Teachings of Christ Mind

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

I’m going to jump right into the book, starting with the last full sentence on page 342 in the Sparkly book.

It says:

And then in all capital letters it says:

Now, I read that two months ago tonight, the 23rd of July. And when we finished, I said that we would continue next week. Two months ago tonight, we were going to continue the next week.

Now, I need to say something: what we have been talking about in the last two meetings and what we will be talking about tonight constitutes the single crux of A Course In Miracles. It is either what renders A Course In Miracles meaningless, fraudulent, silly, ridiculous, useless, or it is what identifies and manifests its value, its reason for existing.

What we are reading about, you must understand, is literal. It’s not spiritual, it’s not figurative, it’s not la-la spouting. It’s literal. Either you take it literally and experience Atonement because you grasp the meaning and the fact that it requires being in a new way, or you don’t take it as literal, and you become a sort of fairytale student of a fairytale Course in Miracles and, for a time, perhaps, feel secure and safe and happy. But it will be a false happiness, and it will not last simply because we are at this change-line, we are at this place of transformation, this place of the undoing of illusion, the place of the end of fragmentation and the restoration of unity—which means harmony, which means relationships inseparable from Love.

Now, when you read:

[Chuckling] That is absolutely literal! Where does that leave you? Well, it leaves you in a place of adjustment if you are going to considerate it to be true—a place of profound shifting, profound adjustment.

After our last meeting, Paul, indeed, felt and understood what had come out of his mouth. And yet, the next day, he hadn’t been out of bed three minutes before he opened up his mouth and spoke for himself. In other words, there was no inquiry of me or the Holy Spirit as to what to do next or what to address or what needed attention. He was quite confident that he knew what to do. But you know what? There was an edge to it, an edge which Susan recognized immediately as him not being in his peace. And she called him on it. In other words, she brought it to his attention. And he had an argument to it. I mean after all, he had just woken up … what could she expect? … give him a chance.

There was a mean-spirited attitude right under the surface of his attention when he got up. And he was offended at being called upon it. After perhaps twenty minutes of vigorous interchange, he yielded, he stopped in his self-assertive independent process, and he did join with me, and he was able to see that, indeed, he wasn’t joined.

Now, I am aware that during the past two months many of you have experienced frustration, anger, pervasive negativity, jealousy, hurt feelings. In other words, being offended in one form or another. Why? Because you weren’t being given credit, you weren’t being acknowledged, your dignity, your respectability was being overridden or ignored. It’s important to understand then that when credit is not being given to you, when praise and appreciation and that which acknowledges your sense of worth is not extended to you, you get upset. Pay attention when you are caught up in emotion, look and see whether you are upset because you’re not being given credit for something that you should be being given credit for.

“Well, I’m not being given credit for what I know. I’m not being given credit for all the experience I’ve had that has proven to me how things work and that, therefore, what I share and what I say is meaningful and valuable and should be appreciated.” You know, think about it, when you operate on the basis of credit in your negotiations and interactions with others, you are spending something you don’t actually have. And that’s why you’re doing it on credit.

Now, when you operate independently, when you have abandoned your connection with the Holy Spirit—which is that of you which is held in trust while you dally with the ego—when you act independent of your Self, which is the full Expression of the Father, you’re operating on credit. In other words, you are spending identity that you don’t have actually. It’s imagined. You are expressing a self that isn’t actual, and you are expecting the same return that you would get if you were Real, if you were behaving as the holy Son or Daughter of God that you actually Are.

To be given credit is a means you have of feeding your pride, of proving to yourself that you are worthwhile. And you know what? Oh, if:

… and you need to:

Where’s your worth, where is all of it that you’re supposed to be given credit for? It’s insulting.

Now, over the past two months Paul has certainly talked with me. We have had discussions, but he and I having discussions with each other isn’t Paul relating to his Brother or Sister, his fellowman, his wife from that which is Real in him. And most of the engagement has been—what shall I say—void of the fullness and the meaning and the value that his connection with me provides him as well as those to whom he extends our joining. And that is key. And it is key for every single individual.

Waking up involves caring about your Brother enough to put yourself in the position of being able to provide something of value to your Brother, which you must avail yourself of by abandoning your self-reliance and leaning into the Holy Spirit or the Father or me to gather the clarity of Mind that it’s your Birthright to be experiencing, and the place from which you are to function. It’s in the giving of not your perspective but the Perspective of the Holy Spirit, which is truly your right Mind. And in so doing, being infilled with the Father’s Perspective, which the Holy Spirit—your right Mind—reveals. In the revealing of It to your Brother, it’s revealed to you, and you experience who you Are and how you function and what your purpose is. You come Home. The Atonement is experienced. And the struggle is over.

Now, it says:

… the light of your learning and your arriving at imaginative definitions to be applied to what God has already Created.

Now, the darkness isn’t always negative. The darkness can be you feeling very confident about what’s good and your insistence on confronting your Brother or Sister with that which is good for their benefit, of course, but also for yours. The darkness is the expression of learning that hasn’t been acquired from union with God, from your love of God, and your being willing to accept the fact that your expressing the Father’s Perspective as the Father reveals it to you now … now … now … now is the experience, the divine experience of Being.

Now, part of what irritated Paul was that there were things he wanted to do, there were good ideas he felt he had that would promote better well-being for him. And it would employ skills and things that he was capable of that he thoroughly enjoyed doing and that he knew he did well and that he knew would reflect well on him. So, if he were to be connected with me or the Holy Spirit in every moment, guided by the Father’s Perspective as it flowed through the Holy Spirit, he would be deprived of doing some really great things.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that many who are incarnating at this time are here for one last fling in humanhood, in materiality, one last fling before never being able to experience again the thrills and the fear of being mortal or of being manipulative or of being ultra-controlling and so on. It’s an attitude which apparently creates and determines worth—or at least that’s the ego hit that comes from it. But the fact is that everyone is here, everyone is in this position of learning because your Birthright, being the Son or Daughter of God that you Are, the direct present Expression of God because it is what you are to resume being consciously instead of pushing it into the unconscious while you fill the foreground of consciousness with your own terrific ideas.

When it says to LET IT ALL GO all of your learning, all of your past, to let it all go is so insulting to the ego because you’re not going to be able to get the hit, the drug like hit, the high of importance and greatness and power.

Continuing. And I’ve started back a little bit with what we covered last time so that there’s a lead into what we’re going to read tonight.

In other words, in your memory, in your conclusions, in your learning, in the learning you taught yourself, even the goodness that you’ve taught yourself that you would try to manipulate others with for their good.

When you’re getting credit for being something you aren’t, then seeing and experiencing who you Are becomes impossible. It’s not your goal; the opposite is the goal.

You see, that’s the important point. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind held in trust while you dally with the ego.

unto the Holy Spirit

God

Well, who did God give it to? God gave it to you, but you’re dallying with the ego so you’re ignoring it. So, that of You which is your right Mind that you’re ignoring is what it was given to [whispering] already, already!

meaning you

Your divine Self that you Are at this moment, but which you are insisting on ignoring because you want the hit of being right, righteous, and being able to be given credit due you.

not yours

But, Paul can attest to you that that gift can seem to interfere with something Paul wants to do or something you want to do. You see? And, therefore, it’s an unwelcome gift because you have to abandon what you want even though what you want amounts to an act of being an individuality when it’s just an imagination of what an individual is that you are clinging to desperately to give yourself meaning while you’re on your own. This is important to understand.

More bad news:

God’s happiness.

“Oh, no it’s not! My happiness is when I get to do what I want to do and come up with something brilliant and fantastic and recognizably great to everyone who sees it. That’s my happiness. I don’t want His happiness—at least not till I’ve had a chance to have my happiness.”

“When you’re independent, you got to take what you can get. Nothing’s given, nothing’s free. You don’t give anything for free. No one else gives anything for free. You got to find a way to get it, to take it, to get control of it, to get control of it away from someone else. That’s the way it works.”

That’s the zinger! Until you do not want it, you will not give it; you will not release it to be replaced with what’s Real. See? This is the literalness of it. It’s not just pleasant spiritual or stimulating wonderful spiritual thoughts. It actually involves a commitment to behave in a new way, the way that identifies you Truly.

Because you really do not want it.

The Holy Spirit has learned because the Holy Spirit—that of you which is your right Mind—never forgot it. The Holy Spirit knows it because the Holy Spirit has never pretended to be something other than the Presence of God being what God is being.

Literal, absolutely literal. But where does that leave you? You get up in the morning or you sit at the table or you start to get up to go to the car to go shopping … how do you do that with innocence, without bringing along with you all your prior definitions regarding every step you go through. How … how do you … how do you do what you don’t know how to do without relying upon the past?

Well, it’s simple. It’s called the two-step; it’s the practice of the holy instant. You ask, “What do I need to know?” You be still, attentively, but ever so quietly for insight. And you keep doing this over and over until you have it and then seem to lose it. And you do it until you have it again. And you keep doing it until having it becomes easier.

Well, that’s a pretty tall order. Sounds impossible. Why even try? Because it’s not impossible. And only in giving your attention there like any other endeavor can your capacity be revealed to you, be uncovered as You.

You recognize them as experiences of frustration and fear and doubt and unwanted negativity and seeming to be controlled by elements that you would run away from screaming if there was a way to get away.

That can mean that you think you do not will for yourself what your Father wills for you as well as you think—mind you the operative word is “think”—you think you do not will for your Brother what his Father wills for him. Why? Because you’ve got your own definition of your Brother and of yourself, and that’s what you will for him or your Sister. You know how your Brother or Sister should be acting. You’ve learned. And you know what? Your righteous judgment of the fact that they are not behaving the way they should becomes the focus rather than the correction being the focus. That’s a dark lesson.

In other words, that:

Once again, this only happens in relationship. You must will with the Father on behalf of your Brother in order for the Will of the Father to register with you as your true Will and your true nature expressed. That’s the only way it works.

Now:

Not only is it completely different, it’s almost as though it’s a different self that’s done it and your being required to become a different self from what you Are. That’s an impossible lesson to learn, or so it seems.

Pure assumption. Something else you taught yourself. That’s why the Holy Spirit is addressing you, constantly insinuating Itself into your awareness—your right Mind—constantly insinuating Itself into your awareness. That’s why I am engaged into the same thing, and that’s why A Course In Miracles could put in print the ideas that express this truth. Complicated?

You see? And you need someone to tell you this so that you can dare to think that perhaps it is simple and that it is possible rather than impossible. To actually yield to Wisdom that initially seems to be different from you so, that in yielding to it, it can begin to register with you as you because you are the holy Son or Daughter of God and not the independent, struggling, and sometimes succeeding entity that you have imagined yourself to be and you are suffering from because you are never truly experiencing your real Being, your real awareness, your real nature, your absolute safety, your invulnerability, your immortality, your perfection.

You need to come up to the black and white of it. You must be willing initially to read those words:

You need to read those words and think maybe that’s possible, maybe that’s true, maybe I can let go of wanting it not by struggling with it but by simply shifting my attention to an inquisitiveness, a reaching out, a desiring for something that I know nothing of, at least at the moment. It’s that simple. That’s—for lack of better words—the mechanism. That’s what precipitates Atonement.

When you get into this place of decision and commitment, you will be amazed how quickly the arguments with great vehemence will arise, which, in so many words, will dissuade you from making the investment of attention—of innocent unbiased attention. You’ll know exactly why it won’t work or exactly why something else has to be done first, thus delaying the actual shift, genuine shift to attentiveness with an expectation of an answer that you’re not providing.

… that’s the simple step, it’s desire.

… you can ask to be taught, but, if it isn’t desire, you’re not really asking and you’re not really listening. And all of the arguments that say you don’t have that desire will abide there mumbling around with darkness and mean-spiritedness and self-righteousness. And it’s all a distraction from the simplicity of bringing innocent attention into the moment.

… which you will find it will be. [Chuckling] When you get to that point of being willing to desire to know beyond your present knowledge, it will come up.

… what do you do?

Your problem will be that you will think you do know what this means. And you will want to rely upon and exercise what you have taught yourself or what you have learned at the hand of anything other than the Will of the Father Expressed through the Holy Spirit—which is your right Mind.

Again, this is literal. These words mean exactly that. It’s not figurative in any way. It’s not some spiritual concept separate from the actuality of being conscious and engaged in living.

And mean it when you say it!

What are you doing here? You’re cleaning the slate. You’re getting all the scribbling off of it that you have put on. And you must be willing to assume that the scribbling is scribbling and not script that’s valid in order to get past the scribbling and see what is beyond it or behind it.

That’s what you do. It’s easy. It’s a spontaneous thing to imagine what doing that all day long regarding everything, what that would mean, what that would feel like. And imaginations [chuckling] are not good.

The Father revealing Himself illuminating the Mind that He is in you as You is what Creation is. That is an experience you should be having because it’s the only Real one. And in spite of the overlay of imagination that you have laid upon it, it continues to be the only Real thing there is, and the only actual Movement of Conscious Awareness that you can have. And when you are willing to skip the traces, to abandon the halter, to slip out of it—the halter of your very definite concepts and opinions and theories—and you’re willing to go into the “not knowing place,” that’s when the Atonement can occur. That’s when you can slip, as it were, fall into the underlying arms and actuality of your Being, which is the Presence of God Being All There Is to You as your experience. This is what you are daring to abandon your thinking, abandon what you’ve taught yourself. This is what you’re being willing to abandon it for.

… the Holy Spirit and me …

Again, literal fact.

… abandon what? What you’ve taught yourself …

“Hey, Holy Spirit, if what I think is true is not true, what is true? If what I’m seeing is not what it Really is, what is it Really? If what I’m believing about myself or my Brother is not true, what is true about myself and my Brother?” You see? You don’t have to get a bulldozer or use some extreme power to get rid of what’s standing in the way of your experience of Reality. All you have to do is say, “Hey, Holy Spirit, what’s really going on here?” And then not interfere with the answer by inserting your own confidences, your own thoughts, your own best theories.

Here it is, more fact:

Literal fact.

So what does that mean? Mean what a bad boy you are? What a bad girl you are? Shame on you! You don’t deserve anything! No. Since you cannot be your guide to miracles because it is you who made them necessary, you can turn to your guide to miracles, which isn’t something foreign to you: it’s your own right Mind, the Holy Spirit, the Presence of God in you as you being All There Is of You, the experience of which is the experience of wholeness, eternality, and so on.

As I’ve said before, the moment you and a Brother or Sister decided together to make commitment to your own definitions and got a divorce from the Father, divorced yourself—became independent from your Source—of course, purely imaginarily. The moment you did that, the actuality of you, which couldn’t be separate from you, became that which was ever-present with you called the Holy Spirit, whose task naturally was to reintegrate what couldn’t really be disintegrated.

So, don’t make a big impossible deal out of [chuckling] doing things entirely differently, or you’ll simply add delay and stress to the inevitable Awakening. Just dare to become inquisitive, curious—curious enough to pay attention—which means to shut up so that the Presence of Love can embrace you, so that you can experience the embrace, so that you might experience transformation and redemption and everything good that constitutes integration, unity and, therefore, harmony.

… God …

So, absolutely One is Reality that, even though you have pretended to be independent from the Father, the Father cannot be something unlike Himself to entice you back or to coerce you back, to be some sort of force independent from you to affect you. You see? The Oneness is absolute. So you could say the return is entirely up to you. It’s your decision to say, “Everything I know is not true, and I am going to reach out to the Source of all Being and ask for the Truth to be revealed to me so that I might learn something new that’s True.”

[Raj did not read this sentence: And being yours, He cannot change Himself, for your Identity IS changeless.]

… God’s changelessness …

… By imagining he is something different.

Guiltlessness Is. It is your nature. It is your judgment. It is the judgment upon you. You are guiltless. Now that’s literal too. And you are guiltless right now, and the experience of it awaits you when you dare to stop dead in your tracks. In other words, shut up your mind, become still—silent—and ask a curious question, “If things are not as I am experiencing them, how are they?” Again, don’t make a strenuous task out of it. Be simply and genuinely curious all day long. And be willing to let your curiosity make room for something that you don’t know.

Now, I’m going to tell you something: that doesn’t mean that what will be revealed to you isn’t something that you already thought. You will, in your listening for Guidance, find truth in you confirmed, but it won’t be the confirmation of an independent ego’s actions as being the truth. It will be clearly the awareness of Truth that you might say you always felt, but you will Know It from the Presence of God in you rather than a shallow imagination.

And this is important to understand. You are not right now full of nothing but bullshit. But because everything you are consciously embracing at the moment is being embraced on the basis of your being an independent thinker, what you are knowing is not the Truth itself in the fullness of the experience of it as the Presence of God in you as your identity. But, even so, you must be careful, in light of what I just said, not to assume that you’re going to be able to bring some of your present awareness with you into the state of being Awake. You must be willing to abandon everything. Let it all go, everything you thought you knew. This is very important.

Now, we’re going to stop here for tonight. And as I said last time, I encourage you to read on to the end of the Chapter² between now and next week. As you read this, read it as though it is absolutely literal. Be willing to contemplate it in the light of it being literal. And in light of it being literal, do your best every day, all day long, to preface as many moments as you can with the thought:

What’s that going to do? If you’re serious about it, if you’re genuine about it, it’s going to put you in a void. And you need to let yourself be in it, and don’t attempt to fill it up with some very creative thoughts, even positive thoughts. Be willing to be in the void so that the void can be filled with the Father’s Love uncovering the Truth, uncovering You to you.

And remember not to do it with a vengeance but with a gentle but definite curiosity, a gentle attention, an undisturbed attention. Let there be faith that [chuckling] you will be answered. The Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—is, of course, ever-present with you constantly intent upon registering with you. You’re not doing this alone. And I am with you, always available. Accept the fact that we are present to answer—and will.

You are loved very much. I love you very much. That which is nothing more than your right Mind, the wholeness of you, the divinity of you loves you very much and supports you in your willingness to be in the void for the specific purpose of learning what you don’t know yet. The teaching will occur. The learning will occur. It’s guaranteed, but only when you abandon faith in your own thinking, your own learning that you have taught yourself, a teaching you are very proud of and a learning that you take great credit for, all of which blinds you and hooks you like a drug to an ignorance to what you already Are.

I can very confidently say, that we will continue next week.