Teachings of Christ Mind

Good afternoon. Paul is noticing that I am feeling a little more enthusiastic and vital than he is in this heat. The best air conditioning is connection with your Guide. [audience laughter]

Okay. To repeat, in the Sparkly book, it’s page 162, last paragraph. In the second edition, it’s page 129, second full paragraph, paragraph number 10. And in the first edition, it’s the second line from the bottom of the page on page 119. And without preamble, we’ll go right into the book.

Tell me something. During the last seven days, how many minutes did you spend being aware that you are the Will of God? I’m not going to force you to convict yourselves by answering the question. But if that’s not what you were identifying yourself as, as you went through your week, then during your week, you were denying What You Are. You were in a state of Self-denial. A kinder way of putting it is that you were in a state of unconsciousness of your Identity. And if you are unconscious of Who or What You Are, it’s impossible for you to express it.

It’s a simple thing we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks—Singularity. And I want it to register with you as something simple. You hang on dearly to your concept of being a human being, your father’s and mother’s son or daughter, your children’s parent, a human being, a physical organism who’s arrogant enough to think it’s at the top of the food chain. You see? And when that’s the way you identify yourself, you leave out the best part. You leave out the Excellence of you. You leave out the Goodness, the God-ness of you.

And so, what it boils down to is something very simple. Let yourself during this coming week be as conscious as you can of the fact that you are more than your current definitions of yourself, that you are in actuality the Direct Expression and Presence of God in the middle of the Direct Expression of God. You call it the world and universe. It is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is Reality, with a capital “R”, the Ultimate. You think it’s arrogant to say if there’s anything here at all where I see myself, it must be God presenting Himself. It may seem arrogant to you to do that, but that is the simple Truth. And as a result, as I have been saying, there is an Excellence present. You are the Presence of Excellence. And there’s much more for you to give, to share, than you imagine or than you embrace in your current human definition of yourself.

You’ve got to dare to identify yourself correctly. Who to? To yourself, first. Because until you’re willing to embrace it, you can’t incorporate it. You can’t let it in to register and settle with you, and become the more of you that you’re capable of being, that you will then be able to extend and share; not as a sharing of arrogance, but of simple and genuine value that’s meaningful to everyone in your experience.

As I’ve said before, you’re all closet Christs embarrassed and ashamed to present Who You Really Are. And it’s time to come out of the closet. And the only way you’ll come out of the closet is to begin to remember in your mind Who You Are. And let it occupy more of your attention. That’s what this is all about. Again …

And this is me. It is the only thing really going on. Continuing …

… God’s.

In other words, the acknowledgement of What Is True about a Brother in your Mind causes what you see in him to be confirmed in you and you are blessed.

Totality. Infiniteness that is Wholeness. That is a Singularity, in other words.

I have Paul on the edge of his seat. We’re going somewhere he has no sense of. How does what I’ve just read relate to the specific human experience of your having to relate to someone who is unconscious of the Truth of themselves and who insists upon acting out defense when there is really nothing going on calling for defense, so that their behavior with you is obtuse, unpleasant, unkind without a cause. In other words, when someone is so unpleasant to be with that being with them and with their behavior constitutes such a distraction to you because it is so unpleasant that it is not possible to continue to be in their presence where you could be an active agent for change, where you could be the Presence of Love that heals.

Even more than this, what if this unpleasant someone, this well-defended someone who doesn’t see that their behavior is an unpleasant experience for others, what if they know that you have a commitment to the prayer, “I wish to see only the Evidence of Love. And I wish to be only the Evidence of Love.” What if this person knows that you have commitment to this, and although they don’t see in what way their behavior is unpleasant, they know that you are experiencing it as unpleasant and they don’t stop because they know you have a commitment to be defenseless? Do you stand there in the hurricane of their behavior and not object to it, but instead express the Truth about them? Or do you say to them, “Until you put the brakes on with this behavior, until you can settle down and stop being unpleasant, you will have to leave. Until you exert a little self-discipline and self-control so that I am not having to dodge the bullets that you are sending my way, we are not in a position to communicate and you can’t remain.”

Does your opting for the opportunity to be the Presence of Singularity in the face of attack something you are supposed to engage in without objection to the setting, the circumstance, in which it’s occurring? Well, I will tell you something. There is a way things work. And the way things work is full of Integrity. And it is full of Kindness.

And I will give you an example. If any one of you is angry, defensive, pissed off, and you want to talk to your Guide, and maybe you’re pissed off at your Guide because your Guide has been pushing your buttons encouraging you to expand beyond your comfort zone, and you approach your Guide full of emotion, vigor, criticism, judgment, you will not be able to hear your Guide. Why? Not because your Guide won’t speak to you, but because the willfulness that you are bringing into play in the process of approaching your Guide, in so many words, makes so much static in your mind that you will not hear the answer. And you will not hear the answer until you bring into play a certain amount of self-discipline and you settle yourself down. And you arrive at a point where, still not having the answer to the thing that was frustrating you, you’re willing to release the emotion because you know it’s getting in the way. And you choose to set it aside, even though it is of extreme importance to you to be able to express it, so that you can go into the Silence where you can hear the answer.

Now, let’s say that you are one of those who has said, “I wish to see only the Evidence of Love. And I wish to be only the Evidence of Love.” And you have made commitment to that and someone else knows it, just like Paul knows that I will never stop being here for him and I will never become upset by his behavior and I will always respond, and yet this one insists upon acting out their sense of separateness, vulnerability, and a need for defense that they feel, and they insist upon doing it most obtusely. You might feel that you must answer, that you must be the Presence of Love in that environment without objection. And you would be wrong. And this is important for you to know. You must … it’s absolutely necessary for you to say “No” to that kind of environmental circumstance, and you must tell them that they must leave if they’re not going to stop, and they cannot come back until they’ve gotten hold of themselves and are willing to go into their Peace and choose for it, so that healing of the disturbance can be addressed, rather than protection from the disturbance needing to be employed.

The behavior is a call for correction, right? You’ve been hearing this ever since we started reading the Course. The behavior, the loveless behavior, is a call for Love. It is a call for correction. And the first part … the first part of the correction involves modifying the way the call is being made so that the call for correction has a little more Love in it, a little less lovelessness in it. Now then, you’re in a position of having to wait until that one has come to the point of saying, “Okay, it’s less important to me to be able to express my upsetness, it’s less important to me, that is less important to me than being in the place where a relationship can occur that allows for healing to happen.” And that may be months. It may be years.

Well now, that seems to take you out of the loop as far as your function is concerned because your function is to be the Presence of Love, to be that Singularity that heals. And now the setup is by virtue of your objecting to the uninhibited expression of anger or defense, you’re not in a position of relating to them in a healing way. Well, you’re not out of the loop because you’ve still got your own mind in which to be clear and in which to be the Presence of Clarity that gets extended.

In metaphysics, there is something that is called absent treatment. It is where healing work is done and you’re not in the presence of the one who has asked for healing. And so you have the opportunity in your mind whenever this individual comes to your attention to ask God, to turn toward the Holy Spirit, to go within to that Place of Excellence in you, to ask, “What is the Truth about this one?” Not “What is the truth about his or her bad behavior?” but, “What is the God’s honest Truth about him or her?” Because you want your mind filled with the consciousness of the Truth about them so that you are not conflicted, and so that every time you think about them, you are sending out messengers that will bring back confirmation of the Truth of them to you.

It is important to understand this, else you end up being the victim or victims of abuse. And you end up being the victims of abuse because you have an unintelligent concept of what it means to be the Presence of Love. “You’re supposed to stand there and turn the other cheek when one cheek has been slapped.” No. When lovelessness is expressed, you don’t give lovelessness another opportunity to be expressed. You don’t come back from the ego place that the slap came from. You come from the other vantage point. You come from the other Voice, the Voice for Truth, and you say, “No. This behavior is unacceptable. The truth that you need to hear right now is that you cannot continue this behavior in my Presence. And until this behavior stops, we have no basis for resolving whatever the distress is that’s causing you to behave this way.” That is turning the other cheek. It’s coming back from the other Voice, coming back from the Place of Excellence in you that honors them enough to say, “I will not give you permission when you’re with me to behave in a way that doesn’t reflect the Truth about you. And at the same time I respect and honor What’s True About Me enough not to join with you in your attitude and retaliate.”

Let’s continue …

Any part of it, even if it’s just the rose, even if it’s just your fingernail.

In other words, your mind will be in a condition of Singularity which is its normal state; it’s only state.

Why? Because existence, the Conscious Experience of Being, Mind, is Singular.

Mmm. So the question comes, “Well, why can’t I demonstrate this? Why with this particular individual, or that particular individual, can’t I do something to aggressively change the situation; aggressively, lovingly, transformingly heal the situation?” And the simple reason is that you cannot make anyone … you cannot make anyone use their will in a way that is contrary to their current choice. And so, until their current choice changes, you must say, “No. You cannot behave with me that way. You will have to go find others who will accept it.”

Well, but it’s your son, or your daughter, or your parent, or your best friend. How can you just break it off? They’re family, or they’re loved ones. Well, I’m going to tell you something. You’ve got to pay attention to your common sense. And if being with them causes only discomfort, and nothing, no matter how loving you are, they will not change their behavior, you must ask yourself whether it is intelligent for you to remain in a situation where conflict is being employed consciously and purposely and be without your peace. And you must finally come to the point where you answer, “No, I refuse to be in the thick of battle where it is so noisy that I cannot experience my peace.” And you must withdraw as I did to a mountaintop. You must withdraw from where you are being thronged by the crowds, by the dynamics, so that you may choose for your Peace and find it.

Now, I’m going to ask another question. You, who might be having situations like this, and all of you are to one degree or another, why are you picking on the one, or two, or three individuals who are insisting upon being hateful and being preoccupied by your inability to change them, when you have a hundred others in your experience with whom you can dialogue and communicate and grow together? What is your addiction to what you see as a call for help that you know is not genuine? What I mean by that is that although at the bottom line every call for help is a call for help, there are those who are calling for help because they’re getting a hit from being unpleasant. They are getting a feeling of power which they are consciously choosing to employ because they know it’s upsetting and they want to see you squirm. And they have no intent of letting you off the hook so that you can stop squirming.

Why do you have an addiction to trying to change them? What I’m trying to point out to you is that the practical fact is that there will be no … there will be no … not enough defenselessness for there to be a joining and a blending of the two of you where communication can occur. And you must wait until they open up and are willing to let someone in and they are willing to stop this behavior, at least with you. If they know that you have a commitment to being the Evidence of Love and they think that that means that you should stand there in the face of their ongoing attack that has as its purpose to make you uncomfortable so that they can watch you squirm, they must learn something about what it means for you to wish to be only the Evidence of Love. Because wishing to be the Evidence of Love and being the Evidence of Love will never involve your saying “okay” to that kind of behavior.

If you say “okay” to that kind of behavior, you’re presenting no call for correction on their part. And so the first part of your expressing Love and being the Evidence of Love is to say “No” to the behavior absolutely, and that until the behavior changes, there can be no active relationship. Then, they will be faced with the fact that they must recognize that they must change their behavior. Just as when you’re reaching out to God in anger and frustration, whether it’s at God or whether it’s at a Brother or Sister, you will have to arrive at a point where after having received no answer, that you decide to settle down your willfulness and your projection of hate so that there’s enough peace and quiet within you to hear God’s Answer, where there’s enough absence of willfulness that the Will of God can register with you.

And every single one of you has to come to this point. Every one of you has to come to the point of yielding to God. And that always involves yielding up your so-called right to an independent expression of willfulness. Now if that’s the only way you can approach God, that’s the only way your Brother or Sister can approach God that is finding expression through you.

“Well that feels really hard-nosed. Oh, this is the tough-love love. I see. I understand.” No. It’s not tough love. It’s just simple intelligence and it is a matter of coming to a realization within yourself that there really is a way that things work.

No little, private, separate egos are making up rules of any sort, even though that’s what egos busy themselves with. There is a Divine Order to things. I’m sorry. Mind is a Singularity. And you know what that means? It means that no matter how hard you try to be fragmented, you can’t succeed because that’s the way it works. And so if you want to experience connection with God, with the Holy Spirit, with your Guide, with the Place of Excellence in you, so that you’re feeling and experiencing it and inspired by it and enlarged in your Awareness of What You Are by it, you must abandon your insistence upon being some sort of really unique and interesting, complex, fragmented presence. Is that clear? Does that make sense? Why? Because that’s the Way It Works. You must cooperate with the Way Things Are. And there is the larger context than the infrastructure of private, defensive thoughts and concepts that you have all developed. And that larger context is your Home.

Now, let’s continue. The next section is called:

Listen to this.

How many of you thought the word “projection” was a dirty word? But it …

… projection is …

… of projection.

So it projects it out there as though it’s not its own. It gets rid of it.

But … (I’m adding the word, “but.”)

… projection …

… the law of projection …

And listen to this:

How many times during the week might you find yourself in a position or situation that calls for correction and you say, “I know what to do about this. My experience tells me that if I do this and that and the other thing, I will be able to move things in a new direction.” Well, somebody says, “Did you check in with your Guide?” “Oh! I can handle this one. I can … I don’t … that’s … that’ll take too long. I can handle this one.” The ego says, “I can handle this one. I can free you of conflict lest you give me up and free yourself.” You get it?

… you see? There’s the Singularity again. There are no other Laws to use. There’s no other Reality to be in. You’re in the Kingdom of Heaven which is governed by the Laws of God, and you’re either experiencing it truly, or you’re experiencing it through the lens of the definitions you have made-up about it. But because Mind is Singular, you will be using the Laws, the only Laws there are to accomplish, or to seem to accomplish, what you’re doing. And because the Laws of Being serve to support Being in Its Infinite Singularity without conflict in it, every attempt you make to do something unintelligent will have an unintelligent result. Every impossible thing you attempt to do will never be done.

And so, when you’re trying to operate on your own, every experience will be a failure of one sort or another. Why? Because Mind is a Singularity, and therefore the intent set into motion by virtue of sharing, or extension, is going to bear identical fruit. The fruit will reflect perfectly the intent because Mind is a Singularity. And the intent to do something impossible will bear the fruit of failure. And the intent to be what you are not will be uncomfortable. To do what is not natural, and which is therefore impossible, will provide you with an experience that identifies its unnaturalness and its impossibility. And you call that suffering. And you call it the human condition. And your ego says it can free you of this. When what needs to happen is you need to abandon the ego’s vantage point. You need to abandon attempting to do the impossible. You need to stop using the Laws of God to demonstrate that you can’t succeed at using them improperly. Again …

… “They did it! It’s their fault! I wouldn’t be having so much trouble if they weren’t doing blah, blah, blah, blah.”

“It’s their fault. It’s not my problem. I didn’t cause it. They’re the cause of it.”

But remember we talked last week about the fact that, yes, you did cause it. You caused it by first of all saying, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.” You didn’t value the Father’s Way of experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven as the Kingdom of Heaven. You said, “I’d rather experience it as something else.” But then, you don’t want to own, take responsibility for, the way you’re experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven. So you do the only thing you can do because being is a matter of projecting. You project the cause of your suffering out there. Why? So that you can be squeaky clean. “You innocent little bastard, you.” And the word “bastard” is not a dirty word. It’s the truth because you have gotten a bill of divorcement, haven’t you? Parentless. Fatherless. Motherless. You see, you thought it was so great to be asserting some self-authority, and you turned yourself into a bastard. You didn’t expect it. And you don’t want to acknowledge it either. So now everyone else … everyone else is the bastard. And now it’s a dirty word. They are a bastard.

The intent [small laugh] … the intent is to do something impossible, and so you can’t succeed. Why? Because using the Laws of God which are Singular in an Infinite Environment which is Singular, the attempt to do the impossible is impossible. Now there is just pure and simple logic.

Why? Because you can’t fragment or divide a Singularity that is absolute and unchangeable. You just can’t. You might fool yourself into believing that you have. And that’s called the human condition. But you can’t do it!

Continuing …

Now, I’m going to add these words.

Because the Laws of God are Singular and because Being is Singular and because Mind is Singular:

Now I’m reading.

That’s just the Way It Works. So, in your ignorance, thinking you are a private, separate, little mind with rights of your own and authority of your own, you think that if you have something that you don’t want and you give it away, you will no longer have it. And you’re dead wrong, because the moment you give something away, you have it. That’s the Law of Singularity.

Continuing …

… and you all know who they are, right? You.

Is that insanity or what?

There is no way out of this. Why? Because it is impossible to fragment your mind. Why is it impossible to fragment your mind? Because Mind is a Singularity. Always has been. Always will be. Is now. Because there’s no other condition of the existence of Mind available.

Now I’ve got to return to this sticky little subject about other people’s behavior and how you respond, because this sentence can be used as a basis for your staying in a situation of continuing to be abused. Here it is.

And the ego wants to come in and say, “Well if I’m saying that their behavior is unacceptable and they cannot behave that way in my Presence, am I not creating a picture that is untrue about them and projecting it on them, and thereby making it true about me? And is not the whole process one that continues the illusion, the problem, rather than healing it?” Is anybody not understanding me? Well, if you are, just rewind the tape and listen to what I just said over again. I’m not going to repeat it right now.

When you say to another, “We cannot continue this involvement until you’re willing to modify your behavior, until you’re willing to exercise a little self-control and stop behaving in such an obtuse way… ,” if you are going to say that to someone, it is not to say they are bad. It is not to say they are wrong. It is not a judgment. It is an observation of behavior that they are engaging in consciously, on purpose. And you are saying, “I will not join with you in agreeing with you that this behavior represents what is true about you. And so I will not let this false presentation continue in my presence. I will not honor its expression in my presence because I know the Truth about you. And until you’re willing to express a little bit more of it with me, sayonara. I honor the Integrity of your Being too much to allow you to cover it up with this behavior and expect me to accept it.” That is Love because it doesn’t honor something in them that they want you to honor. And they want you to honor their right to be themselves in any fashion that they choose, whether it’s loving or loveless. And you must say “No.”

And when you say “No,” it doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. It doesn’t mean that you have a negative concept about them. It says that you respect What’s True about them too much to allow them to present themselves this way and expect you to believe that that’s them and accept that it is them. You won’t do it.

I’m repeating …

And if you stand without objection in the presence of another who is being insane and wanting you to accept their insanity as the Truth about them, you must say “No.” Because if you do agree with them and you agree with their right to behave in a way that doesn’t reflect What’s Real about them, you are then agreeing that an illusion is real and you are confirming it in them, and you are thereby, because Mind is Singular, confirming it about yourself. Does that make sense? Do you see that? Good. If nothing else has been made clear today, that is a major step forward. And we are going to end there.

I know that the Idea of Singularity has been difficult to grasp the Meaning of, and I know that I have been very repetitive, but it’s because it’s so essential to understand. And it’s because it is such a simplicity that if you don’t get it in its simplicity, whatever we read from now on is going to seem complex. And you will think that waking up is a complex thing, when it’s not.

“Can we get on to something fresh and new and stimulating?” Don’t worry. We will. We will.

I love you all. And I look forward to being with you next week. Thank you.