Teachings of Christ Mind

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

Well, how did your week go? When we last talked I encouraged everyone to preface as many moments as you could with the thought from the Course:

So, when you turned on the news, or read the newspaper, or got out on the freeway, or cleaned up from the hurricane, or tried to deal with the lack of food or water or gasoline or money, did you say:

Or did you, like Paul on many occasions, feel sure that you knew what it meant. Or maybe you felt sure that the feelings of frustration or anger … that you knew what they meant—that they were legitimate and that it was appropriate to dwell with them because you knew that they were justified.

Maybe what you were frustrated with or angry about shifted from moment to moment or circumstance to circumstance because it wasn’t really the specific issue that you were upset about. You were just upset, and anything was an appropriate object to vent your upsetness on.

It’s when you get bound up with what you are feeling—and what you are feeling are reactions—that you are unable to and unwilling to acknowledge that you …

You experience commitment to your feeling. You feel commitment to the assurance that such-and-such is unjust and that you have a right to be upset, or angry, or jealous, or futile, or just plain old negative. And you savor it. You feel it. You turn it over in your mind and taste it, almost literally. And you get all the flavor out of it that you can because you’re so upset.

Emotions are addicting. Emotions are a trap. And I’m going to put it this way: we’ve talked many times about the Fall, about when you got a divorce from the Father—which is the definition or the meaning of the Fall—when you and a Brother or Sister said, “Let’s pretend, let’s imagine, let’s imaginatively give new definitions to Creation.” And in so many words, by that decision, you said, “See you later Father. We’re going to function on our own in ‘imagination land’ and we’re going to treat our imaginations as though they’re true. After all, we are omnipotent aren’t we? We are the full Expression of the Father.”

But as we’ve discussed, when that happened, two things came into play that had never existed before: fear and guilt. Fear came into play because when you are denying your Source, you’re in a state of self-denial. When you’re in a state of self-denial, you are in an unbalanced state of mind, an ungrounded state of mind. And because [chuckling] you are the holy Sons and Daughters of God, because you are divine, you are unable to create an ungrounded state of mind and be comfortable, because your holiness, your divine Sanity, your absolute groundedness confronts your imagination, and the deliberateness with which you embrace your imagination, and it’s uncomfortable. It is fright-ten-ing. And it’s supposed to be. And so, fear came into the picture.

Now, why? Why is there fear? Because you’re afraid you’ll be caught in a state of defying and denying the Father. And so, you’re trapped, because now you have to find a way to prove the legitimacy of your sense of yourself that isn’t your Self, but the imagined self that you and your Brother or Sister brought into play by behaving as though you weren’t the holy Son or Daughter of God, but something else—something independent.

It’s that simple.

Now, as I mentioned last time, and before: the Fall is something that is occurring now … now … now … now, in every moment in which you are choosing to exercise independence, practice independence—behave as though you are on your own with a capacity to think all by yourself.

Now, the way to break the guilt, the suffering, the fear is not to succeed in legitimizing yourself, but rather by abandoning the act of dissociation, the act of separation from your Source—from your Father. And you do that by acknowledging:

You see the simplicity of this? It’s simple, but it’s hard to embrace because of the commitment you have to the self you think you are and what you’re going to make out of that self that you think you are.

Okay, it says in the Course:

I’m going to add something to it.

The first time it was said, the emphasis was on the word “reason”:

And the emphasis is on the word “think,” the second time:

Thinking gets you into trouble. Thinking is an act—an independent act—that is not arising out of your connectedness with your Self. What you are thinking on your own is so much static, so much noise—meaninglessness.

Now, you are always upset because of what you are thinking. You are always upset because you are engaged in thinking, no matter what the subject is. The holy instant, the two-step, is the process of abandoning the thought process, because that is what undoes the Fall. And that is the issue of what we have been discussing and what we are continuing to discuss tonight.

Now it is important to see that reaction, emotion is a trap because, as happened in the Fall, when fear occurs, you become distracted from your omnipotence, you become distracted from your holiness, you become distracted from your Source. And the fear present engages you in attempting to overcome the fear instead of abandoning what caused it. And in the process of overcoming the fear, you attempt to legitimize the “self” you now find yourself experiencing as “you”—which is a fake, which is artificial, which is imaginary.

And so, you end up in a perpetual state of self-denial, that you are perceiving as self-affirmation, because you are engaged in trying to affirm the illusory self that has grasped your attention and trapped you.

When you are in that state, it does not seem sensible in the slightest to say:

It does not make sense to say:

And it doesn’t make sense to say:

You’re caught in the trap. And the trap says, “You must use your past learning as the light to guide you now.” “It would be insane for you to set down your fear.” “It would be insane for you to become still, to seek peace, because if you do that, everything you are afraid of will come upon you and destroy you. And then you’ll know the truth—the awful truth—and you will be sorry.”

Now, that’s the way the illusion works, that’s the way existence after the Fall functions. And that’s what keeps you in a fallen state, even though you, the holy Son or Daughter of God that you Are, has not been altered in the slightest. You are still the holy Son or Daughter of God. You are still the effect of God. You are still the manifestation of what God is Being right there where you are. That’s unalterable. And that natural eternal experience is present right now, right where you are, while you are preoccupied with your fearful sense of being a separate self, which is attempting to bring forward the courage and the strength and the power to be able to legitimize yourself in this altered state—all of which seems good and respectable and worth every ounce of energy you can apply to it.

“What better thing could there be to do than to improve yourself? That is the purpose of life … to improve yourself.” But it isn’t, it isn’t! The need is to choose for your peace in spite of it, in spite of everything—to choose for your peace because, in your peace and in the absence of the struggle to improve yourself, the wholeness of you has room to register with you and invite you Home by the very nature of the experience. And that’s the whole point.

And so, in one way or another it must become clear to you that it is sensible, reasonable and natural to acknowledge that you do not know at this moment, in this frame of mind that you’re in…

… because I don’t want to be sucked back into and held hostage to a false sense of everything that is going on, including an utterly false sense of who and what I am.

Somewhere along the line this idea has to become familiar to you—whether it’s understandable or not, whether you are experiencing it or not, whether it seems possible or not—because if this idea doesn’t begin to percolate and synthesize in your awareness, if it doesn’t, you won’t give your attention to anything beyond the state of self-protection and self-preservation that seems normal.

Now, continuing from where we left off last time, which is the 3rd full paragraph on page 344 of the Sparkly book …

That’s why we must talk about this, so that the idea of what is true is present to give you justification to make the “idiotic” statement that it is impossible for you to establish your guiltlessness. [Whispering] Why … why? So that you’ll stop trying.

All of the effort to become something, all of the effort to improve yourself is to overcome guilt. You’re running away from an illusion—something that isn’t Real. You are not guilty. You are not the mortal you think you are, or that you seem to be. You are, and can’t ever stop being, the holy Son or Daughter of God. That means right now.

So, somewhere along the line here, the idea needs to be present in your mind clearly enough for you to even just imaginatively say, “I can’t establish my guiltlessness. And so, I’m going to stop trying.”

“I will try it out. I will experiment. I will dare to abandon the fear-motivated intense actions that I have felt I must engage in to improve myself and to become something.”

But it’s the little ones that get you. It’s the little ones that sidetrack you. Someone says something to you with a certain tone of voice, which might have been occasioned by gas in their intestines—pain—and you hear it and you think that it is making a statement about you, a derogatory statement about you, and you’re quite sure of it.

Well, hey, that isn’t a universal truth or a challenge of a universal issue. It’s one of the “little” things. [Chuckling] It’s really inconsequential. But the reaction from that little misperception is all it takes to engage you in emotion, fear and guilt and the need for self-protection! The need for self-justification! The need to stand up for yourself! The need to prove yourself! The need to make sure that your validity and worth and respectability is recognized! And you’re willing to do it vehemently because it is a good cause!

No it’s not!

It’s a trap! A little inconsequential thing like a mosquito buzzing around your ear that has nothing to do with the family gathering at a picnic on a sunny afternoon in a park, where everyone is having fun. Oh, but no, that mosquito buzzing in your ear gets your attention and gets you frustrated and even makes you say, “Why do we always have to have a picnic? Why can’t we have a family get-together someplace where there aren’t mosquitos?” … grouse … grouse … grouse … fuss. Really!

Well, of course. You withdraw your attention from the holiness of you, from the divine nature and character of you which is Love, which sees peace and is at peace. And so, all that comes through the avenue of peace, is lost to you … even though it’s there.

… the Holy Spirit …

[Chuckling] Certain dark lessons, like justified frustration at that little gnat, that pesky little gnat that just won’t leave you alone when you’re trying to have a good time.

And that’s called “the human condition.” That’s called everyday life, isn’t it? But everyday life is an interpretation or a distorted perception of, not a day in the Kingdom of Heaven, but the eternal now that is the Kingdom of Heaven. So all of it is just a misperception of the ultimate which is going on at this very moment.

What would the Holy Spirit have you give? The willingness to see your Brother and your world with His Vision so that you might be Awake, so that you might experience your Wholeness, so that you might experience your peace.

A miracle—a sudden shift of perception, right here, right now … not pie-in-the-sky after you die.

Miracles are for you.

Four words … four of the biggest words there are.

They are for no one else but you. Miracles exist for you. You are the reason miracles exist! Does that say it clearly enough?

You are the reason miracles exist. Why? Because you’re the holy Son or Daughter of God who has forgotten who He or She is and the miracle is the means by which you are returned to your right Mind. And that’s the only thing they are for. That is their only purpose.

And once you accept the miracle, once you let it in, once you desire it, you Wake up, and the miracle is no longer needed because there’s no “you” calling for it. There’s no “you” needing to Awaken.

So, understand this: Miracles aren’t some marvelous events that go on in the universe for “God only knows what reason.” Miracles—specifically and only—are for you. They exist because God, your divinity, insists upon your not being deluded … because there is that much Love.

Miracles are Love waiting for you to let It in. And that’s the only reason miracles exist. You are the only reason miracles exist.

Miracles are not favors doled out, “If you’re a good boy or girl.” Miracles are your very own divinity registering with you, when you stop trying to act independently and become still enough for them—for Who and What you divinely Are—to register with you and snap you back into your right Mind … bring you Home.

Marvelous four words:

That means it never was a fact because you never were anything less than the holy Son or Daughter of God for whom the miracle exists.

… the Holy Spirit, your divinity.

You, the divine one that you Are at this moment, who never has been less than Sane, Knows the Truth. And it’s only to the degree that you insist on imagining something that isn’t true and trying to make it true that the holy one, the Sane one that you Are, seems to be hidden back out of sight somewhere, unavailable. But I’m telling you that the divine one, the holy one that you Are, is not only in the foreground, it is the ground of Being of you right now. And, literally, every misperception is a fantasy. Misperceptions are not hard to get rid of. They’re not like the Rock of Gibraltar, a humongous mass of heaviness.

There are no dark lessons. There is no darkness. There is no self-centered, self-establishing self in you.

You don’t have to work your way out of this. You don’t have to, as though you were in prison, hammer rocks into stones and stones into powder for twenty years before you’re released, having paid for your sins. That self is part of the imagination, which you can say to:

… your right Mind …

They do not exist in You at all.

… You …

The limited one you think you are.

… makes it your grounded experience of Reality. You see, this is all about you coming Home, back into your right Mind, which is the Mind of God.

It doesn’t teach you how to become free of it. It teaches you are free of it. You never were bound by it. It never was anything but a perception, a story you believed and based your actions and thoughts and emotions on.

Again, the Holy Spirit is nothing less or more than your right Mind. Your right Mind never lost its full Sane experience of it Self. And so, it Knows the Truth for you. It would reveal the Truth to you for you.

… these accomplishments, He did these for you …

That which is nothing more than your right Mind has made you free of what you made, by having forever held you free from what you made. Because of what you divinely Are, you could never become what you tried to make of yourself.

… the Holy Spirit …

You can ignore Him, but, if you call upon Him, He will answer. If you call upon your divinity, it will penetrate the boundaries of your limited self-perceptions and the imprisoning walls of your self-doubt and your negative confidences.

… the Holy Spirit …

That which is nothing more than your right Mind—as it infills your awareness and, therefore, your sense of your mind—uncovers the fact that what you called your mind is gone because it was never there. And you’re no longer bringing it to life by giving it your attention.

… the Holy Spirit, your divinity …

What you give, you get to keep. Another way of saying that is: what you give, you incorporate in you. You see?

This is all a matter of learning about You. Not the you you have thought you are but the divine one that you Are.

Can’t be split into two … me and not me … me and another me. The Real me and the [chuckling] really fabulous imagined me or a really morbid, depressed, miserable example of a human being.

When you say that, “As we,” it means, “As I and the Holy Spirit are held as one instead of the Holy Spirit and fabulous ego me:

But you know what? You won’t know what it means to be …

… until you say:

And, therefore…

You can’t learn that you’re …

… as long as you’re trying to be something on your own and believe that you are and further believe that God created you that way, that God created you as a separate entity and gave you free will to make of yourself what you will, with the proviso that you’re supposed to make the best of yourself. It’s not true. It never happened. God did not give you justification for denying your Source and being able to be anything other than miserable if you do.

Who is God’s Teacher? The Holy Spirit, your right Mind.

… as is the Creator’s Son.

The Holy Spirit is the means by which you learn of the need to abandon the thought that you can know anything at all by yourself and lead you to the point where you’re willing to make commitment to abandon any attempt to base your actions upon your independent judgment and reasoning and, instead, become silent and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what God is Being.

… in the absence of your self-assertions of any absence of your negative feelings which you feel justified in harboring.

[Chuckling] The moment you insert your own judgment or your own hurt feelings or your own insistence on anything, you’re acting against Him, you’re acting against your Source, you’re acting in defiance of your right Mind and, therefore, your natural ever-abiding Sanity.

Me and the Holy Spirit, that disappears. What’s left is “I Am.” And the I Am-ness of it is God Expressing Himself because the I of You is letting It in, and through, and confirming that It’s All God and not a separate entity called you being God’s spokesman, or God’s actor, or God’s delivery boy.

… let the Voice for Truth be in your Mind and come out of your mouth.

Remember, in the Fall, something unexpected happened: two omnipotent, omnipresent Sons and Daughters of God decided to use imagination and deny what everything Really Is by giving it new definitions. And the unexpected happened: fear and guilt entered the picture and trapped them in self-preservation and self-improvement.

Now, when one engages in the two-step, when one insists on not using his own past learning as the light to guide him now, something unexpected happens just as in the beginning. But it’s the reverse: division disappears … division disappears. Conflict vanishes. Peace is restored surprisingly. Surprising, because you wouldn’t expect that to happen from your becoming still, from your not engaging is some grand act. But there it is: division disappears.

That’s the surprise that becomes clear to you, that’s the experience that unexpectedly infills you.

You see, independence creates, we’ll say, static. But when independence is abandoned, the static disappears. And, we’ll say, the concert, the music of the spheres, the beauty of Creation and conscious Individuality is clearly there and is clearly experienced. This is the surprise. This is the miraculous.

It’s so simple. You will see this intellectually at first. And you can grasp the simplicity of it intellectually. That’s the first step, but then you have to dare to act inwardly on the basis of that idea and actually become still, and actually in every moment willingly acknowledge:

Well, that pretty well shuts everything down, doesn’t it. But you could try to do something to correct it. And so, there’s the third part:

And so, you must be willing to sit in what seems like the emptiness of self-expression, and self-assertion, and self-existence. And in the silence, listen for the Voice for Truth. Be ready for the miracle, which exists entirely and only for you because you deserve to Wake up, you deserve not to be bound any longer.

You know that. You’ve had that experience, just as well as Paul knows it and has had the experience even today.

Why are you ill at ease all the time? Because you don’t understand. But the suggestion is that you’re a mortal, you’re an organism, and you were born without understanding anything. And life itself is the process of gaining understanding. That feeds into the idea that you’re here to become better, that you’re here to perfect yourself.

And so, you’re not at peace. But the miracle is discovered in the act of choosing for your peace in spite of what is going on, in spite of what you’ve been conditioned to react to. Peace can be chosen for and arrived at. And the miracle is that in arriving at that peace understanding emerges. You say, “Oh, I had an, ‘aha,’ experience.” And you know what? It came as a wholeness, not as a little part added to another little part, linearly; the whole thing came in a sudden flash because understanding is whole. And it comes in the middle of peace.

You see? As an independent thinker, you think you understand, you have come to understanding. There are a whole lot of things you understand. But it’s not understanding because there is no peace. There’s still a lot more you need to understand before you’ll finally be able to be at peace. Right? Okay, then that’s not understanding, that’s just highly focused belief.

… and, therefore, the other is not.

That sentence needs to be highlighted.

Let that set, because it will be what justifies engaging in the holy instant, engaging in the two-step in saying:

Well, Paul knows and you know that there are many times when peace is not what you want. You want justice. You want to get even. You want someone to know that they have hurt you, and you want them to pay for it, you want them to suffer for it. You don’t want peace; you want the self-righteous anger and justification, even though physicians will tell you that will eat you alive.

Well, the point is, that to the degree that you do not want peace, you will not choose for peace and understanding. Knowing oneness with the Father’s Mind, in which the experience of Reality in Its Totality is available to you, will not be experienced. That’s too much of a cost. Self-righteousness isn’t that great.

… and remember we talked last week about the fact that all of this is literal. It’s literal:

And who is the Teacher of Peace? That which is nothing more than your right Mind—the Holy Spirit.

I want to remind you that the use of that phrase, “Nothing more than your right Mind” relative to the words, “the Holy Spirit,” does not appear in the revised versions of A Course In Miracles, but it does in the Sparkly book and in the original writings. It is important that those words are being used and are available to everyone because, as you can see, they are very key to Awakening.

That which is nothing more than your right Mind—the Holy Spirit.

Your right Mind, the Holy Spirit. Literal. Absolute.

Literal.

You see, in the realization that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind, it will become clear to you that the Holy Spirit is not floating around in the universal ethers, and then, when you over here decide to invite the Holy Spirit or to Know the Truth or to Wake up, the Holy Spirit will come over where you are and infill this little presence that’s somewhere in the middle of the universe. No! Because the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind. Then:

See?

… this tiny sense of self that you are committed to, right in the middle of the Wholeness of you, causing the rest of the Wholeness of you to seem to be not you. And so, it has become called the Holy Spirit.

… the little you …

Stop reinforcing the bubble that separates the little area inside from all that’s on the outside.

… all that’s on the outside, the Wholeness of your Mind …

The minute you let the bubble pop, [chuckling] the only thing that can happen is for the Allness that’s there, to be the Allness that is All There Is now.

You must abandon the awful satisfaction that you get from being angry.

The Holy Spirit, as long as you’re insisting upon being just a tiny portion of what the Holy Spirit is, seems to stand between you the little entity that you claim to be and God.

… He knows that His oneness with God …

Meaning you.

… and unity, I’m going to add …

… which the Holy Spirit, you and your right Mind, cannot abandon and haven’t actually abandoned …

… and when you read those words, I want you to let them stand for one word, “Love.”

What’s your job?

This is literal.

… and “think” is the operative word.

… listen to this …

[Raj says a few words here, but I the static is too strong to be able to make out the words well enough to transcribe.]

You see? We talked about this before. How insulting is that? How insulting for big things to happen which weren’t at your hand, but [chuckling] you seem to be the delivery boy for.

Again, that’s still holding on to the delusion about you being not just independent in mind but independent in manifestation. You are the Mind that is God Presenting Himself. But you won’t experience what God is Presenting until you stop trying to take credit for it yourself.

[Chuckling] You notice it didn’t say, “Nothing will prevail against you.” Having a you on your mind to prevail or be prevailed against is part of the illusion.

And if nothing is prevailing against your peace, understanding will be your experience of Being, and it will be an infinite understanding.

This is simply the Truth. I love you all and I look forward to being with you next time.