Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Well, we’ve been talking along time, perhaps over a year about the holy instant—the two step. The holy instant, the practice of the holy instant is where you shut up your own thinking—your own private thoughts—and you turn your attention to the Father or the Holy Spirit to ask, “What is the truth here?” to step outside of your best judgments, your best thinking, your best logic and your supposed capacity to be able to authorize meanings and in making that request, that invitation to joining with the Father in the silence, experiencing the influx of the Father’s Perspective, either directly from the Father or through the Holy Spirit whose function it is to reveal to you the Father’s Perspective as yours.

So we’ve been talking about joining and being un-joined for a long time.

Now, we’re talking about faith and faithlessness. And it’s bringing into clearer perspective what the holy instant is. It’s bringing into clearer perspective what the difference is between you, the holy Son of God that you Are, and the you that got a divorce from your Father and have existed for a very long time as an orphan. So, we’re at a point now where being an orphan or being the holy Son of God that you truly Are can be seen to be the equivalent of faithlessness and faith.

You know, we’ve used a lot of words, but it’s simple. It boils down to two things: Faith or faithlessness. Faith, we have found means you being joined with the Father or you being joined with the Holy Spirit in an act of compliance, of yielding to the Holy Spirit. Why? Because it’s nothing more than your right Mind, the purpose of which is to reveal to you your Birthright, to have the Perspective of the Father as your perspective with nothing interfering with it. So it’s becoming simple.

Faithlessness is when you choose to operate as though you’re an independent agent, where you never check in with the Holy Spirit, you never check in with the Father. You just do the best you can to get through your day and perhaps learn a little bit better how to manipulate your Brothers and Sisters so that tomorrow might be more pleasant for you even if it’s less pleasant for your Brothers and Sisters. So it’s becoming very simple and very easy to understand.

Now you might say this “holy instant” stuff—to engage in faith—is something you don’t have a lot of time for because you must cope with your days on the same old basis that you always have. Yes, you can conceive of engaging in the holy instant now and then throughout the day but you know what? If I suggest that the goal is to be doing it 24/7, three hundred and sixty five days a year—in other words, all the time—“Oh-h, that’s an unrealistic demand.”

But let’s look at it this way: It’s not really doing something unnatural. And so there’s truly a benefit to it. But imagine that you get on the plane from any place that isn’t England or Australia. And you go to either England or Australia and you get off the plane and you rent a car. Immediately you’re faced with the task of sitting on the opposite side of the car and driving on the opposite side of the road. Not only that, you’re faced with walking on the opposite side of the sidewalk, you’re faced with going in through double doors, going through the left door, walking along the left side of the hallway. If you don’t do this, you have collisions with people or objects.

And so if you’re going to enjoy your visit to Australia or England, you’re going to have to pay attention constantly, just like I’m asking you to engage in the holy instant constantly. Why? Because if you stay conscious while you’re in Australia or England, you won’t have any collisions, you won’t have anybody frustrated with you because you are out of place. You will have a comfortable, enjoyable time. Likewise, if you will engage in the holy instant, you will have a comfortable, enjoyable time.

Now you all have the capacity to pay that much attention. And if you realize that right now, your lack of paying attention in terms of the holy instant, in terms of choosing to be joined with the Father or the Holy Spirit, it’s causing you to experience everything as sin, disease and death. It’s causing you to experience substance as matter—vulnerable, undependable, unstable matter. But that’s only if you’re choosing to be an orphan. That’s only if you are depending upon your own best judgment. It’s only if you’re choosing to ignore your Source … only if you are choosing to ignore your right Mind—your sanity.

So, just as not paying attention while you’re driving from the opposite side of the car on the opposite side of the street, because not paying attention while you’re doing that can cause your death, you know, and therefore, it’s justifiable to pay attention. Likewise, if you’re choosing to practice faithlessness, if you’re choosing to be in the world on the basis of the definitions you are giving to it, you’re likewise faced with the potential, the inevitability of death, aren’t you.

So the payoff is great if you’re willing to practice the holy instant. You see? And the negative side is so negative that there’s really no reason not to try to consistently, persistently choose for the holy instant, engage in faith, intend to constantly be in the world with your Father or the Holy Spirit—I was going to say, holding your hand, but it’s—with you holding the Father’s Hand or the Holy Spirit’s Hand, it’s you hanging on to your sanity.

So you can see, we’re talking about actually changing. We’re talking about behaving differently. You get off the plane in Australia or England and you must behave differently in very fundamental ways.

Students of A Course In Miracles are faced with having to change the way they behave. And as we’ve been reading here, it has to do with changing from faithlessness to faith, changing from the practice of independence to the practice of joining and being united with your Father—your right Mind, the Holy Spirit. You see? Really doing something different.

The problem all of you have right now is that you think you have an option. You think because you’re in the United States, you don’t have to pay attention because you already know how to drive on the right side of the road and walk on the right side of the sidewalk and the right side of the hallway and so on. And so, because you know how to practice faithlessness, because you know how to be an orphan, you think you have the choice of continuing, or engaging in new effort of shifting to faith, or getting off the plane in Australia or England and with careful attention, yielding to the way things work there. You see?

So we’re talking about change. And as I said, the big problem you have is that you think you have an option. So you say, “Oh-h, I’ll do the hard work tomorrow. Today I’ll use the means that I used yesterday.” And so you stay in faithlessness and you are absent from your experience, the experience of faith—the experience of the holy instant in which the laws of God prevail.

So we’re at a point here where there’s a call for a change of behavior.

Now I want you to think about this as well: When you get off the plane in England or Australia, everything looks the same. The roads still have a white line down the center and parking along the curb on either side. Everything looks the same and yet the behavior relative to it is different. So what’s happened? You left a country like the United States where you did things one way, and you got off the plane, and everything looks the same and you do things a different way.

What’s happened is that you have moved over a threshold in which you have been translated from one set of meanings for a world, to another set of meanings for a world … the same world. Do you see what I’m saying?

Waking up is not a matter of moving from the world you’re familiar with to Heaven—some other world. It will be the same world that you’re experiencing as an independent authorizer, as an orphan, as one practicing faithlessness, wherein you begin to practice faith and see it a different way, experience different meanings for it and behave differently relative to it.

This is important. Translating is much easier than trying to become a different person or a different kind of soul or an Awakened being, as opposed to an ignorant mortal.

But you know what? You’ve got to make this trip from, we’ll say, the U.S. or Europe to England or Australia, you’ve got to make this trip without the apparent demand to change that you find if you actually go to England or Australia.

And so you’re going to have to learn in the United States, we’ll say, or Europe, how to be as though you are the Son of God when you still think you’re a mortal, without the constant reminder of everyone around you who are behaving as though they are the holy Son or Daughter of God. So you will not have the reinforcement that makes it seem more imperative to you to change, to actually begin to mentally behave differently, and physically behave differently. But that’s what it’s called for.

And as we continue into the book tonight talking about relationships because relationships are where faith and faithlessness are practiced, I’m going to approach it a little bit differently than it is in the Course for two reasons: You need the perspective that I’m going to be sharing and you will be able to transfer the perspective to full-on relationships with others.

Now, you’re in relationship with everything … absolutely everything. Wherever you are right now, whether you’re jogging or sitting, you are in relationship with everything in your environment. Even if you don’t know all of what is there. You are in relationship to it. Coming really close to home, we’ll say, you’re in relationship with your body.

So we read last week that …

… the goal is to learn of the holiness of your relationships. We talked mostly here about relationships with your Brothers and Sisters. But because you are in relationship to everything, including your body, what we’re reading about applies there. And that needs to be clearer because there needs to be more healing going on, which isn’t going on because you’re looking at your body and your world and your Brothers and Sisters with faithlessness. You’re looking at it all from your own perspective, un-joined with That which knows the truth … That which knows of your holiness … That which knows that all that exists is the infinite manifestation of and expression of God, your Father/Mother, your Source—That in which you have your Being.

Now, I’m going to back up to the beginning of the last paragraph we read last week:

Well, who’s setting the purpose for the relationship? If it’s you, it’s you practicing faithlessness, it’s you acting independent of your Source, it’s you behaving as though you can function without being plugged in.

The purpose set for your relationship is for you to experience it from faith, in faith, through faith, meaning not confidence you have in the thing you’re in relationship with, but in that state of mind which does not see itself or experience itself as separate from its Source, separate from the Father, separate from the Holy Spirit.

It’s in the joining with your right Mind, which reflects to you the Father’s Purpose and Meaning in everything that you, from faith, cross the border between the two different ways of functioning in the one and only world there is.

It’s that simple.

Now, if …

Then it means that your relationship is set for the experience of being well, the experience of being whole, which will, if you’re coming out of faithlessness, appear to be healing of your body, we’re going to say, or your relationship with your Brother or Sister, or your relationship with your knee or your elbow or your heart or your kidneys. Do you see what I’m saying?

You land in Australia, you rent a car, you drive off. If you see the right-hand lane as anything other than the place for traffic coming from the opposite direction, if you see it as the lane for you to be moving forward in, you are in effect, practicing faithlessness—you’re refusing to be conscious—and you’re going to have an experience [snaps fingers] to bring your attention to reality, to the way things work there. You don’t want to see it all as something else. You don’t want to see your world and universe as something other than the Kingdom of Heaven, because then you’re practicing faithlessness, and substance will be matter, capable of decay and death, instability, undependability—a threat to you and your peace of mind.

But, if you practice faith by insisting upon being joined, then you are where the Father’s laws prevail and you will find substance is Spirit—the Presence, for lack of better words, the energy of God. You know? You’re going to be looking at the same thing, which I’m going to call, substance: One way, through faithlessness, you will see matter. The other way, through faith, you will see Spirit.

Now you aren’t going to see Spirit until you’re willing to put forth the energy and the attention necessary to be present with your body—your knee, your heart, your kidneys, your elbow, joined—joined with the Father. So you see what I’m saying?

It’s necessary to bring the effort forth that’s necessary to look at your body, that which you are in relationship with, and look at it with the Father instead of your best judgments. And I will tell you, that under stress, your best judgments will be your worst judgments. And you will see the result. Your experience of substance will be colored by the vantage point you are using: Faithlessness or faith.

Now, I know that many think that the Course has nothing to do with physical healing. But I will tell you that it has to do with your letting your mind be so filled with the truth, revealed by the Holy Spirit, that your perspective shifts, your attitudes change. The fear you had of substance when you thought it was matter will give place to peace as a result of joining and being in faith. And you will experience Spirit, which is incapable of being flawed, injured, threatened, vulnerable.

Please, do not misunderstand or mistake this. And do not fall back into the lazy attitude that the Course In Miracles has nothing to do with healing.

You know what? When you land in England or Australia, the reason you have problems is because you have preexisting mindsets. You believe that you’re supposed to do things on the opposite lane of the road, on the opposite side of the hall, etcetra.

Now one of the mindsets you all have is, that there is something true about you: You are spiritual, you are a Soul, you are a Spirit even, you might say, and you, as a general rule—the majority—feel that this is eternal. But your body? …uh-uh. Your body is mortal—material. It will die. It is not eternal. That’s a mindset. That is a preexisting mindset that you are bringing with you into your practice of the holy instant. And you must understand that in the practice of the holy instant, you can’t continue to embrace that mindset because that mindset creates a relationship between you and your body as though they’re separate, they’re not identical and that your body really can’t do anything other than grow up, grow old, grow unwell, sicken and die.

You see, that kind of a relationship arises out of faithlessness. And it’s an unhealthy relationship. It’s you standing in a constant state of diminished appreciation for your body. Not only a diminished appreciation, but an increasing fear of it as you “grow older.”

Your body, as I’ve said before, is the visibility and tangibility of your individuality. Your individuality is God-derived. It’s the Presence of God, That which identifies it is as eternal as that individuality is. Because all it is, is that which identifies it, causing it to—your individuality—to be experiencible.

Now, as you cross the border from faithlessness to faith, part of the alertness, part of the attentiveness has to be given to your inclination to shift back to the familiar. And so when you pull out from a gas station in Australia and you’re inclined to make a right turn into the closest lane, something in you has to remember to say, “Stop! [snaps fingers] Don’t do it! That’s not the way (even though that’s what’s familiar). You must turn right into the far lane.” You see?

You must be alert if you want to practice faith and if you want to get in that place where God’s laws prevail, you are going to have to be alert when the idea occurs to you to say, “I can’t depend upon my body. My body is going to rack and ruin. It is going to die sooner or later and it looks like it is going to be sooner.” You’ve got to catch those thoughts so that you don’t turn into that avenue of belief—that rut of belief—and then run into failure at experiencing the holy instant or healing, and then being surprised at it. You see?

So you’ve got to pay attention. And when you begin to doubt your body, when you begin to think that healing is impossible or it’s unreasonable to expect, you’ve got to say—within—“That’s bullshit! I do not accept that!”

You can say, “Raj, has told me that the substance of my body is Spirit, and that my body is the visibility and tangibility of my divine individuality and therefore, it has a divine function that is eternal. And so I am going to refuse to engage further in the thoughts that create great fear in me, even though I’m familiar with them and everyone around me is familiar with them, and reinforce them.” You see?

You’ve got to do something different. That’s what it’s about. And you’ve got to be careful not to carry the old ruts forward, or to try to. Okay.

… you know, being un-joined, that’s what faithlessness means.

… as what?

Now when you read a sentence like this, it sounds as though the real subject is:

… um-m, wow …

You know, as-faith-to-truth—four words. But when you read a sentence like that, take a look at it, because it is saying that faith is closely tied to truth. Faith—engaging in being joined with the Father or the Holy Spirit—is closely tied to truth. That’s why it says that when you practice the holy instant, God’s laws prevail. That’s where God’s laws prevail, because faith is closely tied to truth. Being joined is closely tied, it’s actually inseparable from experiencing the perfection of God’s Creation, which you’re not separate from and no part of you is separate from. You see?

… and I’m going to say, anything.

… your body …

… it’s …

Here’s what it actually says:

Now I’m going to read it with the words for tonight:

Well I’ll tell you something: Your body, being the visibility and tangibility of your individuality, has a dedication from day one—from the moment of Creation—it has a dedication to truth. It is here with the intent and the capacity to identify You perfectly, period. That is its function. It’s function is to identify the Presence of God perfectly.

Now, if you lack faith in it, to fill its part, your dedication is divided. You see? So if your knee or elbow or heart or kidneys or any other part of your body seems to be giving you a problem, you better check to see whether your dedication is divided. What are you bringing to the relationship? “Oh, well it’s just a physical body, and you know, in a few years it’ll die and my Spirit will go on, blah, blah, blah.” Man, that’s a great way to miss out on the fullness of life now, that will always be the fullness of life if you practice faith.

In this case, your body hasn’t been faithless to you, but you are, you have been, until you see and accept that you’re the holy Son or Daughter of God who’s individuality is identified perfectly by this thing called a body, you will practice faithlessness against your body. Your fear of it … your doubt of it, is an attack on it.

Now the simple fact is, that it can’t change your doubt. Your faithlessness practiced cannot stop your body from being the visibility and tangibility of your divine individuality. But it can and it does cause your experience of it to be miserable and it does seem to cause you to go through an experience that has been identified as death—with accompanying suffering. And that’s not your Birthright.

Continuing:

Well, that’s what happens in faith. The holiness of everything goes everywhere with it because you’re paying attention since you’re driving on the left-hand side of the road and you aren’t familiar with how to do it and if you foul up you can have a real problem. You see? But you practice faith and learn to practice it more resolutely and the holiness of its relationship goes with it everywhere.

You know, not just when it’s convenient, not at the end of the day when the kids are in bed or, you know, you’re home from work and your boss isn’t looking over your shoulder … you know. Holiness and faith go hand in hand.

… listen to this:

The way things work governs. And when you’re not fighting the way things work, the way things work …

Kidneys functioning … elbow healed … heart problems gone … knee problems gone.

… not the one you set up but the goal set in place by the Father …

… this is an absolute statement here …

The fulfillment of what? The goal’s reality. The Father’s Will … that’s what it means.

When you don’t get in the way of the goal’s reality, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s a tiny thing or a huge thing it will be gently turned to its use, the use of Reality, the use and purpose of God’s Will.

You see? This isn’t a promise, this is a statement of fact. It’s a statement of fact that governs you constantly. Again:

That’s what it says right here.

How can you interfere? By slipping back into faithlessness. And again, it doesn’t mean you’re not having faith … you’re not having faith … you’re practicing faithlessness. No. It means that you’ve slipped back into faithlessness, which means you’ve slipped back into doing your own thinking. You’ve slipped back into an independent rut that you’re familiar with and you’re going to try and deal with life from that independent place where you refuse to be joined—you refuse to take the time to be joined—which constitutes faith and places you in that place where God’s laws prevail. You see?

It’s really simple and it’s really clear. It’s getting simpler. The truth is becoming more compelling.

It’s that in which God’s laws prevail. It’s that in which your sanity returns to you. It’s that in which you’re vulnerability and your mortality disappear, replaced by a new perspective that doesn’t call fear and guilt into play and undoes all that fear and guilt seemed to cause.

I’m going to read this again:

Again: If you choose to love to think for yourself, to love to make definitions, to love to come to conclusions, to love to figure out how to manipulate your Brothers and Sisters in the world to make you better and better even if it cost you everything in your world drastically.

… if you would use privacy … if you would use independence … if you would use autonomy … if you would use private authority instead.

It’s clear isn’t it. You are to expect to see God’s laws prevailing right here! Right now! With everything you’re in relationship with, including your body. And the holiness of your relationship is what you are destined to Wake up to and what you are called upon to let in, and which you are to prepare your mind to experience by refusing to practice the habits of faithlessness that keep you bound.

God’s laws prevailing are a here and now event, which you must all stop refusing to let in by consciously and conscientiously giving your attention elsewhere.

Remember, Waking up is what we could call a translation of perception, where the one and only world which can be looked at from two different vantage points is looked at from the only one that’s true … the lens … the lens of faith and the absence of faithlessness.

I love you all. Let it be a good week, because it will be, whether you let it in or not.

Okay.