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Good evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet and Happy New Year.

Has a nice ring to it doesn’t it … Happy New Year … Happy New Year … Happy New Year.

Everybody likes thresholds: The changeover of a Millennium, the changeover of a decade, the changeover of a year. And in almost all cases, each of you brings an expectation of newness to these things. And you also bring an expectation of the breaking of boundaries, the breaking of bondages–release from that which has held you. And you’re even willing to consider that the breaking of those bonds can happen by extraordinary means.

What is a shame, is that you only do that when you come upon a change-line–what I’m calling a change-line–a point that you call a threshold. And you do not energize or activate that attitude every moment of conscious awareness.

Many of you make resolutions … you’re going to turn over a new leaf.

Well, this is good. Because it calls into play an act on your part: “I am going to do something in a new way. I resolve to … blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

You’re not saying, “Wow! I can’t wait for something new to happen to me” and sit there passively. You bring yourself into play. And this is good.

But I’m going to ask how many of you, on any New Year that you have experienced, how many of you have said, “I resolve to let the impossible happen to me? I resolve to let that which I am confident cannot possibly happen to me, happen. I resolve not to bring any resistance to the impossible happening … like Waking up … like having a total radical healing … like youthing–in other words, having the experience of not just old age, but aging disappear.”

How about resolving to let go of a long-standing enemy? And not be bound any longer from your own growth by your commitment to being angry and enjoying the satisfaction of it?

It’s a wonderful time. It’s a wonderful attitude for all of you to be embracing at this moment. It’s a wonderful attitude to never abandon.

Now, how … how do you effectively resolve to experience change? How do you effectively resolve to be made new?

By stepping out of the mindset you’re currently using. By stepping out of the mutual agreements you have entered into with everyone else. Even the ones that say the words “Happy New Year” always have a pleasant connotation. That’s a mutual definition. It’s a mutual agreement. It’s a tradition which simply means that it’s a mutual agreement and a mutual definition of long standing … right?

Hey, how about “Happy New Instant? Happy New Instant, Happy New Now” now…now…now…now? How about bringing an expectation of newness constantly into play as part of your act of observing–as part of the activity of being conscious, of being alive?

And how about making commitment to letting your new Vision be supplied to you because you have said, “Father, what is the truth here? Holy Spirit, what is the truth here? That which is nothing more than my right Mind, not my deluded mind, but that which my right Mind knows is the truth?” You see?

Now, I’m going to take advantage of your belief system about New Year. And so I’m going to use this demarcation in time to provide an intent–I’m not going to call it a goal … an intent–an intent to embody the meaning of the statement, “Why in the hell should I wait another moment to Wake up? Why in Heaven’s name should I not let Heaven in now?”

You know, for how long have you been studying A Course In Miracles? Is it just a pleasant past-time that is relatively helpful to you in your journey from birth to death? Is there nothing more to it than that? Is there not something about it that is supposed to cause Awakening and release from illusions and dreams?

Is it not about making a transition from ignorance to understanding, from confusion to clarity, from a distorted experience of Reality to the direct experience of the Kingdom of Heaven that you’re having because you have allowed yourself to realize that you are indeed the Son or Daughter of God, absolutely divine and never were some poor piss-ant orphan, never were some result of a physical process that in fact, all that you had been calling physical processes were simply experiences of Reality being perceived unclearly. You see?

Everything that you’re in the middle of, everything that you’re experiencing is the ultimate, is the Kingdom of Heaven seen through a glass darkly, seen through confusion, seen through a reluctance on your part to let go and see what It truly Is. You see?

You have this safety valve, this gap of safety between how you experience things now and how you will experience things if you keep your resolution, if you allow something new to happen, if you allow yourself to be made new. You see? You resolve to change, you resolve to Wake up … “Oh, won’t it be wonderful to Wake up in 2011 … before Christmas of 2011? Won’t that be wonderful?”

But, you know, it might not happen. And so you don’t have to worry about what it might involve. And after all, you have, you know, twelve months and twenty some days before you find out whether you met your expectation or not, whether the resolve was committed to and enacted. So you’re safe. If you don’t do it … nah-h… no big deal. You see?

The simple fact is, as we’ve talked about … well before I say it, let me ask a question: “Why aren’t you experiencing the ultimate? Why aren’t you Awake? What is keeping you from seeing things as they truly Are? What is keeping you from seeing yourself as the Daughter of God and nothing else? What is keeping any of you from unfettered, unlimited good?

It’s the fact that you’re fighting for the right to not have It.

Now it isn’t that you’re fighting for the right not to have your good, but what you’re doing is fighting for the right to have your bad. You’re fighting for the right to hold on to your limitation. You’re saying, “This is impossible.” Instead of saying, “I expect to see the impossible happen. I am curious to see the impossible happen. I am curious to see that which goes beyond my ability to comprehend, register with me in a manner I can comprehend.”

But no, you say, “I can’t have this and I can’t have that. So-in-so’s behavior is keeping me from it. So-in-so’s behavior has been atrocious and it’s really offended me. And I can’t just let go of my offense–of my offendedness. If I did that I would certainly not show that I had any respect for myself.” You see?

Oh, the crazy arguments that everyone brings up to hold onto their limits and to not see the impossible happen that would render the justice you think you would get by holding on to your limitations, so utterly irrelevant, because the fulfillment that would replace it would be so utterly meaningful and so outside of the scope of the petty small-mindedness of the orphan mindset.

You’re going to find me this year, pushing for actual change. Pushing you not to settle for flowery phrases and wonderful statements of A Course In Miracles. I’m going to push for you to arrive at a point before the year is up where you’re not even going to bother to pick up the Course again because its Meaning has registered with you and you have been transformed and you’re now experiencing all of the Meaning embodied in that book and more.

I’m going to be pushing for you not to be satisfied with no particular change occurring but a capacity you have to somehow be half-way happy in spite of the lack of change. I’m going to push for you not to miss the point.

If Awakening is not supposed to occur then put down this book and go out and live life the best you can.

If Meaning … if change is supposed to occur, if transformation is the promise, then demand the transformation, demand to have the evidence and don’t put it down until you do have the evidence–not evidence of your having a capacity to be in charge and make things happen, but evidence of perfection that before you lift a finger, before you think a thought, it is your Birthright to be experiencing.

You need to learn to demand to have the experience without yet having done anything to deserve it, without having earned it through some orphan act. And then when you don’t have the experience yet, don’t stop feeling into it. Don’t stop being attentive for it. Don’t give up on expecting to see this evidence of the Father’s Dictum, “Behold I make all things new.”

“Happy New Year–Behold I make all things new. Happy instant! Happy New Now! Now…now…now.”

If you’re not experiencing ultimate good right now, it’s because in one way or another, you’re arguing against it … and you are winning the argument. And the solution is simple!

Abandon the argument. Stop reinforcing it. Stop rehearsing it in words. Stop telling everybody about your problem. Stop talking about the impossibility of the situation and how unfair it is without ever bringing into the conversation one iota of curiosity about how the problem might be solved … and how it might be solved easily and quickly … and how it might be solved because at the bottom line it just might be an illusion – it just might be the way you’re perceiving things because of the bias you’re applying to your line of vision.

See, it’s nice to have the truth that’s expressed in the Course to read and to contemplate because it does stimulate new perceptions. But when it moves you to a place where you expect what you’ve read to be true and to register with you in your life and it doesn’t happen, you get discouraged and you give up.

You give arguments against it: “Well, I don’t have what it takes. I know it’s the truth. Man, the minute I picked up the book and started reading it, I knew it was the truth. There’s just something in me that isn’t quite getting it.”

You see? And there’s your argument against Happy New Now–Happy New Instant! Happy New Not ever having to wait again for my Good!” You see?

Because when you dare to believe what you’re reading and you dare to go into the holy instant and you dare to abandon your privacy and you say, “Father, God or Holy Spirit, what is the truth here? What is your divine Perspective that I have been told it is my Birthright to be experiencing as mine because no other perspective was ever given to me?”

When you do that two-step and you don’t hear the answer and the problem isn’t resolved and in fact it seems to be getting worse, you tend to throw in the towel, you agree with all the arguments against hearing the Father’s Answer–experiencing what it is your inherent Birthright to be experiencing because of what you divinely Are. And you make a big thing out of your discouragement. You blow up your discouragement bigger and bigger until it’s billowing all over the place and proving to you how overwhelming it all is and how unreasonable it is under the circumstances for you to expect “Happy New Instant!” You see? “Happy New Now … Now … NOW.” You see?

And here is where you must persist. Here is where you must go against the meanings that you as an orphan and all of the orphans in the orphanage have agreed upon together is a circumstance that there’s no way out of, and that indeed, your sorrow and your frustration and your anger are absolutely justified and they are what should be magnified. You see? It’s just a silly mutual agreement–it’s nonsensical.

But, you know what? If you want to see the evidence of the Father’s Will, if you want to see the evidence of everything as the Kingdom of Heaven instead of the evidence of a material world that you see, you’re going to have to plough right into that experience of failure. “I’m practicing the holy instant, I’m doing everything Raj said and it’s not working. And it’s not working and it never has worked. And I don’t … you know, if I stop and think about it, I really don’t know very many people, even those studying the Course or even those listing to Raj … I don’t really know very many people who have ever had the experiences Raj is talking about. Wow, and you heap argument upon argument against the holy instant. You heap argument upon argument against letting yourself into that void where you’re no longer asserting your definitions and meanings and your so-called authority, and you’re inviting God’s authority in so that you can find yourself in that place where God’s laws prevail and nothing else does, and you experience the enlightenment you need.

“Well, I know, you know a few people who have had maybe a little taste of what Raj has talked about, but nobody’s Woken up yet … look at Paul, he hasn’t Woken up yet” … argument upon argument upon argument.

Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Don’t let those words be hollow words.

Well, here’s another threshold for you, a bigger one than New Years: It’s the Second Coming! Wow… millions of people look forward to that. Well, in some ways, A Course In Miracles is a part of that. It’s the clarity of the Christ entering into the human picture again. And I have to say again, that it hasn’t happened so that you can have pleasant words to make life more pleasant between birth and death without ever altering that illusory experience that seems to begin with birth and seems to end with death and simply constitutes, for lack of better words, a period of confusion which none of you need to be suffering from and it’s time for everyone to Wake up out of … that’s why. And yet, you may have been studying the book for twenty-five years already.

Well, let me ask you this: If I appeared … if the Second Coming happened and I appeared on your globe, do you think that it would be so that all of you could take another two thousand years to absorb and assimilate and wonder about, and be amazed at everything I might say and everything I might do?

No! The point would be so that the dream, the illusion of mortality and the ignorance of your divinity might cease. When? Over a long drawn out period of time? No! [snaps fingers] Instantly! This isn’t a tease [points to ACIM]. And it isn’t just an accommodation to the human condition. And isn’t it wonderful that God has given us these inspiring teachings.

So, here we are, New Years Day with change on everyone’s mind, newness, the turning over a new leaf, the becoming new, the being made new to whatever extent any of you might allow, even though the majority of you will only allow just a little bit.

Hey, what about great abundance, regardless of the economy? Can’t happen? Oh, okay. But you lie. And you believe your lie. You believe the mutually-agreed-upon-definitions. Why you can’t possibly experience your holy Birthright until the “gray men” are dealt with, until the great financial families who are really governing things behind the scenes somehow die off or kill each other, or a great act of God wipes them out. We lie. That’s not the truth. You see?

Holiness is not circumstantial … wholeness is not circumstantial. Put that under your belt this New Year Day.

Your wholeness is not circumstantial.

It doesn’t depend on anything else or anyone else doing or not doing anything. But in order to experience it, you’ve got to abandon the orphanage activities and you’ve got to join in the holy instant and say, “Father, what is the truth here? What is the true perspective? I am willing to give up my confidences about what everything is and how everything works in favor of letting in Your Perspective which is the truth because it is the Perspective about Creation, which You are the Source of. And I am going to stop turning to any other apparent resource to gather the facts about life.” You see? That’s how you stop doing what constitutes an argument against being aware of the truth. You see, it isn’t so much something that you need to do, it’s something that you need to stop doing. That’s where the simplicity of it is.

And so I’m going to keep pointing your nose in the direction of the simplicity and I’m going to keep saying, “Are you seeing the evidence?” And if you say no, you’re not seeing the evidence, and if my asking you if you are and you’re saying no that you aren’t makes you feel incompetent and discouraged, well just remember that’s a ploy of the ego, it’s a ploy of the orphan, it’s part of the mutually agreed upon appropriate behavior. You see?

Oh-h-h … but if you look at it simply and honestly, you’ll see that it’s just a ploy, it’s a tactic to distract you from engaging in what will actually make a difference. It is a tactic that immobilizes you and makes you uninterested in looking for the evidence, looking for “Happy New Now”! You see?

And so, you could say that you find yourself in the attitude of somebody in the nineteen fifties, you know, halfway between the change lines … the “Happy New Millennium,” … you see? …the time when real changes can occur and when you’ll allow for the changes to register with you because you’re not saying that the impossible can’t happen. “Oh, but in the nineteen fifties, you know, they’re sort of the doldrums, you know, sort of a place of ignorance, not a whole lot of new ideas and blah…blah…blah, you know … well … yep … so …”

Don’t let any part of your day be halfway between change lines. Don’t let them be a place where it really is an important thing to be a dumb shit-head, to just lays around in immobility and lack of interest and play stupid.

Now, we’re talking about getting out of special relationships. And special relationships are, if you’ll remember, relationships you enter into with people or things when you don’t know who you Are. In other words, when you, thinking you’re an orphan, enter into a relationship with another or some thing absolutely confident that there’s nothing more than a happenstance effect right there where you are … born to die and to struggle in between.

When that happens, that’s called a special relationship. And you get out of special relationships, not by improving them, but by doing the one thing that will re-illuminate in your mind your awareness of what you divinely Are.

Now, continuing in the book, I’m going to back up to the beginning of the paragraph that I said we would be reading from. And it says:

Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality.1

See? See, that’s what I want to make clear with you. You come to this day, “Happy New Year” … but you’re confident that you won’t …

… be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality.

Or abruptly hurled into whatever it is you’ve resolved to be. You’re not afraid of that. You think that can’t possibly happen. And so you’re safe. But you have the right intent, correct?

Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind…

… New Year or not …

Time is kind and if you use if FOR reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition.

Well, I’m saying, allow for it not to be a gentle pace. Allow for the possibility that you might possibly be able to be hurled into and abruptly lifted into Reality. You see? Because all that’s happening is you’re letting yourself be returned to your right Mind, you’re letting the Holy Spirit register with you, which is nothing more than your right Mind, your divine Mind, your inseparability from the Father.

So although you need …

Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality.

Realize that it can happen as quickly as you’ll allow it. And why delay? That’s what I’m saying. That’s the thrust or the intent that I will be sharing this year and hopefully not for very much of it because you’ll get it. You see?

The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their fixed position here.

Meaning, here in your definitions, here in your ignorance of who you Are and the definitions you have developed about who you are as an ignorant one.

This will not leave you homeless, and without a frame of reference.

Waking up and becoming free from all of the little mean-spirited small-minded rules that you’ve bound yourself by won’t cause you to be homeless. You know what? It won’t constitute going insane. It’s the return of sanity. And to any degree that any of you have ever let any of that in, you have experienced groundedness that was unbelieveable. And yet the groundedness was of something infinite, something huge: You, you in a much larger experience of yourself a more infinite experience that didn’t cause you to feel as though you were floating around but rather more firmly anchored in invulnerability.

So:

The period of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorter than the time it took to fix your minds so firmly on illusions.

You see? Happy New Now! Happy New Instant! You see?

The period of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorter …

… it can be shorter than anything you’re expecting. You can let it be quick. You can let it be happy, now!

Delay will hurt you now more than before, only because you realize it IS delay…

… well, does that mean that what I’m going to be pushing for this year is going to cause you to feel more hurt because I’m not going to be letting you forget that it’s a delay for nothing and you’ll be aware that you’re delaying when you don’t have to? I guess you could use it that way. But don’t. I guess you could use it and your subsequent attempt to get into the holy instant and experience the transformation without experiencing it, you could use that as a means of justifying abandoning the task, because you don’t want to be in that place where you’re feeling totally incapable. But you’re going to have to be willing to go there and stand there with the intent to be at odds with it, to not agree with it in order to move through it, in order to watch it simply give up its bluff and dissolve.

And so, you might feel during this coming year that I’m going to be pushing you into an uncomfortable place and asking you to do something that you don’t feel at all like doing. But that’s the way it works. And that’s the way Waking up occurs. And that’s the way the purpose of the Course is fulfilled. And that’s the way the function of the Holy Spirit accomplishes its task of returning you to your right Mind.

Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it IS.

You see? But then you say, “Okay, but I’m doing what Raj is saying and it’s not working and I’m not getting anywhere and nothing is happening and everything is the way it always has been, therefore these words are about me in another time in another place and in another frame of mind.”

You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in any special relationship here.

“Well, I seem to be and I don’t seem to be able to change it, so you must be talking about when I’m Awake or something that doesn’t relate to where I am right now.” No, it talks about where you are right now and the fact that you must stand in that place of feeling incompetent, where it seems nothing you are doing to practice the holy instant is having any effect. And you must stand in the face of your discouragement and watch its bluff dissolve.

So it’s not totally fun. But you know what? You’re not ignorant of the process now. And I’m going to be behind you, in front of you, saying, “Come on … go on … this is the way.”

Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in any special relationship here.

In any relationship that you’re in without knowing who you Are divinely speaking.

For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it IS.

It’s like, maybe for the first time you know what the purpose of a New Year resolution is, and what a Real New Years resolution is: Practice the two-step, engage in the holy instant and stand there in the face of all that seems awful until it dissolves, because you are no longer wholly insane.

I’ve shared the truth with you.

Happy New Year! Happy New Now! Happy instant!

And I look forward to being with you next time.

  1. T16.6 The Bridge to the Real World 



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