Table of Contents
Good evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.
Well, from the West Coast of the United States, we are in the last few hours of Easter Sunday. And So I can still take the opportunity, legitimately, to wish everyone a Happy Easter. And of course, what will make Easter happiest this year is for everyone to get the point. Because when everyone gets the point, they will Wake up. And the whole reason for my having come will be fulfilled.
I’m going to suggest tonight, that few of you know why I came. At least it hasn’t occurred to you in the context that I’m going to speak about it tonight.
Because the reason I came was to undo a misunderstanding—a misunderstanding that arose out of your having decided to look at things whatever way you chose to look at them and to abandon the Father’s Perspective. And as we’ve discussed, when you did that and made commitment to it with a Brother or Sister so that the two of you were committed to it, something happened that was unexpected.
Suddenly, the infinite perspective that you had had available to you was lost in a very tiny limited perspective associated with what you call, “your body,” which prior to this commitment, had simply been an essential and integral part of all of Creation. Because absolutely everything created is identifiable, whether it is identifiable as a leaf or a body, it’s identifiable. There is visibility and tangibility. There is experience-ability of each created thing.
And so, indeed, there was that which specifically identified you but it was an integral part of the infinity of that which identified everything.
Now you decided to get a divorce from your Father. You decided you wanted to look at things your way. You wanted to be the determiner of the meaning of everything and you and a partner engaged in it and suddenly lost the infinite view … found yourself experiencing yourself as limited to this form.
And as we’ve discussed, fear and guilt came into the picture because there had to be something to say, “Don’t do this.” There had to be something built in to the sanity of your Being that said, “Although you can attempt to do this, don’t do it, because it’s not in harmony with your Being. It’s not in harmony with the way things work. It’s bound to cause you to lose the experience of your integrity, and therefore your soundness, your stability, your grounded invulnerability—you’re bound to lose it and so, don’t proceed any further.” You see?
There’s a built-in factor in you that says, “try to do the impossible and you will get feedback so that you will not waste your time doing it.” But you wasted your time doing it and you became, in your own mind, identified with your body and you identified yourself as a body and you had to use your body to create an environment in which you weren’t overwhelmed by the fear and the guilt you were feeling.
And so you had to use your body—you thought—for self-protection.
Now, whoever you partnered with in moving into this delusion, he or she also had to come to this same conclusion. And so you, together, became wary partners, untrusting, because it was impossible for you to determine what was really threatening—what was really creating the feeling of fear and guilt.
So you and your partner and others who joined you in this state of affairs, began to create mutual agreements. And in the process of making mutual agreements, you saw to it—all of you saw to it—that in the agreements you made, your integrity was protected … your validity was protected, or the environment in which to substantiate your validity was secure enough to allow you to work on securing your stability.
And so, you know what happened? Judgments came into play: Whose value was greater? Judgments about value or valuelessness came into play … greater value, lesser value … those with a skill to assert authority more than others became more important. You see?
Now something happened in this process: You began to see the body as an object. And since you identified yourself with the body, you saw yourself as an object and you saw everyone else as objects. And you know what? As objects, you could be purchased and sold. You could be owned. You could be possessed and governed depending upon your “status” and whether you, in a subservient role, found a way to oppose it and win so that you could free yourself, you see?
Now what you don’t realize … what you haven’t thought about is, that on Christmas morning, what happened on your globe was Something, Someone arrived to challenge the theory of evolution—to challenge Darwinism.1
Now, you might say Darwin didn’t even exist then, he hadn’t developed his theory yet. No. But everyone already knew the structures, everyone already knew what Darwin simply crystallized into an explanation which he saw as governing life in time: Survival of the fittest. You see? But any slave owner two thousand years ago, was already living Darwin’s theory, was already demonstrating it.
And so now you realize, that when you got your divorce from the Father, when you said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way,” you created the Darwinian state.
We haven’t talked about it like that before. But what can make it evident to you is that in the process of transitioning from the infinite view to the finite view, from being the Father’s Son or Daughter to being an orphan, the body became the all-important thing. And it became an object of definition. And it became an object of ownership. And Moses undid that ownership for the Jews. But mankind and including the Jews after that, continued to function as those who were divorced from the Father. They were still behaving as orphans.
And so I arrived, and I taught and I demonstrated the Truth. And then the time came when a crucifixion happened, and although I didn’t say it in the Garden of Gethsemane (as has been reported that I did) the statement does bear some value: “Father, if You will, please let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless, Thy Will be Done.” 2
I never said that because I never lost the faith. I never lost the Perspective of Who I was as the Father expressed—as the Father expressing in that moment. But it does demonstrate what everyone has to come to in terms of an act of their own where they do the two-step, where they involve themselves in the holy instant.
At the end of this lifetime, between Christmas and Easter, I demonstrated that life is deathless. I demonstrated, that although a crucifixion seemed to occur and although a body seemed to die and be placed in a tomb, that body emerged. Why?
Because it demonstrated the statement from the Course, “I am not a body.” 3 You may have thought I was, you may have thought a body was crucified, you may have thought a body died, but hey everyone … look! I did not die!
I am not a body. Even though there is that which identifies me, I’m not it! It is not what I am! I’m not participating and I haven’t been participating in the dream of separation from God—of having gotten a divorce from the Father and said, “I would rather see things my way.” You see? I never joined anyone in that.
And so, this demonstration of the fact that I am not a body of the sort you have identified me as, and of the sort that you think you are, I am not a body, I am still free to be as God created me. Or we could even say, as God is Being me at this very moment after the period of three days in the sepulcher. You see?
My disciples and those who had listened to my teachings had the opportunity to realize that this demonstration: That I am not a body was a demonstration that they were not a body … even though they’re visible and tangible and identifiable. And that therefore, their existence is eternal—deathless. And they don’t need to go through this process called “death.” You see?
My life undid the idea that Being is a matter of a body going through a series of linear experiences from a starting point to an ending point and in the process, having to survive against unreasonable and overwhelming odds that nobody wins.
Be with that for just a moment …
Let’s go into the book: A new section
I Need do Nothing4
You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength.
Even though we have been talking a number of weeks about what the body is, and what its function is. And the fact that there is a need for a transition from body identification to Mind identification in which the conscious experience of body is occurring along with all the rest of Creation and that what Mind is experiencing as body and Creation are the infinite ideas that God is consciously experiencing eternally and which therefore, because your very being is the embodiment of His, your existence is an existence of feeling and recognizing and experiencing ideas. Even though once you got the divorce from the Father and determined what everything was, you determined that the body was material along with all of the rest of Creation, and that it was something which developed, became more than it was, and that whatever was dominant took over: the survival of the fittest. So …
You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means you still find sin attractive.
See, there we go [chuckle]. It accuses you of something that you have no idea how it could be true or how it could have happened. But you see, the only sin there is, is the misidentification of you by you. And when you say, “Father, I want a divorce, I want to see things my way. I want to do things my way. I want to determine what the meaning of what everything is, and what the rules are that govern everything…” you do that, you’re missing the mark. You are denying the very essence of your Being and you’re therefore existing in a state of self-denial and in a state of denial about the Kingdom of Heaven because you and your Brothers and Sisters have determined that It’s a material, physical universe where chaos prevails but somehow, it manages to … um … move in such a way as to cause forward movement in the development of the species. You see? And so it’s redeemed from its chaos by some unknown factor which causes chaos to become constructive.
Now to believe that, to practice it, is sin because you’re in a state of Self-denial.
Now the fact is, you can practice Self-denial and you can practice it forever. And you can exist in pain and suffering and everything negative without causing yourself to cease to be. Because all you’re doing is overlaying what you divinely Are with an imagination that isn’t true. But as long as you’re doing that, you are doing what the word, “sin” means.
When you love the challenge of overcoming fear and guilt, your attention and your intent certainly isn’t expressed as a way of glorifying God … is it? It’s not expressed as a way of manifesting and acknowledging and expressing your divinity… is it? No. If you’re doing something other than that, then you are engaging in nonsense. And if you are believing that the nonsense is meaningful, then you are in a state of sin—something to abandon.
No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal.
You know … practicing the survival of the fittest: Anyone who’s caught up in that is not one who accepts Atonement for himself, because Atonement is a word that defines you yielding to the Father—you practicing willingness to be directed, rather than being the authority yourself. It’s you deciding to abandon your independence so that you might fit in with and cooperate with the Movement of God and let that Movement be what finds expression through you in the world.
Now that’s the opposite of the practice of the survival of the fittest.
You have thus not met your ONE responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction …
… and the survival of the fittest as a theme—as a purpose in life—is what someone who prefers pain and destruction engages in.
Now …
You have made much progress and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body.
If you stop and think about it, you take care of it all day long. Your attention is on it one way or another. You say, you’re driving to the store … but if there’s a little discomfort in the seat of your pants, you shift your position to become comfortable. You attend to your body constantly for its comfort.
It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared.
And let’s understand something here: We’re not talking about it disappearing because it’s an illusion. We’re talking about the fact that it hasn’t disappeared from your mind as that which secures your safety and which you must ever be ready to utilize it for, to secure your safety. It’s never faded from your mind because it’s your bottom-line protection. You may think that your mind is what saves you, but if your mind doesn’t clarify things for your Brother so that your Brother stops threatening you, then you know your body is the last resort.
It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared.
You can see that the only time that it would ever disappear, the only time it’s survival of the fittest function could disappear, is if you felt utterly safe.
You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant …
… the holy instant …
… that the miracle of Atonement happens.
The holy instant is that experience which results from your ceasing thinking and energizing your definitions of everything and saying, “Separate and apart from my best judgments, my pet theories and what’s important to me, ‘Father, what is the truth here? I wish to abandon my independence and join with You and have You enlighten me as to what is Real so that I might respond in a manner that fits the occasion’” … the occasion being, a moment in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Afterwards, you will see the body again, but never quite the same.
Meaning, you will slip back into using your body for your self-protection. And therefore as the means you utilize to keep yourself from being in touch with the Father and experiencing His healing Perspective.
And every instant that you spend WITHOUT awareness of it …
… the body …
… gives you a different view of it when you return .
Now whenever Paul is letting me speak … like right now, he is not aware of his body, meaning, that his attention isn’t on it for the purpose of being prepared to defend himself if something should happen that threatens him. Because when he is in this space joined with me, just as when you are in the space you’re in when you are joined with your Guide, body identification isn’t happening. It’s that simple. And as you can see, his body hasn’t disappeared. And as he speaks, his lips move, his hands move, all in service of the expression of the truth that he is allowing through him. You see?
Now here’s a startling statement:
At no single instant does the body exist at all.
These words have a very “tight” meaning … very narrow meaning …
At no single instant does the body exist at all.
In the holy instant, the body as a means of defense, and the body as your identity does not exist in the holy instant—in that place where you have abandoned time. This is important!
At no single instant does the body exist at all.
Let’s be even more clear:
At no single instant does the body …
… as you have defined it …
… exist at all.
It therefore does not function as a defense or an identity. That’s what it means. As a defense or an identity it does not exist at all in the holy instant. One of the reasons is, that in the holy instant fear and guilt are absent and there is no call for self-protection. Without the call, you are free to experience how everything appears and what it’s Meaning is because there is a purity of your attention, a holiness—a wholeness—of your attention that doesn’t screen out any part of the Kingdom of Heaven.
At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just NOW.
Your salvation lies in your willingness to be present in the NOW. Because that’s where you can experience Being without a call for defense which allows your definitions of your body to fade from your mind because there’s no use for them, at least for that instant. Do you see?
Only its past and future make it seem real …
… the definition of body you’ve given.
Only its past …
… what’s happened to it before …
And [its] future …
… what’s likely to happen tomorrow …
… make it seem real. Time controls it entirely…
… you see? And time is where evolution occurs … you see?
So I was correcting … and the Course is correcting Darwinian concepts and theories—corrected them before Darwin congealed them. And everyone else said, “Wow! We would like to agree with your definitions here that finally explain to us what the state of orphanhood is.” You see? And the mutual agreement took over as law—as fact—unchallengeable.
Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present.
Sin is never present in the holy instant.
In any single instant, the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else, and would be avoided.
And I would add: Would be simply avoided. You see? No contest. Without guilt and fear present and the accompanying attraction, pain would be avoided.
It has no attraction NOW.
You see? It has no attraction in the holy instant. It has no attraction in the moment, if you let your attention be present in the moment without distraction.
Its whole attraction is imaginary, and therefore MUST be thought of in the past or in the future.
… when you move into a dreamy state of imagination. But when you’re in a clear state of attention now, it’s nowhere to be found and there is no effect to it.
It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless, just for an instant, you are willing to see NO past or future. You cannot prepare for it WITHOUT placing it in the future.
You can only prepare for something you’re anticipating.
Release is given you the instant you desire it.
Not the month you desire it, not the one year that you’re going to desire it because you’ve developed a one year plan. No.
Release is given you the instant you desire it.
The instant you’re present in the moment and desire it.
Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it does aim at SAVING time.
This is important.
Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but …
… here’s what it offers …
… it does aim at SAVING time.
In this process of learning what the Course is teaching and practicing the holy instant …
You are attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin.
That’s not the answer. You see? The agreement to overcome fear and guilt, which are present because sin is being engaged in, is not the way out of the orphanage. It is to withdraw your attention from the fear and the guilt. To do the two-step, which is to back off, become still and secondly, ask “Father, Holy Spirit, what is the truth here?” That’s what works. Not fighting against sin.
Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts …
… listen to this, because it’s not discounting them.
All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.
A now experience of a now definition—a now meaning that you’re employing and validating and governing yourself according to.
Your way …
… our way with the Course.
Your way will be different, not in purpose, but in means. A holy relationship is a means of SAVING TIME.
You see? Years of meditation and contemplation done in a cave or in a sanctuary of some sort, is something that you can engage in alone. You know what? Aloneness does not prompt you to bring your attention into the moment, not like a relationship does. Nothing, no commitment to anything other than a partnership with a conscious intent, can bring your attention specifically and only into the moment with the least amount of defendedness.
If you join with another for the purpose of having a holy relationship, which means that the two of you choose to be together and to relate to each other only after each one of you individually has turned to the Father and said, “Father, what is the truth about my partner?” That that is when you relate to each other on the basis of the infilling of truth and clarity that the Father provides to you about your partner. That causes you to not be vague in any way. It truly brings your attention into the moment you’re in with a specific desire of the Father to see your Brother or Sister truly. That’s what shortens time. Because that’s what brings your attention out of time into the moment you’re in with love as the motive. You see? It’s so simple. And it’s so beneficent in its function.
One instant spent TOGETHER restores the universe to BOTH of you.
You see? Something that meditating for a lifetime cannot as effectively do. You see?
You ARE prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do NOTHING.
What does that mean? Well, when you got your divorce from the Father, when you said, “I’m going to determine what things are and I’m going to believe what I and my Brother have decided are true,” the first thing that you were prompted about was to do something, to overcome and cope with fear and guilt. And what did you have available to yourself to use for that purpose? Why … your body. And so you did. You needed to do, and so you did.
And the undoing of the constant affirmation of your divorce from your Father occurs when you’re willing to do the two-step and join with the Father or the Holy Spirit with a genuine desire to know the truth about this one you’re in relationship with. You see?
In doing the two-step, in backing off, so to speak, from engaging in doing for or against your partner, you stop engaging your mind and your body in defense. And in the absence of the practice of defense you are abandoning the definitions, or you are abandoning the commitment to the definitions you have given about your body and you’re willing to be defenseless. In other words, you’re willing to be present with your partner, weaponless. You see? Which means you’re engaged in doing nothing that before practicing the holy instant, you would have been engaging in, and which would have kept you ignorant.
Now you need but to remember you need do NOTHING. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you SHOULD do.
Or: What you SHOULD DO.
When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just one happy realization; “I need do nothing.”
Anyone who has practiced meditation knows that with it’s regular practice even for only twenty minutes, twice a day, you move in that twenty minutes into a place where fear is absent and peace is present. And it is even reflected in your body as the dropping of high blood pressure, the balancing of the systems, because peace is where your attention is.
Doing nothing and being in the silence, not exercising your so-called capacity to think for yourself, is what leads to the influx of truth together with an inseparable pair—Love and Peace.
Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time.
But listen … I’m saying, but listen … and I’m continuing:
We do not need this time.
You do not need to wait so that it happens at your own time. You don’t need to rely on time, you don’t need to employ time. If you want to, then go sit in a cave and meditate for ten years, twenty, forty. But:
We do not need this time.
Why? Because you have someone with whom you can join in a holy relationship through the individual practice together of the holy instant.
Time has been saved for you because you are together.
You’re not doing this alone. You’re doing it in a way that causes great focus, simple focus to occur.
This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for YOU.
What was made for you? The Course … A Course In Miracles. Also what is made for you? Is, the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The guidance of that which is nothing more than your right Mind, already present with you, already being your right Mind even though you are employing a mental activity which doesn’t reflect the existence of the Holy Spirit, of your right Mind. So:
Save time for me …
… and I’m going to add: And for yourself …
… by only this ONE preparation, and practice doing nothing else.
Christmas was the introduction of this idea. And Easter was the completion, the full demonstration of this.
“I need do nothing” is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty.
Loyalty to what? The moment you are in with one that you intend to have a holy relationship with, which causes you only to be in relationship with him or her by means of asking first of the Father, “What is the truth here? What do I need to know? What needs to be done?” so that the answer can be the basis of what you do with your partner that reflects holiness, healing, transformation, atonement.
Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation.
Can you imagine?
Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation…
This means, the means of being in a holy relationship with another saves that kind of time and promotes your Awakening with far greater rapidity and it helps to tip the first domino that causes the transformation to spontaneously occur with Brothers and Sisters who are very close to yielding completely into the moment.
To DO anything involves the body.
Survival of the fittest again, control, manipulation … you know, finding a place on the ladder of good, better, best, bested … right?
To DO anything involves the body. And if you recognize you NEED do nothing, you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind.
In other words, you’ve withdrawn the significant meanings that you have faith in that you created about what your body is and on the basis of which you act in the world.
Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and escape from time.
The only place where evolution can seem to occur and justify all that embodies the survival of the fittest.
This is the way in which sin loses all attraction RIGHT NOW.
Not in the future.
For here is time denied, and past and future gone.
It’s true. Any of you who have meditated and simply moved into the state of peace, know that time has disappeared, past and future are gone, that which was causing fear is no longer fearsome. And in fact, if you stay in that peaceful space, you can consider what had been fearsome before you started meditating, and hear that which will resolve the fearsomeness because you are in your peace, able to see what works to bring about harmony and remove what your unclear mind had seen as an impossible threat. This is simple, but it is important.
Who need do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit …
… that which is nothing more than your right Mind …
… comes, and there abides. He will remain when you forget, and the body’s activities return to occupy your conscious mind.
Again, the definitions of your body that you have employed for the purpose of keeping yourself safe, of being the fittest under the circumstance, whatever the circumstance might be.
Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return.
The thing is, you have to remember to return. Because your habit is to engage in the seductive suggestion that you have reason to be proud if you can survive and be the fittest. You see?
[Yet] there will always be this place of rest to which you can return.
If you remember to return.
And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity.
In other words, the storm may not go away while you are shifting your attention from survival to centeredness and the peace of your Being that is ever present with you. The raging activity will not hook you and upset you so you can see what to do, what fits in the face of the raging activity, and you can behave from peace with unscattered intelligence that is revealed to you.
This quiet center, in which you do nothing…
… of the sort that you had conditioned yourself to engage in for self-protection.
This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent.
Did you catch that?
This quiet center… will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent.
Well, wait a minute, I thought this section said, “I need do nothing,” um … and your body is supposed to disappear.
This quiet center… will remain with you, giving you rest [peace] in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent.
Ah-h … yes, you’re asking, “Father, what is the truth here? What do I need to know?” And in that innocent attentiveness, the Father, the Holy Spirit reveals the truth to you. And just as Paul knows how to move his lips right now and put his hands in this position, it is not because his attention is being given to his body doing something, but because he is …
… in the midst of busy doing on which he has been sent.
You see? You will know what to be. You will know what to do. And indeed, as I’ve been reading here in this section which says “I need do nothing,” you may be saying, “Wait a minute, there’s another place in the Course that says, ‘Listen, learn and do.’ That doesn’t make sense, that’s inconsistent.” No. Do the two-step: Meaning, become still and ask, “What is the truth here?” That’s … listen. Then comes the influx … learn. And in the learning of what the truth is, one knows how to be, or one knows how to do. You see? But it’s not a doing that arises out of the concept that the body is here to do things to protect you and to control others. You see?
So when you listen, you will be given busy doing to do. You will be sent on busy doing. Again, let me read the sentence:
This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you…
… no matter what’s going on …
… giving you rest …
… and I’m adding the word “peace,” . .
… in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent.
And for which you must obviously need to have something that identifies your presence, renders it visible, experienceable, so that the doing, the being, can be what happens.
For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly.
You hear that? It doesn’t say, “For from this center will you discover that you don’t have a body, because it’s an illusion.” No.
[For] from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly.
In other words, not as part of the Darwinian system of “survival of the fittest.” You see? That’s not sinless activity of the body. That’s not using the body sinlessly.
[For] from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly.
So be sure that you are willing to embrace the body as something holy with a function that identifies holiness.
It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.
Listen again:
It is this center…
… of peace and the holy instant where God’s laws prevail.
It is this center, from which the body …
… you have concocted, is absent. It is from this center that a body used for self-defense and control …
… is absent, that will keep it so …
… that will keep it in its sinless state …
… in your awareness of it.
I think everyone can agree that you are in a time which calls for bodily activity that is sinless. It is a time for the understanding of what the body is to be released from the theory of the “survival of the fittest,” of domination, of slave and owner mentalities and everything that accompanies that, so that relationships in families, in communities, in countries and between countries can be moved by and transformed by holiness, sinlessness, that it is everyone’s right … that it is everyone’s Birthright to be able to employ and experience to be blessed by and to bless by.
Happy Easter.
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