I mentioned that the problems being faced in the world at that point, and actually now, arise from a fundamental mistake.  And the fundamental mistake is the belief that substance [wraps knuckles on table] is matter.  When the fact is that substance—the substance of everything you encounter every day—is not matter.  It is Spirit, Spirit with a capital “S”—Spirit, one of the synonyms or meanings of God. 

Spirit is the substance of Creation.  It is that out of which God creates.  It is that with which God creates.  And the Creation is the substance of Spirit patterned in the image of the Idea in God’s Mind.

You, every single day, are confronted by the patterned images, you might say, of the Ideas of God.  You are constantly in the midst of a totally holy experience.  But that is not what you believe, that is not what you profess, and that is not what you, within yourself, are committed to.

You’re committed to the definitions of substance as matter.  A dangerous thing to do  because in the denial of what it really Is, you lose the experience of what it really Is.  And in your professed faith and commitment to what you believe it is, you find yourself bound to what? 

Polarities: Positive-negative, peace-fear, life-death. 

And as we’ve been saying all along, this division of that which is One into polarities was the result of your saying, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.  Father, I would rather define what this is.  I want to make up the definitions.  And based on the definitions I make up, I will create a world . . . I will create a world that serves my definitions.  In other words, a world that serves me.  A world that reflects what I’ve determined reality to be . . .” You see?  “. . . because I’m going to do it on my own.” 

Immediately, as we’ve said over and over, two things come into play:  Fear and guilt.  

Without polarities, guilt couldn’t seem to exist.  And there would be no cause for fear.  But polarities are inherent in the decision to act at odds with God.  Is that any surprise?  The decision to act at odds with God sets up what?  A polarity.  And that causes every perception that follows that act to be polarized. 

As a result, you’re walking through the Kingdom of Heaven—and you know I’ve said this over and over, but it’s got to come home to you that I am speaking truth that today in what you call this world—not another one afar off, pie-in-the-sky-after-you-die, but right here and right now you’re in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven [wraps knuckles on table].  The substance of everything is Spirit, not matter. 

And Waking up is a matter of doing the two-step, as we’ve said, going into the holy instant and abandoning your commitment to everything you believe  [again wraps knuckles on table] that that’s matter, that that’s a physical organisimic body—born, matures, ages, dies, because that’s what material bodies do.  Right? 

You say, “It’s just not my belief.  Look at all living things . . . all living things die.  That’s what we’ve decided to call, ‘the cycle of life.’” 

Gee, it’s almost poetic isn’t it.  It makes a mistake sound really reasonable and embraceable doesn’t it?

You’re in a time right now—I mean literally, today, yesterday, tomorrow—you’re in a time in which events are happening that I trust are making it easier for you to hear what I’m saying and bring into play in you a greater willingness to abandon your confidence, and for you to be willing to step outside of the box of your traditional perceptions in order to consider something you haven’t considered before, such as:  That you really are in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven and everything you’re confronted with or by is constituted of the substance of Spirit—God stuff.  And that therefore, because of what it actually Is, there is a different experience of it awaiting you when you abandon your confidence that it’s just matter [slaps hands together].  I could as easily slapped Paul’s face . . . I could as easily punched someone else in the nose as a demonstration that it’s matter.  Matter being polarized can engage in activities which are harmful—hurtful.  Right?  But as the substance of Spirit, these hands could pass right through each other.    Paul’s definitions at the moment don’t allow that simple truth to be demonstrated, although he would enjoy having the experience.

What needs to  settle in  and register deeply with you  is,  that everything you can touch and feel, caress or slap, today . . . TODAY, . . not after you die in Heaven, but today, is Spirit, not matter.

If you let that sink in, it’s going to be obvious to you that you have a really fascinating interesting task in front of you.  You have an activity to engage in, not just because it’s interesting and fun, but also because it’s utterly intelligent to engage in—experiencing what’s true, rather than illusions, because illusions bring with them suffering, polarities.  You see?  And you don’t really want that.  And hey, if all of this that you see and feel is the substance of Spirit, if it’s all God stuff, then really, what better activity do you have to engage in, than to delve into, lean into, let yourself into the experience of what it truly Is?

Because then, you’re in that place where God’s laws prevail.  You’re in that place where polarities do not exist.  You’re in that place where regeneration and redemption can occur . . . transformed experience of things . . . healing of bodies.

Now, I used the word, “patterning,” because when God has an Idea it is a pattern.  It is a pattern that is experienceable and recognizable, tangible, as I’ve said before, to the Mind which forms it.  There are no polarities to it.  And there are no polarities or differences between this particular pattern, you might say, a hand . . . and this particular pattern which you would call, “a shirt” or another particular pattern called, “plutonium” or another particular pattern called, “gamma rays” or another particular pattern called, ‘kidney” or another particular pattern called, “a table.”

Now the pattern is an idea that is comprehensible.  In the Mind of God, an Idea arises that is comprehensible.  It is at that point already, a pattern.  And that pattern is recognizable to the Mind that formed it.  It is also recognizable to all that that Mind has formed—meaning all of Creation—because it embodies the consciousness that God is, is capable of recognizing and experiencing the new pattern.  And so the new pattern is a shared experience of unity.

Now, when you say, “But Father, I’d rather do it my way.  But Father, I’d rather define things myself,” you are incapable of having an idea arise in you that is a pattern that is recognizable and experienceable.  You’re incapable of initiating Creation from scratch all by yourself. 

And so, all you’re ever doing when you’re giving definitions to things is re-naming what God has already patterned, renaming what God has already been Being.  And when you do that, your relationship with that thing is polarized because you are holding it to a definition different from the pattern or Idea that God is Being right there. 

And as a result, the pattern that you would call a table becomes not an idea which your body (has many ideas) can pass through and you could carelessly run into the table and break your leg and fall and hit your head and die.  And you could have a polarized death-creating experience.  Not because it is what you think it is, but because you’re insisting on relating to it untruthfully.  You are unwilling to relate to it as it Is. 

And all of a sudden, That which is incapable of polarities, That which is incapable of manifesting in relationship to everything else pure and utter harmony, it becomes something destructive.  It’s the same thing with atoms.  It’s the same thing with gamma rays. 

I know, you say, “Well, the sun emits gamma rays, the sun emits ultraviolet light, the sun emits substances that are not good for man’s health if he gets out in the sun too long . . . or if there’s a solar flare of extreme intensity.”   You see?  “And so that’s natural, that’s part of God’s Creation.”  

I beg your pardon, it’s not.  But it is part of the way you experience It while you are claiming to have the authority to give definitions to everything on your own.

Now it’s time for the suffering caused by polarities between substances and polarities within substances themselves, to cease to be governing any of you.  It’s time for you to dare to Vision anew.  It’s time for you to dare to conscientiously practice the holy instant.  Why?  So that you might yield to the Father’s Perspective.  Because when you yield to the Father’s Perspective you let yourself back into your native perspective and you let yourself back into a place where even if there is an emission of radioactivity from a nuclear energy plant, neither you nor the cows nor the plants have any negative effects from it.

Now why?  Because the atoms in the leaves, the atoms in the plants, the atoms in the cows, the atoms in the milk are all what? The substance of Spirit.  It’s one unpolarized substance.  It’s one substance, many forms but pure and utter harmony because they embody one intent.

As co-creators with God your task is to stop looking at all of this and calling it something other than what it Is and making commitment to your definition of it so that you stand at odds with what it really Is, while you are attempting to get the thing, which you have defined anew to serve your intents and purposes.  It’s time for that to stop.

It’s time for that to stop today.  And it’s time for every student of the Course to stop thinking that that isn’t part of the Awakening process, that that isn’t part of what happens in the holy instant.  And that regeneration and redemption isn’t inherent in your saying, “Not my will be done Father, but Thine be done.”

It’s that simple.

“You know . . . so a little puff of radioactivity is released and maybe some of the cows in that prefecture . . . you know, maybe their tissues are damaged, and maybe their milk is not good and maybe they’ll never be able to provide milk for anyone else and maybe the plants there in a small radius might be damaged and maybe creatures that live in that area will take on strange forms . . . why?  Because the pattern has been disturbed,”  You see?  “You know, and isn’t it a shame . . I mean, ya know . . . thank God, it’s not the whole of Japan, but just . . . ya know, a small part of the Northern part of Japan and you know . . .”

That’s sickening!  That attitude needs to be squelched!  Red flags should go up when that kind of thought occurs to you.

“Oh-h, but wait a minute . . . ya know, maybe they’re going to have to release more radioactive steam and materials into the air . . . and they’ve just discovered that the levels of radioactivity on the West Coast of the United States are elevated a little bit, not much, not enough to damage or hurt anybody . . . ewww . . . ”  but doesn’t make those of you on the West Coast of the United States sort of abandon your . . . you know, your distanced perspective . . . “Well it’s happening over there and isn’t it a shame . . . and thank God it isn’t worse than it is.  Oh my God, it’s worse than I thought it was.  There is an elevated radioactivity on my shores where I live . . .”

You know what?  Maybe a doomsday scenario here will never occur, but the call for clarity, the call for putting into practice the holy instant, the call to not be satisfied with mediocrity when it comes to your health or your physical structure or your aging process and so on. 

This is a wakeup call.  This is an opportunity to heal the justification, if I can put it that way, for actually leaning into the truth further than you have, being open to the radical more than you have, and being willing to dare to say, “Maybe the substance of everything here isn’t matter.  Maybe it is the substance of Creation Itself—meaning Creation, God’s Movement.  Maybe it is!  And maybe it behooves me to be infinitely more diligent in giving my attention to the clearer experience of Creation that I’m being told it is.  Maybe it’s time for me to expect to see regeneration and redemption. 

What is redemption?  It’s a return to the original, and I’m going to say, a return to the spiritual original.  A return to the pattern that the Father patterned by having the Idea, which is now forever Eternal and forever made new, moment by moment by moment, and which is incapable of sin, disease and death, so that I no longer have to say, “Well, you know, the substance of my liver or the substance of my this, that or other part of the body has lost its pattern . . . a new pattern has emerged and the new pattern is really inimical to the function of the old pattern, so I’m very likely to die from this pattern change.”

No.  That’s not being co-creators with God.  That’s being a creator on your own.  “Well, I’m going to say that this kidney is not the substance of Spirit, and this other pattern that’s come into play and is disrupting the original pattern, I’m going to say that that’s cancer.  And I’m going to say that these two are incompatible with each other, that they will eventually see the result of destruction.  That’s what I’m going to say.  And that’s what I’m going to believe.  And that’s what I’m going to be afraid of.  And that’s what I’m going to dwell on until I die because I have no justification for dwelling on anything else.”

Do you think that’s being a student of the Course?  Do you think that’s being a student of truth?  Do you think that is the result of the holy instant that you’ve been reading about, that you’ve talked about, that you want to have the experience of?  No.  But the whole purpose of the Course is for you to have the experience of what the Course is talking about.  It’s for you to have the experience of how God Created things, which it’s your Birthright to be experiencing because after all, you aren’t a lump of physical organic flesh either—you’re not something encased in matter!

Everyone is lazy and lackadaisical.  And it’s time to employ some vigor.  It’s time to use the circumstances at hand.

Well, really what difference is there really between swine flu and radioactivity or summer colds or winter colds?  “Oh, well, they sweep around the globe and they affect people, they’re transmittable, they can have an impact and people can die from all of them.”

Now, many of you, I know, have great confidence that a cold or swine flu is something that can be healed through prayer, through the practice of the two-step and the holy instant.  But there are other things like cancer and radiation poisoning that you say cannot.  Hey, the effects of that which is poisonous cannot be transmuted, nullified, made ineffective or on the other side of the coin that maybe your immune system could be potent enough to ward off the effects.  You see? 

But again, you see, that’s polarities—that’s one thing having a negative power and another thing having a positive power that can ward off the negative power.  We’re still in polarities aren’t we?  We’re in a war.  We’re still in the independence stance of, “But Father, I’d rather define it myself.”

You haven’t stepped out of that into that place where you say, “Father, what is the truth here?”  Wherein the benign-ness of the substance of Spirit can be revealed to you, where you can feel and experience wholly that there are no polarities and not only are there no polarities between things, there is instead a bond of Love—not bondage—but a bond, an embracing bond of Love communicated in and through and around everything by everything in one great union of Love expressed and expressing, given and received all as one event.

When you let that experience in—the feeling of it—because it’s been revealed to you by the Father, because you’ve said, “Father, I don’t want to fool around with my definitions any longer, what’s the truth here?” . . . when that comes in, again, you’re in that place where God’s laws prevail.  And you’re in a place where a radioactive cloud or swine flu germs or any other communicable, deleterious substance could have adverse effects.  You’re in a place where that capacity simply is no longer present.

The earth in Chernobyl does not have to be damaged, uninhabitable, nonproductive for tens of thousands of years.  The Earth needs healing.  Any damage that has occurred in Japan does not need to take a long time.  And people in that area do not need to live in fear for the rest of their life—which I hope they realize is eternal and not brief—they do not need to live those years in fear of cancers forming because of this disturbance.

And you know what?  Cancers that you might be experiencing in your body that aren’t the result of radioactivity or cigarette smoking or any other action you might have taken that could cause it, that seems to just sort of naturally have arisen, you don’t need to spend another day with that threat . . . you don’t need to spend another day with that threat.