Teachings of Christ Mind

December 16, 1988

There have been times during the past several months when I have felt very clear about not only this book, but about Jeshua. During those times, I cannot help but give thanks; rather than commuting on congested highways, my time is spent enjoying the peace and quiet of my home, allowing the manuscript to take shape around the communications from Jeshua.

But there are other times - of anxiety, of questioning, of doubt -and I am convinced that surely this must be crazy. Well, almost convinced.

Always, when the tirade of self-criticism abates, there comes a quiet voice speaking to me, heard only when I choose stillness within. He is there, always, assuring me that all is as it needs to be, reminding me that my task is to trust.

Last week, during one of my anxiety attacks about small details like paying the rent and buying food, I put the thought out to the universe that I just can’t do this, that I am, after all, not very good at jumping off cliffs! Isn’t there a nice, comfortable job out there? The very next morning the phone rang, and I answered it to receive an offer for just that! My first impulse - probably out of habit - was to grab it fast, before the lifeline was withdrawn. But something made me stop. I made an excuse about needing time to think about it.

I tried to spend the day just tinkering around the apartment, but grew restless and took a long walk. It is not often that December provides such a pleasant and dry opportunity in the Northwest. I ended up on a bench at a deserted pier along Ruston Way, watching a sea otter lazily playing in the water twenty yards away.

I feel caught between two worlds, knowing that I am unable, or unwilling, to return to the old world, yet only faintly recognizing the one ahead. It is a world without familiar roadmaps and signposts, a world which I am hesitant to enter. But behind my internal, intellectual hairpulling is a feeling, a sense that somehow, in some way, I am going to emerge there, where He is, wherever that is, and in spite of myself.

I know well now, after this year and a half with Jeshua, what is required of me, if I truly want to be in what He calls the “Kingdom.” It means giving up all the familiar ways I have cultivated for dealing with life, or what I thought was life. Whether those ways are effective or not is beside the point. It means releasing the unconscious belief that my life is mine, in the common view we all have of “me”. Habits are not easily broken, or is it that “I” can’t break it, since “I” am, fundamentally, the habit?

As I watched the sea otter comfortably swimming about just off the end of the pier, I began to think that maybe those crazy physicists working on the cutting edge of quantum theory are close to the truth, closer than perhaps they realize. Or are they masters come to us in disguise to prod us out of the structures of our thoughts, the shadows on our cave walls? They speak of an odd reality, in which all possibilities are somehow already present, hidden in some invisible bag of eternity, waiting - waiting for us to do but one thing: to make a choice as to which “reality” we will manifest. We are the ones with the power after all, always.

According to Jeshua, those “infinite possibilities” come wrapped in two packages: one is labeled the “Kingdom,” and the other, “Dream”. The Dream holds within it a seemingly infinite number of possibilities: all the worlds and lifetimes lived before us, lived after us, lived now as us. All of these worlds are founded on one cornerstone: Separation, inseparably united with one fundamental energy, the energy of fear. Collectively, we believe so strongly in it that it goes unquestioned. We live in separation from each other, from nature, from God. Because we insist on being separate, we choose without hesitation the package labeled “Dream,” and immediately find ourselves right here, right now, in a world we have believed to be real and independent of us. Or is it but a mirror reflecting nothing but our choice?

“Maybe,” I thought to myself, “maybe the world keeps revolving round as it does, wars and greed and the like, because we insist it is real, and then struggle to find ways to deal with it. Have we given the package labeled ‘Dream’ our power? Have we given the very power of the Son away to our illusions?”

In Tibetan Buddhist metaphysics, it is said that at death the soul leaves the body and begins ascending to the clear light of the Dharmakaya, the “Body of Truth.” However, faced with the overwhelming power and beauty of this light, the soul - habitually identified with its sense of being a separate self - recoils out of fear. This recoil creates a heaviness, and the soul sinks down, eventually back into yet another round of birth and death in a physical body, and all because the soul misunderstands its own nature, insisting on being separate!

Perhaps the packages aren’t offered only once. Perhaps they are offered to us every morning as we wake up, or every moment, for that matter. Is the Light always available, and the death we fear but a moment’s delusion?

Perhaps if we all decide to choose anew, right here wherever we are, right now whatever we are, the world we will manifest will be different, so very different. Different because we will seek not to create our world, but the world intended by a mystery forever beyond us, yet a mystery that resides right in our very core, at the center of our own truest selves.

The sea otter disappeared beneath the surface of the bay, swimming off to explore and play in other worlds. I waited for a moment, hoping he would surface again, then turned and walked home.

Back in my apartment, I stared at my computer, unable to find anything to say, not sure what the direction of this book is to be. It is still ahead of me, somewhere in that fog, the one without any signposts.

I spent the evening watching television, that great god of culture forever reassuring us of what is real. Finally, I pointed the remote control at the picture of some newscaster - they all look and sound the same, don’t they? - and zap! The world disappeared!

It seems so clear, so simple! And yet a trace of something inside me is still resisting. Separation, and all that comes with it - where is the button, and how do I push it? How do I change channels? How do I finally and irrevocably release the package labeled “Dream”? Am I sure I want to?

Marc, arise and write, please.

The voice startles me, and my eyes pop open.

“Ohhh, damn.” I lift my head with a struggle and turn to look at the clock. It is 11:30, and I feel very tired.

“Can’t we do this in the morning?” I ask my unseen visitor, then chuckle to myself at the nonchalance with which this conversation is taking place.

Yes.

God, I love the feeling of His presence so much, and think how nice it would be to just curl up on His “lap” and sleep forever.

At three o’clock, you will be awakened, and we shall continue.

Three o’clock! I was thinking more along the lines of nine o’clock, or even later. I feel his energy subside, and quickly fall back asleep.

Out of a myriad of cascading thoughts and images, awareness emerges. I realize I am awake.

“Damn, damn, double damn!” I sink down in the covers. It is so nice and warm here, and so cold out there! I know, I’ll just ignore this. Giving it everything I can, I toss restlessly for awhile.

Suddenly, my eyes pop wide open. Looking out of the corner of my eyes, I see the clock clearly. It is 3:34, and I have to go to the bathroom. No warning at all, I just have to go to the bathroom, and it won’t wait another minute.

Disgustedly, I throw the covers back and grab my robe. On the way to the bathroom I lift my eyes upward, muttering under my breath, “Boy, you guys will stop at nothing, will you?”

For a moment, I pause. The energy which is Jeshua has suddenly abated, and I find myself gazing at the flickering lights on the black and quiet waters of the harbor. There is the faintest of feelings within me, a pulsing of some sort. Surrendering my resistance, I breathe deeply and slowly, allowing abdomen, ribs, and chest to expand and release without strain.

While the intensity of this pulsing, this vibration, does not grow, it seems to expand in all directions, and then becomes softer and softer, drawing me more deeply into it. Though my eyes are open, I catch a glimpse of colored lights, felt as much as perceived.

Images begin flashing on the screen of my awareness at incredible speeds. I embrace the emotion each brings, recognition dawning that each is a part of me, each a lifetime, stretching back further and further, seemingly without beginning. They appear and disappear in an instant. As they fall away, I feel my body melting within itself, a deepening peace embracing, penetrating every cell. I am dissolving, letting go of all traces of resistance, all traces of denial, all traces of doubt - dissolving more and more completely. Increasing space now between the images as they become fewer, and fewer, and fewer until…there are none.

I do not know how much time goes by, for here, time is not.

From the silence of an emptiness which is forever perfect fullness, there emerges awareness, first of the reflection of my face in the window before me, then of the ships at rest in the harbor, the still waters, the flickering and radiant lights. They all seem to be contained within the reflection on the window, they in me and I in them; I am one with all things. In my reflection a faint smile begins to grow, a smile that springs gently from the center of my heart.

I did not know it would be like this. I would never have guessed it. Sitting here in this wonderful old rocking chair, the world so quiet in this pre-dawn hour, nothing special taking place. Everything the same, yet everything so different!

For this moment of eternity, gone the Dream.

Tomorrow I will start writing.