Teachings of Christ Mind

Question

The question is how to develop a greater clarity and discernment around wearing one’s own emotional body and energy and staying clear with that and not, so to speak, take on the cloak or clothes of another’s emotional body and wearing theirs?

Answer

Beloved friend, imagine that you are sitting in a grand orchestra and there are many violins and many flutes and many oboes and many clarinets, and what have you, that comprise this orchestra. And the show has not yet started and so everyone is tuning up their instruments. And as you sit there (you are a flute player) you place the mouthpiece in the instrument, and as you raise it to your lips you’re a little nervous because, after all, this is a new show for you, you’re the rookie on the block, so to speak. And you seem distracted by the sound of the oboe, the sound of the clarinet, the beating of the drum, the little squeal of the strings of the violin. For a moment you are distracted. Which sound is my sound? How can I hear my own sound if all these other things are making noise around me?

The virtuoso, so to speak, the master of the instrument, learns to put their attention on what they want rather than on what they fear is preventing what they want. And what you want to do is hear the sound of your own flute. And so you bring your instrument to your lip, and you begin to blow across it, until you find just the right angle so you can begin to emit the note.

Oh, that’s the one I like. Oop, now I’m being distracted by the oboe again. Rather than thinking, how can I separate myself from the oboe, focus only on what do I want to hear? My own flute.

Practice blowing the note again. By turning the attention to what you want, by releasing the oboe players and the violinists and all of the rest from being blamed for distracting you. Focus on what you want. What is the frequency you want to feel in your body, what are the thoughts you want to think? Put your attention on generating the momentum of blowing the note that you want to hear in yourself. And as you build that momentum, it begins to sound like the note struck from a crystal glass: shining radiantly, sounding radiantly through empty space, where nothing obstructs it. So that even that the oboe player and the violinists are doing their thing, you are so absorbed, you focus all of your attention and all of your desire on not worrying about what they’re doing, or how their sounds may be affecting you—but when you feel the effect or distraction of the oboe, you turn again to creating the sound of what you want. Whether it means breathing deeply, whether it means smiling lovingly, whether it means thinking a thought that “It is done and I acknowledge it.” You learn to turn the attention of your mind in the direction of what you want to feel and to experience, to call into your reality. That is what builds the strength.

And, you see, that is what brings the answer to the question. For, as you begin to stabilize—by focusing on what you want—you become familiar with the frequency of the note that you are creating as the flute player. And the more familiar you become with that note, the clearer it becomes what is not that note.

And in just the same way, whenever you think you’re feeling energies and you’re not sure whether it’s yours or somebody else’s, turn the attention of the mind from that thought—that’s a useless question. Bring it back to the focus of:

Who cares what I’m feeling now or what I think might be going on. What do I want? Oh, I want my body to be relaxed. I want to look lovingly upon the world that I see. I want to walk as a Christed being in feminine form. I want to be happy. Well, what would that feel like in this moment? Ah.

Begin to use the power of creation, that you’re always using, to create differently—by bringing the attention from worrying about the oboe player to focus on the radiant jewel that you can bring into being by blowing your own note. Strengthen that. Become it.

If you were to go to a gymnasium to exercise a muscle, and you go to lift the weight, you would not allow yourself to look around and wonder who’s lifting what weight, and why can’t I lift that weight over there, and all of those other things. You would know that you’re only there to focus on what you are doing. How are you moving your muscles? How are you lifting that weight? What does it feel like within you? For you know that if you distract yourself, you might hurt yourself. Is that not true?

Uh-huh.

Each time you choose to let yourself be distracted by what others are doing, by dissipating your attention away from the note you want to learn to play, and that comes by asking the question:

What would it be like to be perfectly at peace in this moment?

What would it be like to be Christ incarnate?

What would it be like to be with no fear?

What would it be like to be free of my past histories?

By focusing on your note, you discover that the only time you ever harmed yourself is when you put your attention on trying to figure out what was somebody else’s, and what are they doing? The more you focus your attention here on blowing the perfect note through your flute, all of this around you will begin to fall away. It is called, I believe, vigilance and discipline.

[ Laughter. ]

Let me give you a picture.

Imagine being a Jew, the son of Jewish parents, middle class to lower middle class, as you might call it, in a cultural time frame of great upheaval: great fear and doubt and struggle and conflict. Imagine standing in a circle, what you might call a plaza, I suppose, in an ancient city called Jerusalem. And seeing the bedlam all around you, and suddenly realizing that none of it matters. The only thing that matters is what do I want? I could have made the choice and said I want to be a successful merchant, or a successful money changer, like everybody else. But, instead, I decided to go for the gusto and ask the impossible thought, the improbable thought, the heresy, the heretical thought: What would it be like to be Christ incarnate in the midst of this place? I turned my attention to focusing on asking what I truly wanted. And that has made all the difference.

Would you be willing, then, to begin to discipline the mind, to bring it back to asking yourself that question:

What is it I truly want? What would it be like right now, to become so outrageous in the midst of what I think is an insane situation, to choose to be unlimited and perfect peace?

Any such thought like that will do, as long as it’s highly unlimited.

Okay.

Does that help you in that regard?

Uh-huh, very much.

So then we’ll be seeing if you decide to play the flute well. Beloved friend, you might as well, you’ve already explored the vagaries of the clarinet and the oboe and the trombone.

Don’t forget the drums!

And the drums.