Teachings of Christ Mind

Welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.

I’m going to talk about something important tonight, not necessarily anything new. Something we’ve been discussing for quite awhile, which I know the majority of those listening are finding to be more significant and more demanding than you might have thought.

Now I want to back up to the account of Creation, to the point at which Adam and Eve were created and were told not to eat of the fruit of the Knowledge of good and evil. And they ate of the fruit.

Now this has been called an allegory but it has been taken literally. It is almost impossible for anyone familiar with the Bible to not feel that there were a man and a woman in the Garden of Eden—the realm of perfection—who were disobedient to God and ate some fruit. But that wasn’t the disobedience, that wasn’t the thing that caused the fall.

Literally, the thing that caused the fall was that the two of them made a decision. The two of them made a decision.

Now, let’s take a look at this: God did not give man the capacity to make decisions. That is not the way the Being of God manifesting as Creation, including mankind, functions. We’ve talked about this, we referred to the fall as being when two or more brothers or sisters—Sons or Daughters of God decided to act independently. Literally, that means they decided to make decisions for themselves without referring to their Father, without being joined, which, of course, is impossible.

That which is the Expression of God cannot become disjoined from Him. And so, that never happened, not as a fact. But a decision was made to act on the basis of thought processes which never arose out of the inspiration and revelation that is the movement of the Mind of God that it is mankind’s function to experience as the Father is Expressing and Being it and reflecting back to the Father the acknowledgment of His action—the crediting, you might say, of the Father with what the Sons and Daughters of God are experiencing.

In other words, it is the function of the Sons and Daughters of God to bear witness to the Father, breaking that mode of Being, which is the result of being still, joining, listening, hearing and acknowledging, that the abandonment of that amounted to a decision to act independently. And it didn’t matter whether they ate fruit or killed animals to eat and pretend that they were living off of the protein and so on, it doesn’t matter what the acts were, it’s the fact that they chose to do something they weren’t given the capacity to do—make decisions independently.

Now, we know from months and months and months of my talking about it and from anyone reading the Course to any extent, that the moment a divorce was believed to have occurred from the Father, those who got the divorce moved into the realm of imagination. Whatever they imagined a thing to be, that’s what they said it was, and that’s what they decided it was, and that’s what they based all of their thinking on.

This pretension of independence, believe it or not, is hard work. Because it denies the very nature of one’s Being, which is to be inseparably, eternally joined with the Father as the Father’s Expression, bearing witness to the Father because they’re paying attention to what the Father is Being, and not to what they wanted to decide everything was and what the meaning was.

This takes effort because it’s an act of Self-denial.

This is important.

The effort is not a comfortable experience. And so there is an ever present dissonance which everyone is trying to get away from. The only thing is, everyone is trying to get away from it by virtue of even more independent thinking and reasoning and use of logic and still being unjoined, divorced from their Source. Again, an impossible thing.

Now that’s the experience. The experience seems to be one of struggle as though it’s difficult to deny one’s Source.

But what I want to point out is, that the struggle is caused by the presence of the Holy Spirit which, for the first time, has been described as “that which is nothing more than your right Mind” in the book A Course in Miracles. This is the first time that has found expression and it’s a key point.

The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind. It is that of you which is held in trust while you’re in a state of denying it. But it isn’t just idly, patiently abiding in the background while you have fun being independently, imaginatively creative.

You must understand that if you attempt to deny the majority of your Being, the majority of your Being that is being excluded from your awareness by your willfulness, is going to feel like pressure to you because it is going to and it always has been insisting upon registering with you and Waking you up!

This is important to understand. Because it means that you are constantly partnered with, by That of you which you are in a constant state of denying. And this partner with you—which is nothing more than the rest of your right Mind—is the presence of Love constantly undermining your willfulness, constantly being your Teacher, constantly supporting your being shaken out of your intent to continue to think independently and define everything yourself without ever saying, “Father,” or “Holy Spirit, what is the truth here? What is the more of what God is Being right here than what I’m seeing?”

You are constantly companioned with, by that of you which is your holiness which is holding in trust the Father’s Perspective of Creation and of You and the correct Perspective of your Brothers and Sisters which it is your Birthright to be experiencing and blessing your brothers and sisters with, by the acknowledgement of their divinity as well.

Now, because it’s believed that there’s a trinity—an actual separation of three different elements—it seems to you even though you are a student of the Course that the Holy Spirit is something separate with Whom you can communicate and Who is willing to be your Helper to reunite you with the Father.

What is not clear to you and which must become clear is the fact that the Holy Spirit is the rest of you. It is the rest of your infinite conscious awareness which you’re not connecting with because you’re engaging in private, personal, willful activity that’s unjoined with that which is Universal, that which is divine.

And so, in the belief there is an actual Trinity, you do not realize that in practicing the two-step, in practicing the holy instant, you are letting all of what you really Are back into your conscious awareness. You are letting It’s constant intent to insinuate your Sanity back into your mind—you’re allowing that to happen.

But in order to do that, you must stop thinking independently. You must become still, you must reach out with a constant … with a conscious act of joining, of abandoning privacy, and want to know what is the truth here, where I am seeing an unholy, ungodly mess called my world or my personal relationships, and so on.

Well, so many of you say, “there are only a few who are able to hear the Holy Spirit or hear the Christ, and so I must depend on them and I’m just going to have to be satisfied with the fact that I can’t do it.”

Well, congratulations! You’ve just engaged in a decision. You’ve taken an idea, you’ve stated it, you’ve stated it as a fact, you’ve accepted it and you have succumbed to it. And of course, you’re not going to hear anything.

But here’s the point. It’s time for everyone to Wake up out of the illusion of privacy, independence and some incredible capacity to imaginatively be as creative as anything could be. Because as a mortal—as a human being—you have this capacity and the truth that’s being revealed is that you do NOT have that capacity and you are suffering from practicing it as though it’s real.

The holy instant is the silence in the very essence of you in which you abandon your confidence in your little private self-hood and what it can accomplish and in the genuine absence of that you lean into an Answer that you don’t yet have. And you lean into it with commitment because you, for some intelligent reason, have decided that you want to break the habit of mortality. You want to break the habit of being miserable, of sinning, getting sick and dying!

Now, just as I said with Adam and Eve, it didn’t matter what act they engaged in, as long as the act was based on a decision that constituted an independent act.

Well, in terms of Waking up—in terms of the practice of the holy instant—it doesn’t matter what you’re doing: washing dishes, washing your car, repairing your car, weeding the garden, feeding the hummingbirds … it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. If you decide not to do it alone, you are engaged in the process of Waking up. You are engaged in refraining from being independent and beginning to value and enjoy the desire to not be alone, to be joined with that which represents God—which is nothing more than your right Mind—which is ever available to you, which has been companioning with you and is insisting upon registering with you because your Sanity is actually irrevocable and although you’re not experiencing it, it is not gone.

And so, what needs to be understood is, that although you go through your day without doing hardly anything joined, you just act and behave on the basis of what you were raised to believe, and you may even be acting with very stern and strict, I will say, postulates—principles—that were handed down to you by strict parents or by a society which was very confined to principled behavior. And it’s time for you to abandon that.

I will tell you, if you are not listening and if you are not hearing, then everything you are doing is being done in your imagination—everything is being defined by what you have imagined, or by what the imaginations of others were that were taught to you. And you are not connected in that place where the Revelation of truth and healing and invulnerability and eternality are present for you to regain the experience of.

You can see from what I’m saying that what is called for and what the ultimate issue that the Course is teaching, is that every moment of your day should be intended by you to be engaged in with someone else. I don’t mean family. I don’t mean brothers and sisters here. I mean by the Holy Spirit or by joining with me or by consciously reaching out to the Father because if you’re not joined, no matter what you’re dealing with, it’s being dealt with through illusion—imagination that isn’t based on fact.

So, the practice of the holy instant is ultimately important. It needs to be brought into play constantly. You need to arrive at the point where you’re going through your day knowing that you’re not alone and reaching out for the experience of communion. And even if you are not succeeding at it initially … persist.

You might even have to just go through your day and every ten or fifteen minutes or more often ask, “Are you there Holy Spirit?” “Are you there Jesus?” “Are you there my Guide?” As I check out in the grocery store, “Are you here with me? Are we doing this together?” The simple reminder that it is supposed to be an experience of being joined—of not being alone—will help promote your hearing. But you’ve got to know that’s the point. And that’s what I’m needing to refresh tonight before we continue on through the book.

Love is constantly present with you, tapping you on the shoulder, as it were, to say, “Move this way, move that way, say this, say that, here’s how it really is,” teaching you, guiding you, in ways that have one result: healing, wholeizing—the returning of your Sanity by the acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s Perspective because it is nothing more than your true Perspective which you’ve been ignoring as long as you’ve been choosing to use your own definitions about how things work. Now, you’re not used to doing this. You’re not used to the idea of not going through your day outside of the privacy of your own thoughts and your own decisions and your own conclusions, etc.—your own interpretations. You’re not used to that. And so it feels like an impossible change, something that’s going to be really hard.

Well, if you’re going to be genuine in the desire to join, if you’re going to genuinely engage in the holy instant, you are going to have to bring a level of faith into it. You are going to have to bring, for lack of better words, a certain determination into play. And it’s going to feel like you’re doing it all by yourself, because you aren’t going to be relying on the way everyone else sees things. You’re not going to be relying on what you’ve been taught everything is. And you’re going to be moving into a space where what you’re not familiar with can be revealed to you.

You’re going to have to lean into a new experience of being conscious that will only register with you when you engage in a conscious choice to not do anything or believe anything or engage in private thinking about anything. And you join because you want to know the truth that the Holy Spirit or the Father or Jesus can give you.

Your conditioning, your definitions—the meanings you give, tell you that you’re not likely going to be able to succeed because it is so radically different and you have no means of justifying it yet. That is where the determination and the commitment must come into play so that you engage in what doesn’t make sense to your imaginative private mind. Because that’s the only way you will step outside of memory and the bondage of rules and behaviors that cannot change.

The Holy Spirit—the Presence of Love that companions with you, is willing to make things so clear to you that all it takes is a little willingness on your part. It’s true. But at the moment you’re quite conditioned to believe what you believe and to believe you do not have a means or a way of becoming quiet enough to let an entirely new perspective register with you. But that is nothing more than conditioned thinking—a habit of thought which you validate because you’re more familiar with it even though it doesn’t work!

You need to know how wonderfully supported you are, how constantly supported you are. And you must bring, as I’ve said, an act of faith into relinquishing your confidence in what you believe, and for lack of better words, asking the Holy Spirit for a better belief, we’ll say, for a perspective that more closely approximates what is utterly divinely true about you, about Creation and about everything that you’re experiencing.

In other words, you must want to know the truth that you don’t know yet, and that you have no means on your own of discovering. I’m talking about going through your day wanting to know the divine truth about everything you’re experiencing. You’re well familiar with the lousy interpretation your imagination and your conditioning is giving to everything you’re experiencing.

And yet, as I’ve said before, Reality is the only thing confronting you, which you’re either seeing clearly or through a glass darkly. You’re either seeing clearly because you decided to join and inquire as to what the truth is, or you’re seeing through a glass darkly¹ because you have abandoned the avenue of revelation that’s available to you, and instead you’re using your own best judgments and the skills you think you have that no one ever gave you. You see?

The task is to go through your day as consistently as possible wanting to know the truth—the divine Reality of everything you’re confronted with and you need to know that on your own you can’t possibly know. And therefore, there is no benefit in trying to figure everything out yourself no matter how creative you are, or think you are.

Un-joined means not Awake—unconscious of what the Reality of everything is that you’re experiencing. Joined puts you at the threshold of the awareness of truth that it’s your Birthright to be experiencing in the absence of any call for decisions—private decisions—of your own. This should be a joyous thing to engage in, even though it isn’t initially.

I’m here to encourage you to bring the desire to look at everything and experience everything with the Holy Spirit, asking for the Holy Spirit’s Perspective, which is truly your divine perspective and recognizing that this is the only way you will get out of the prison of the misperception of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is the only thing confronting you.

The simplest way for this to have meaning for you is, that if you will at the least assume that there is a God and that God is omnipotent and that you are His Expression and the Kingdom of Heaven, Reality—whatever the words, “Garden of Eden” originally meant—if you recognize that because God is omnipotent there must be available to you a different experience than the one you’re having, it will be easier for you to want to have the experience of truth. And for it to be a practical enough understanding, we’ll say, of the need that you’re willing to want it as consistently and as permanently as possible, so that you bring, I’m going to call it, a determined willingness, which is different from willfulness, so that you bring a determined willingness into play to hear the Voice for Truth and to no longer rely upon whatever goes through your mind when you’re not joined. You see?

Now we will continue moving through the book, A Course In Miracles. But no matter how much more you read, at the bottom line, it’s going to come down to the call for you to yield whatever pride you have in your own capacity to do things independently, and in humility and the absence of your trying to be something special, you want to know the truth.

You want to know the truth that you can’t possibly arrive at through the use of imagination, and you can only arrive at in the willingness to be so joined with your right Mind that you find yourself joined irrevocably with the Father and you are able to experience everything and recognize, actually recognize God in what you’re experiencing so that you are able to bear witness to Him, which is your part of the act of Creation.

I am inviting everyone not to get so hung up on the words in the Course or the concepts in the Course, that you can think about and discuss them at length, very intelligently, but neglect to do the one essential thing, which is to “shut up!” to become still, and engage in rejoining, abolishing the divorce from the Father that you and a brother or sister initiated at some point. You see?

You know, when a crisis arises, when something happens that is, I will say, major, and to you it is overwhelming because you know you have no way whatsoever to cope with it, then you will practice the holy instant. Then you will engage in the two-step. You will silence your imagination. You will refuse to scare yourself to death and exacerbate the problem. And in the silence of the absence of your best judgments, you will reach out, you will lean into the Holy Spirit. You will lean into the disclosure of what is True, and you will be healed. The problem will be resolved, because you lost faith entirely in your private, personal capacity to cope.

Now, I am here to constantly remind you that you don’t have to wait until some major experience that overwhelms your imagined capacity to cope. You can just simply abandon it at any moment, without any good reason other than that you, knowing that there is Truth beyond what you’re experiencing, want to know what it Is.

And so you bring the wanting into play, constantly providing an energy, an atmosphere of humility and willingness, an invitation that you’re not blocking. It may feel to you as though everything will collapse. What I want you to know is that in your acts of independence everything has collapsed. Things aren’t that great. You’re not experiencing healing and transformation even though you study the Course or any other religious or spiritual teaching—and you believe that it’s possible.

You can lean into the actuality of it on purpose by wanting to know the Truth that goes beyond the most imaginative perfection that you might be able to come up with, and you want to experience it because It is the Expression of an eternal God, where there is no variableness, where what God Is, is constantly moving into Expression and nothing else. Want that and remember to want it no matter what you’re engaged in.

Everything … everything that is true is intent upon registering with you. Because everything that is true needs you to bear witness to God, to acknowledge God—not as a theory, but as an actual experiential recognition—because then you are fulfilling your role as co-creator and not denying it, not escaping from it because you’d rather think for yourself.

And so no matter how many more pages there are to read, no matter how many more things there are to say and to elucidate, there’s one thing that it all boils down to. And you can begin this very moment and have every day, every hour, every minute from now on, filled with an active awareness of your wanting to know the Truth that you don’t know yet and that you have no way of discovering all by yourself.

That’s the simplicity of it. And you could say that’s the difficulty of it. But the only thing that makes it difficult is the familiarity and the reverence that you bring to what you believe and what you want to believe without joining with that which can provide you with an incredibly different view that exposes God and the Kingdom of Heaven to you today, right where you are in every moment. And that’s the point.

You don’t have to wait till you get to the last page of the Course and then say, “Okay, what do I do now?” And you realize, “Oh, I better engage in the holy instant. I better practice the two-step, because now I can’t rely on the ongoing good feelings and wonderful perspectives that I was exposing myself to as I was reading through the book. Now I better do it! Now I had better recognize, and I know I’m being repetitious, but it’s the simple truth, now I recognize that no matter what I think on my own, it is an experience that denies me the discovery of what I truly am that causes me not to experience the Holy Spirit as that which is nothing more than my right Mind. And I don’t want to have that experience any longer. I’m going to abandon it.”

You might feel that you have no choice once you get to the end of the book, although you could start the book over and over and over. So don’t wait until the end of the buoyancy that comes from reading the wonderful ideas in the Course. Don’t arrive at the end of that and in the emptiness that follows, dare to start engaging in the holy instant.

Do it now … do it now … do it now!

Do it as you’re listening to what I’m saying. Do it so that you recognize that what is happening is that a Brother is bearing witness of you to you to cause you to recognize that there truly is another way to look at this that far exceeds anything you can imagine, and moves you to the willingness to open up to it.

All you have to do is be quiet and curious and the insistence of the Holy Spirit—which is nothing more than your right Mind—will flood you because it is intent on your Sanity being returned to you. And that’s called Love. It is the Holy Spirit’s purpose to uncover the Father in you and in everything you’re experiencing. And that insistence will succeed when you give up and open up.

And so, this won’t be the last time you hear me talk about this. But we needed to talk about it before we proceed further in the book.

And I will share with you that I’m very glad to be with you in this manner once again continuing forward.

I love you. I am the Presence of Love moving you into your willingness to want to know the truth about everything, no matter what you’re engaged in. And I look forward to being with you next week.