completely? What Love, again.

outside the teaching of your Self …

Well, you know what? You’re not going to learn that you’re teaching yourself until you become a student, until you’re willing to let Something outside of your piss-ant, personal, authoritative control of everything.

that means that you will find the humility that it takes to truly listen and abandon the biases you have previously brought to your listening, to see to it that your learning does not violate the truths that you have decided are the truth.

Now you understand how learning and teaching actually work.

You see, that joy, that “A-ha!” that your student experiences will bring you the joy that’s inherent in teaching. And your being the student, as I said, and letting the learning occur, so that you light up with the joy of Being and teach others through that joy, that will be yours.

Now the interesting thing that we cannot finish without pointing out is, that although that week where Paul was doing all the things that were not what he was supposed to be doing, ended up illuminating the holiness of the Movements that occurred during that week for those with whom Paul was involved, even though holiness and spirituality was not the subject matter.

No matter how mundane the activity you’re engaged in, if you are engaged in it because you have been inspired into the involuntary and uncontrolled engagement in it, everyone involved will be more aware of God than you can imagine. And that is the miracle.

… your Self.

Who?

And you’ll have that experience when you let go of this thing outside of you that you’ve been imagining and holding onto, called the ego-frame of reference, the orphan mentality.

you holy Son of God and Daughter of God …

I know, you still don’t think that’s Who you Are. But if you’ll listen to what I’m saying and if you will engage in learning, you will have the experience of it. And that’s the point.

each one of you …

You see? That’s the meat and potatoes of it. The meat and potatoes of it isn’t hard work, it’s a matter of deciding where you’re going to give your attention and then giving it with commitment. That simple. That’s it.

Nobody else. Oh, don’t wait for Maitreya. Don’t wait for anyone else.

out of his own commitment, out of his own desire to be the holy Son of God or Daughter of God.

But listen:

All the holy Sons and Daughters of God.

That’s a promise. But you’ve got to build the bridge. The bridge between this self and this Self that you think are somewhere between your ears, with commitment.

You holy Son of God, you holy Daughter of God. Your foot has to be on it, because you’re the Father of the Prodigal Son or Daughter Who’s gone out to have this fantastic fantasy of being a mortal and imagining all of it up. But the Self that you Are is what you Are, not the other.

That means those Who are already Awake, but it also means all of your creations.

and because the Self that you Are is the only Self there is that is where you would be in spite of the fight you put up against letting it in, against letting go of what’s causing you to feel limited and suffering.

Don’t get too conceptual now. Where your Self awaits you is at the other end of your attention. That’s all. Your Self awaits you at the other end of your attention. The question is: Where are you going to give your attention?

Good news. Let this be a fantastic week.