Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Well, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on the holy instant and I know that many of you are feeling that the holy instant ought to work better than it does, because you’ve been doing your very best to practice it and the problems seem to be very stubborn and unyielding and you seem to be making no progress.

There’s a reason for it. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about tonight.

I’m not going to start with the second sentence, I’m going to back up to the first sentence that we ended with last week:

Now, one very simple factor here is that the ego’s plan for salvation, which simply put, means you thinking your way through a problem, you reasoning your way from failure to success, you doing something out of your independent competence to succeed. That’s the ego’s plan for salvation. And to you, that feels like the way that works. That’s more significant than I may have made it sound.

You are all convinced that the means to your success lies through your thinking processes, through your independent use of your mind—that’s what works.

Now, the Holy Spirit teaches through comparisons and opposites. And as a result, as we talk about practicing the holy instant, about doing the two-step, it sounds as though you’re being invited to do something that will not work because it’s an abandonment of what you are absolutely convinced does work and is the only thing that does work.

So you walk into this practice of the holy instant handicapped, you think, because you’re being required to set aside what will work, what does work for something that you are positive can’t work because it doesn’t involve the use of your reasoning and your thinking and your mind to find the way—the creative way—to solve the problem to be successful. You see? Not to say anything of the fact that this way doesn’t feed your ego and there’s no way for you to feel the hit of accomplishment, if in fact, the holy instant works.

So, your mindset is a handicap to you as you move into this practice which I tell you is the only way out of the human condition. It’s the only way out of the orphanage. It’s the only way back into your right Mind. It’s the only solution there is.

Now:

And that’s always what success is. That’s always what the ego’s purpose is: Vengeance against the past.

However, from the Holy Spirit’s vantage point:

You must understand that the Holy Spirit has a different starting point, if you will, than the ego does. The Holy Spirit’s starting point is it’s intimate, indivisible, conscious awareness of God’s Purpose and God’s Will and the fact that giving attention to God’s Will is the only means of securing and holding and forever experiencing divine sanity. You see?

Now the problem with this is that none of that connects with your conditioned need to find ways to accomplish things that give you the credit, that make you real, that make you valid, that make you competent and respectable. You see? And as it’s been said, “there’s the rub.”²

So …

And you say, “Well, how can I accept that it is gone? You say it is accepted that it is gone but how do I arrive at the experience of that when I know it’s not gone. I’m turning to the holy instant, I’m desiring to practice the holy instant in order to make it go away. And so the fact that I’m asking, is a statement that the problem is here, that the past is not gone, that the vengeance has not been uprooted and has not disappeared.” You see?

And this way of thinking disturbs the peace of the holy instant and distracts you from the experience of the absence of the past and the fact that vengeance has been uprooted. And so you, in practicing the holy instant, must have some basis for giving your weight to all of the meanings that we’ve been discussing about the holy instant.

And here’s the basis for it. The basis for it is: That your perceptions of the world and universe—not having been gathered from your conscious communion with the Father, in which the Father has shared His Perspective with you so that you recognize It as yours—your interpretations of the world and universe are false. They are flawed. They are illusions. They are delusions.

To hold onto whatever holds those delusions in place cannot constitute salvation for you. And so you must be willing to abandon the convictions you have, the commitment you have to your present definitions of everything—the present meanings you’ve given to everything.

Now there are those who read the Course or other spiritual traditions, I will say, who say that the world and universe are an illusion. But I’m telling you and have told you over and over again, that the world and universe is Creation Itself seen through a glass darkly—seen through misperceptions. The misperceptions are the only things that will disappear. What the misperceptions were about will remain eternally, unchangeably in place.

What will uncover Creation to you in its natural eternal perfect state is your practice of the holy instant. That means that in the shift of perception that follows your commitment to the holy instant, there is going to be transformation. There is going to be the disappearance of sin, disease, death. There is going to be the disappearance of damage. There is going to be the disappearance of imperfection. And most of all, there’s going to be the disappearance of the tendency for imperfection to occur, and for the liability to be ill to occur.

Again:

… from the Holy Spirit’s standpoint …

… why is it accepted that the past is gone? Because there never was a past. The past is gone because the past isn’t present. The past doesn’t exist. And the word, “exist” is a present tense verb. The past doesn’t exist.

When you move into the holy instant and you are in your peace, you will not find yourself … you will not find your mind occupied with the past, you will find your mind occupied with peace. And peace is always present. It is always in the present. It is always an experience of presence—the present. And with the passing of the past, without the past being in any way occupying your conscious awareness, you will find that …

You see, the problem many of you are having presently is that you’re practicing the holy instant and you do pretty well … but you look, and you say, “But so-and-so is still being a bitch, so-in-so is still being a bastard, so-and-so is still being dishonest, so-and-so is still trying to take advantage of me. I felt a shift in me but nothing happened and the situation is getting worse. I feel a shift in me about my financial well-being, but my employment situation isn’t changing …” or, “The raise I was supposed to get is not coming through, and not only for me, it’s not coming through but for many others.” You see?

And all of this … all of this convinces you further that your thinking is the viable, correct thing to value and base your responses on and your feelings and your willingness to move forward or your insistence upon giving up. You see? So what’s the problem?

The next sentence says …

And this is where you can begin to feel like this is all bullshit! Because you’re still in the same bad position you were, whether you’ve been enfolded in perfect gentleness and everything is supposed to be gone except the truth.

But listen:

… in your practice of the holy instant …

It’s your disbelief that you bring with you. You have faith, you have hope, and you practice the holy instant. You bring willingness to it but there is still doubt. There is still the lingering feeling that the behavior you see and the circumstances you see truly are real—that they are not illusions and that they are going to debilitate you and injure you and ruin you. You see?

Be aware of it.

See, an injury, an imperfection—a physical imperfection—a disease that seems to be active in your system, these things seem to you to be real. They seem to be real things that somehow the holy instant must invalidate and it might take a struggle because the problem is so actual and so real. But you see, this feeling and this belief arises from your vantage point. And your vantage point is a frame of mind which is not connected with its Source. It is a frame of mind in which you are unconscious that you are the Son or Daughter of God, that you are not an orphan, and that God is All. And therefore, whatever you’re seeing with these distortions is in itself absolutely perfect. And its perfection is only escaping you because you’re relying upon your best judgments, your best thinking, your best reasoning, your fundamental attempt to be an independent agent. You see?

There’s a complete difference between that. When you’re looking as an orphan, you will see distortion. You will see sin, sickness, death. You will see damage. You will see injury … it goes on and on. You will see them. But it doesn’t make them real. It only makes them distortions of That which is flawlessly perfect right there, right now. The difference is absolute. The difference is total.

And when you choose to practice the holy instant and join with the Holy Spirit which is nothing more than your right Mind—your divine Mind, that Mind in you which is the Father present in you—when you turn to That, there’s only one thing that can happen: The peace will come, the clarity will pervade you, pervade your mind, pervade your feelings and you will see everything anew. And damage, injury, imperfections will simply stop presenting themselves.

Now I know this sounds like magic. This sounds, well, like we said:

And because you know what is possible, then what I’m telling you must be impossible. You see? But it is what you need to know so that you have the nerve, so that you have the guts, so that you can pull together the stamina to persist in this (as far as the ego is concerned) crazy endeavor of indulging in a holy instant in which you’re going to let go of your authority and you’re going to say to Something else, “Fill me with your Authority, fill me with the power of the universe that You are … I’m going to just [chuckles] … I’m just gonna sort of shrivel away into nothing and be nothing here and I’m gonna let the Somethingness that You are be all there is to me. Hey, goodbye cruel world.” You see?

But the orphan’s perspective is flawed. That is the perspective that is flawed. That is the perspective that is not telling the truth. That is the perspective that can’t tell the truth because it doesn’t Know the truth.

And there is a way out of the orphanage. There is a way out of “the human condition.” There is a way to Wake up. And Waking up is not a false meaningless promise to provide you with some sort of comfort during a miserable experience called, “life.”

I promise you, you won’t. You will let go because you’re going to find yourselves slowly becoming discouraged. And fortunately it will be a discouragement applied to the right thing. You will finally become discouraged when it comes to attempting to save yourself, all by yourself … and you ask for help.

That which is nothing more than your right Mind will prevail when you join with It, because in your act of joining you are making whole that which for a while you pretended were two, were separate, distinct, different. And so the Holy Spirit will prevail when you join because you, in your joining, will be undoing your act of divorce, your act of independence.

… you know, inadvertently, out of habit or because of your unbelief.

… the Holy Spirit …

The experience of what? The experience of the absence of vengeance. The experience of the past. This will happen. And this is why it will seem futile. You’re doing what we’ve been talking about and yet for some there are incredible corrections, healings occurring. But for the majority, they’re not. You see?

You see? What you are engaged in, in practicing the holy instant, is to become disenchanted with delusions, it is to become disenchanted with illusions. To arrive at a place where you’re willing to look at apparent sin, disease and death and so on and say, “You know what? If there is a God and if God is all, these things are not Real and I am willing to withdraw my investment of faith and trust in what I think I am seeing there. And on top of that, it is my intent to join with my right Mind by asking of the Father, by asking of the Holy Spirit, “What is the truth here? And I am going to persist in this—because there is no other solution—until I see the miraculous, until I see matter start behaving like Spirit, until I see healing occurring, until I see illusion disappearing.”

Every one of you have had the experience of having illusions disappear, what you call, “healing” occur. That gives you hope. That keeps you going. But I’m telling you, that this is to be a total shift of perception and not just a healing here and a healing there. We are talking about a shift from the unreal to the Real, from the experience of Reality distorted to the experience of Reality as It is. And in order to abandon Reality distorted, you have to abandon the way of looking at things that causes it to appear to be that way. That’s all we’re talking about. That is what is accomplished through the holy instant. That is the purpose of the two-step.

“Oh, but the world condition … you know … how many billions of individual minds are there that would have to change in order for there to be ‘Peace on Earth,’ in order for there to be ‘Brotherly Love’ willingly expressed? It’s impossible!”

Well, that’s what the ego says. It’s not what the Holy Spirit says. And this book: A Course In Miracles, it’s purpose is to cause you to shift your allegiance from your best thinking and your best judgments and your capacity to reason well, to withdraw your investment from that, to abandon it, to let go of the attempt to be successfully independent and join with your Source, so that the perspective that your Source is Being and which is called Creation, no longer escapes you. This is your Birthright.

Not because it’s forced on you, but because the actuality of it is that there is no you that actually has the capacity to not receive it. You think you do have a capacity not to receive it. And as long as you don’t receive it you’re having the orphan experience.

But you know what? The orphan mindset is not governing Creation and Creation is the only thing going on, Reality is the only thing occurring right now. And so that which is not going on in Actuality will at some point cease looking like it’s going on. And that point where it will cease is, when you stop energizing it by insisting upon independence. Then delusions, then illusions will [snaps fingers] simply vanish and you will have or experience what are called instantaneous healings and the impossible—billions of souls experiencing who they Are and expressing It [snaps fingers] can happen without it taking a thousand or five thousand years for the current mentality of the Planet to change and to change against its natural instincts, which are to war and battle and overcome and control, et cetera.

That means that it’s already been received. It’s already embodied in you. It’s already all there is of You. It’s your constituting presence.

God has never had or engaged in an unsuccessful act. It’s that simple.

You see? Here’s the difference between the orphan’s vantage point and the Holy Spirit’s vantage point.

… God …

That means His Sons and Daughters are free right now. This is the radical difference between Reality and unreality, between the Holy Spirit’s perspective and the ego’s perspective, which are totally opposite.

… in that quietness that you go to and reach out to the Holy Spirit or to the Father …

You see, the Holy Spirit’s vantage point is: That you’re neither behind the point of perfection, nor advancing toward it, that you’re at that point and must understand yourself therefrom. You see?

Reality already exists in Its awesome perfection. That means everything about you, everything about what you call the world and universe, everything about your Brothers and Sisters … you see? . . it’s already flawlessly perfect right now. If you are seeing imperfection there or anything less than loveliness … listen to this: It is not there!

The holy instant and the Holy Spirit exist for the purpose of causing the realization of that fact to occur in your mind, so that you might willingly watch what isn’t there disappear NOW, so that healing and correction of illusion can occur NOW. Because there is nothing existing that has to have something done to it to improve it.

Continuing:

You see? You’re neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing toward it, you’re at that point and must understand yourself therefrom … right now, today, here.

There it is. And watch it when the argument presents itself, “Well, that won’t work.” You know, there is a joke: “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” And the answer is: “One, but the light bulb has to be willing to change.”

Well, I’m sorry … your Brother doesn’t have to be willing to change in order for you to make the gift of the willingness to persist in the holy instant until you find the Holy Spirit infilling you with the conscious awareness of your Brother’s present inviolable and therefore eternal perfection.

Hey, if you’re seeing the bastard or the bitch, you’re offering them that illusion. And if you persist in behaving as though they are a bastard or a bitch, you will be consistently teaching them illusions about themselves. You certainly will not be indulging in the holy instant in which your awareness can be purified, filled with the awareness of truth about them that causes your whole being, your whole demeanor, your whole perception of them to be changed, so that even if they seem to persist in bad behavior you won’t respond as though the behavior is real or true or calling for condemnation. And you will find the words being present in you that illuminate that element in your Brother that he or she recognizes as their perfect safety so that they can let go of the defense that has caused them to seem to be a bitch or a bastard.

So you seem to come to the holy instant because in your orphan mentality you’re experiencing a problem that you cannot ignore. And the Holy Spirit, whom you reach out to, responds, not from the orphan level, but from the level of communion with Reality, communion with God and communion with You, as the divine one that you Are and reveals to you, in time—where you as the orphan was experiencing the problem—correction, the revealing or uncovering of the Kingdom of Heaven that was being misinterpreted and suffered from. You see? And it brings to you the true condition of Heaven. And that’s the way it works … and that’s not magic.

By golly, you have to get past this point of the confidences you have about what can’t work and what can’t be done because, only that cannot work, only that cannot be done which the ego perceives, which the orphan mindset perceives of what? Of the perfect Kingdom of Heaven, but seen through the lens of independence, of being without a Source, of being insane.

So, once again, we are still talking about the simplicity. What I mean to convey tonight is, that you must be willing to see that it’s like there are two different orders of reality … that’s not the right word, because one of them is unreality. It’s like two different paradigms and yet paradigms seem to indicate validity even though there may be a shift from one to another.

But the point is, that unreality is unreal. And the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, is connecting with you, is teaching you from that Place which is the Father’s Mind, to reveal to you your alliance with the Father’s Mind and the fact that all there is to your Mind is the Father’s Mind. And therefore, there simply is no presence or power that is binding you to the experience of illusion.

Be ready at every moment from now on to see delusions [snaps fingers] vanish, to see healings [snaps fingers] occur, to see correction happen where you were convinced it could not.

The Holy Spirit is not responding to you from the place you’re asking Him for help. You’re asking Him for help from a place of ignorance. He’s answering you from a place of illumination. And the fact is, that the place of illumination that He’s speaking to you from is your natural abode, because He is nothing more than your right Mind.

You know what? A Course In Miracles, is not a course in miracles. A Course In Miracles is not a book about a course in miracles, it’s all about you. It’s all about learning how you’re using your mind, so that you can stop unconsciously binding yourself to limitations which it’s not your Birthright to be experiencing, and so that you might be released into the fullness of your divine Being.

Wow! I love you, and you, and you, and all of you. I look forward to being with your next week.