 
Location: The Kingdom of Heaven | A COURSE IN MIRACLES
STUDY GROUP WITH RAJ Good evening. And welcome to everyone who's joining us on the Internet. In the last few weeks we’ve been talking about faith and faithlessness with a rather narrow definition applied to them, one which makes things simpler. Simply put, faithlessness is when each one of you leans upon your own understanding. Faithlessness is when you never reach beyond the meanings and definitions which you employ in order to “understand” life. Faithlessness is when you never have to bring anything more into the picture than the confidence you place in your memory and in your skill at manipulating ideas, so as to, through the use of logic, come to conclusions that are undeniable . . . conclusions that require you not to employ faith at all. You see?
Faithlessness is a totally self-centered act. Faith, on the other hand, is what the Course is all about. Faithlessness is what life has been all about up until the illumination that the Course has brought forth. Faith is when you silence your self-will, when you silence your best thinking. When you stop relying upon yourself and you reach beyond. It’s the practice of the holy instant or the two-step, as I’ve been calling it and describing it. It’s when you abandon faithlessness, meaning self-centeredness and you reach beyond and you say, “Father”—meaning God, the Source of all Being, or Holy Spirit—“What is the truth here? I want to see the truth . . . that I want to see the more of what God is Being, I want to see the more of what Reality is, right here where I have been seeing what I’ve defined as a material world and universe. In other words, if this is more than a material world and universe, if this truly is the Kingdom of Heaven misperceived by me, then I sincerely and committedly abandon everything I’ve imagined. I devalue it and I make commitment to reaching toward the Father, toward the Holy Spirit—which is nothing more than my right Mind—so that I might escape the results of faithlessness, so that I might see instead of be blind . . . that I might Awaken and no longer dream.” So you see, faith and faithlessness are really black and white. Just like being the holy Son of God or being an orphan because you said, “Father, I’d rather get a divorce from you and determine what everything is myself.” You see? It’s black or white. It’s this or that. And you know what? If anyone is truly interested in Awakening to the truth, they are going to have to, with determination, abandon the way they have been functioning up until this moment and bring something new into play. Now what you’re going to bring into play isn’t really something new, it isn’t something you’ve never heard of before, but it’s something you’ve neglected to employ because you gave preference to something else. This thing that you need to employ is faith. And because faithlessness, meaning your typical everyday way of looking at things, because it is not contributing in any way to your returning to your Sanity, you must be willing to refuse to employ or utilize it because it undermines whatever degree of faith you might bring into play—or try to bring into play. This is very important. Now, the last sentence, the last time we were together was: Truth is the ABSENCE of illusion, illusion the ABSENCE of truth.1
Once again, very black and white . . . right? Both cannot BE together, nor perceived in the same place. To dedicate yourself to both is to set up a goal forever impossible to attain, for part of it is sought through the body, thought of as a means for seeking out reality through attack, while the other part would heal, and therefore calls upon the mind and NOT the body.
Now we read: . . . part of it is sought through the body, . .
. . . and what that means is that part of it is sought through the body as you have defined it: a material organism, not a divine Idea held in the Mind of God, illuminating and expressing the divinity of the Idea that the Father is expressing as that Identity. You see? This applies to all bodies, all forms. Now . . . The inevitable compromise . . .
. . . when you want to have truth and illusion side-by-side, and employ a little bit of that one and a little bit of the other as it suits your purpose and your fancy as you go through your day, . . . . . The inevitable compromise between the two is the belief that the BODY must be healed, and not the mind.
When the mind was where the decision was made, “Father, I want a divorce. Father, I want to determine the meaning of everything.” See? And in that act, followed by commitment, which also was mental, you fell asleep. Suddenly, instead of all of Creation being the total Meaning of Being—meaning your Being and your inseparability from all of It—all of a sudden you were identified solely with the specific identification of you, which is part of the infinity of Creation. And you said, “Oh-h, what happened? I’m a body, I didn’t expect that, but hey, I’ll give a different definition for that and I’ll make it a definition that can contribute to my being the ultimate that I can be, as a result of my use of my mind to define myself and my world.” You see? . . . Ah, now there was the initial act of faithlessness. And the result of it was identification as a body, an illusion—not the truth of You—but something you couldn’t escape when you decided to think for yourself and determine things for yourself instead of being co-creator with God, by being the presence of that which recognized God in everything and acknowledged God because you saw and experienced It, thus confirming Creation and being co-creator of It by your recognition and confirmation of It. Now again . . . The inevitable compromise . . .
. . . when you’re trying to have illusion and truth be together . . . . . . The inevitable compromise is the belief that the BODY must be healed, and NOT the mind.
Even though, as I just described, the mind is where the problem occurred and therefore is the place where it must be resolved. For this divided goal has given both . . .
. . . meaning truth and illusion . . . . . . has given both an equal reality, which could be possible only if the mind is limited to the body, . .
. . . meaning only if you have arrived at a point where you think that your mind is in a brain, in a skull, a part of the body, rather than being That in which the body, the brain, the fingernails, everything and all of Creation abide and have their actual Being as divine Ideas to be recognized for what they Are and acknowledged for what they Are as the Presence of God in motion called “Creation.” [For] this divided goal has given both an equal reality, which could be possible only if the mind is limited to the body, and divided into little parts of seeming wholeness, but without connection. This will not harm the body, . .
. . . this is very important . . . . . . but it WILL keep the delusional thought system in the MIND.
Now, to have been practicing faithlessness, we’ll say, for as long as you can remember, because at the moment you’ve forgotten that you’re the holy Son or Daughter of God for as long as you have been practicing faithlessness, which we will say is forever, the body has been what you thought you were. I don’t care how many incarnations you might have experienced, the fundamental of each one of those apparent lifetimes has been identification as a body—a body that is subject to sin, sickness and death—a body that does not seem to identify what’s true about you, what’s true about your holiness. It doesn’t identify eternality, does it. But that’s because you have identified it with meanings you have imagined, that have arisen out of an absence of connection with your Source. As a result, your body seems to be able to be destructive, destructible and mortal. Now here’s the thing:
This will not harm the body, . .
. . . you can live as many lifetimes as you want, you may believe that you are a body and behave defensively and use it to attack the world so as to better define it, you can do that but this will not harm the body.
What it means is, that it will not harm what the body actually is, which is an Idea held in the Mind of God, moved by, enlivened by the Movement, an action of omnipotence. What it truly is cannot be harmed. And the evidence you have of that, if you believe in reincarnation, the evidence of that is that even though it seems to die because of this disease or that accident, why, you still exist. And you still exist again and you still exist again. So you see, it doesn’t harm the body, but until you abandon the definitions you have applied to it, you will seem to not see God in it. You will seem to not see eternality in it even though the repetitiousness of it [chuckle] is a demonstration of its eternality. So: This will not harm the body, . .
. . . all of this trying to make truth equal to illusion and try to employ them both and let them be side-by-side . . . . . . This will not harm the body, but it WILL keep the delusional thought system in the MIND.
Because the delusion can’t be going on anywhere else. And so it’s not going on anywhere else. And what the Course is teaching and what we’re illuminating is the fact that the solution to the human condition lies in the shift from identification with the body to identification with Mind. Here, then, . .
. . . meaning mind . . . . . . is healing needed. And it is here that healing IS.
It simply is nowhere else. For God gave healing not APART from sickness, nor established remedy where sickness cannot be.
So you see, God didn’t place the remedy in the physical universe. God didn’t place the remedy in the body. God established the remedy where the flaw emerged, where the unintelligence was expressed and that’s in the mind. They are TOGETHER, and when they are SEEN together, all attempts to keep both truth and illusion in the mind, where both MUST be, are recognized as dedication to ILLUSION; . .
. . . you see? Once this becomes clear to you, you’ll see that illusion is a false perception and truth is a true perception. Illusion is the false perception of Reality and truth is the true perception of Reality. Very simple. Since they’re both perceptions, they can’t actually co-exist in an intelligent mind. They can’t exist in the divine Mind. And when you see that clearly, you will recognize that it’s foolish, meaningless, to continue to try to incorporate the human condition into the divine condition or to have divinity alter the human condition but still leave it human. You see? And so it will become clear to you what you need to do. It will become clear that you need to address this in the mind . . . in your mind. And the way you address it is through the use of the holy instant, is through the use of the two-step, where you shut up your mind and you abide in the consciousness of peace or of silence. And in that peace you reach out, “Father, what is the truth here?” You see? “Holy Spirit, what is the God’s honest truth here?” And then you maintain the silence—you push against the silence instead of reverting to your well established habits of thinking. You remain devoted to Knowing the truth, having the truth revealed to you. And I have been here all along to reinforce in your minds the fact that when you ask, the Father answers. When you reach out to your divinity, meaning the Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—It answers because integrity and unity is what characterizes Being and therefore, You. And so you must recognize the “black” and “white” of it, the “this” and “that” of it and choose for that and remain steadfast with that choice. You see? It’s really very simple. What seems to make it complicated is that you have great investments in your best judgments and the definitions and meanings you have applied to life. And they are all associated with your becoming a more perfected, valuable entity who has integrity in his own right. And so it’s difficult to let go of faithlessness because it seems to be the abandonment of the possibility of your integrity in your own right. It thus, seems to be dangerous to your well-being. Again: They . . . . . . sickness and healing . . .
. . . are TOGETHER, and when they are SEEN together, all attempts to keep both truth and illusion in the mind, where both MUST be, are recognized as dedication to ILLUSION; . .
. . . that recognition is called “learning.” And it puts you in a new place able to be on a new basis. So . . . . . . when they are SEEN together, all attempts to keep both truth and illusion in the mind, where they [both] MUST be, are recognized as dedication to ILLUSION; . .
. . . it’s foolish to try to keep them together . . .
. . . and given up when brought to truth, and seen as totally unreconcilable with truth, in any respect or in any way.
The human condition and the experience of holiness are irreconcilable. They’re not reconcilable. They will not be brought together. Misperception will be given up for true perception. They will not seem to exist side-by-side as choices anymore, once you make the choice for truth with commitment and persistence. Truth and illusion have NO connection.
Faithlessness and faith have no connection. The orphanage and the Kingdom of Heaven have no connection. What seemed to be two will turn into one when the other is abandoned. That’s what this is all about. And this is what the practice of the holy instant is for. Truth and illusion have NO connection. This will remain forever true, however much you seek to connect them.
“Oh, I would love to be anointed by God. I would love to be inspired by God. I would love to be in-filled by an experience of divinity so that I might help my fellowman, so that I might transform this world from the chaos and the conflict that it seems to be in the middle of.” Well, I’ll tell you something: That’s trying to combine truth with illusion, faith with faithlessness. Because you can’t hold onto a world in turmoil to be fixed up, while you reach for that which is unlike it because it’s holy, because it’s divine, so that in your grasp of it you might be able, with your feet firmly in the orphanage, with your feet firmly in the land of faithlessness—meaning the land of the definitions you’ve given to everything—you can’t do that and that’s not what the holy instant is for and that’s not what Waking up is for. Because when you make this commitment and persist in this commitment until revelation occurs in you, because you’ve asked, “What is the more of what God is being here than what I’m seeing?” you won’t see the world through the lens of your definitions and meanings anymore. And so, although you will recognize the “call for love” and you will know how to bring that call of love forth, because the Father has illuminated it to you, correction will occur. But it won’t be the fixing up of the old, it will be the correcting of the misperception because it’s not the body or world that needs to be healed, but the mind which is misperceiving. The mind, I will say, whose Birthright is to be seeing everything perfectly with the Father’s Perception in its divinity.
Truth and illusion have NO connection. This will remain forever true, however much you seek to connect them. But illusions are ALWAYS connected, as is truth.
All of truth is connected and all of illusion is connected. Each is united, a complete thought system, but totally disconnected to each other.
You see? Faithlessness and faith are totally disconnected. The orphanage and the Sonship are totally disconnected. But they don’t constitute two completely separate things. They constitute two completely different perceptions. You see? Where there is no overlap, there separation must be complete.
And this is repetitious, but it needs to become clearer than it ever has been before: That Reality and unreality are totally isolated from each other, illusion and truth are totally isolated from each other, being an orphan and being a holy Son of God are totally separate from each other. There is no connection. There never will be an overlapping. There will be mind misperceiving, suddenly through faith beginning to perceive truly. Where there is no overlap, there separation must be complete. And to perceive this is to recognize where separation IS, . .
. . . meaning, in the mind . . . . . . and where it must be healed.
Meaning, in the mind. The result of an idea is never separate from its source. The IDEA of separation produced the body, . .
. . . produced the body constituted of the definitions you made up about it. And the definitions never included God anywhere. The IDEA of separation produced . . .
. . . I’m going to say, your definition of . . . . . . the body, and remains connected to it, making it sick because of its identification with it.
[Big sigh] That which is not connected to its Source seems not to have the qualities, characteristics or actualities of its Source. Without God, the body is what you’re experiencing. And sickness and death are inevitable. But remember, this will not harm the body. Okay, so maybe it won’t harm the body, but if it’s not harming the body and you’re just sort of stuck in a “Groundhog Day,” constantly repeating the meanings that lead to the end of the day called “death” and the beginning of the next day, which is the repeat of the previous day . . . if that’s all that’s happening, man, you have justification—perfect justification to do something different. You think you are protecting the body by hiding this connection, . .
. . . the connection between your idea of it and the result of your idea of it . . . . . . for this concealment seems to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth.
Whew! Like I said, the more committed you are to asking to know what the truth is here where your body is, where all form is, the closer you get to actually letting the answer in, the more you will be uncomfortable, the more you will experience fear, because it will require you to abandon your attempt to make yourself a successful independent entity in your own right. And that to you—again, to make it perfectly clear—constitutes a terminable violation of your integrity. Of course, that means the integrity of the definition you have given to who you are supposed to be and become. So you become frightened because you’re going to lose your integrity or the potential of capturing it and that will mean you will be nothing. You see? That’s what you think truth will uncover, that’s what you think faith will uncover, not realizing that what has covered you up—your misperceptions—will dissolve and you will find yourself Sane, whole, mentally clear as the co-creator of Creation forever. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become because of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness.
In other words, your preoccupation with your self-interests and your own ideas and thoughts. For faithlessness is an attack which seems to be justified by its RESULTS. For by withholding faith, you see what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look beyond the barrier to what is joined with you.
It binds you, it keeps you bound, it keeps you ignorant, it keeps you unconscious, it keeps you misperceiving and as a result, not knowing where you really are, what you really are or what the nature of what everything is. But listen: To have faith is to heal.
To have faith is an answer, we will say, to have faith is the answer. It’s the fulfillment of your Being. It’s you coming into the full, unified, conscious awareness of who you Are as the Presence of Love, as the Presence of the Father, as the Presence of That which never was meant to experience lack or suffering or jealousy or hate . . . or sickness or death. To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, . .
. . . you see? It’s the sign that you’ve been willing to push against the silence, but not by thinking. To push against the silence by listening ever more attentively and ever more consistently until the very act of embracing the unknown, by bringing your attention to it, convinces you that there is indeed another activity you can engage in than faithlessness. And as that becomes more actualized in your mind, it precipitates the breakthrough. [He did not read: and would therefore share it.] By faith, you offer the gift of freedom from the past, which YOU received.
When you do it, you are released from the past—meaning your faithlessness, all of your thinking, all of your judgments, all of your determinations as to what everything means. You do not use anything your brother has done before to condemn him NOW. You freely choose to overlook his errors, looking past all barriers between your self and his, and seeing them as one.
That’s what happens when you push against the silence. That’s what happens when you press against the flimsy bubble. And in that one you see your faith is fully justified. There IS no justification for faithlessness, but faith is ALWAYS justified.
Faithlessness is very simply something that has never worked. Everything associated with it has never come to fruition. By that I mean, not a single one of you who is dreaming has managed to arrive at a point of being successfully independent, credible with integrity in your own right, meaning unjoined with your Source. So, dare to make the commitment. Dare to push into the unknown, against whatever resistance is there, by doing something you are quite capable of doing. You really can sit or stand wherever you are and say, “Father, what is the truth here?” And you can do that with meaning because the words are very simple. And you know you’re not asking your human father. You know you’re reaching beyond the human condition. “Father, what is the truth here . . . Father, what is the truth here? I choose no longer to be insane. I choose no longer to be in a state of ignorance thinking I’m in a state of intelligence. Father, what is the truth here? Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than my right Mind—what is the truth here? I will let You in. I invite You in. I invite You to do anything you can do to break through, although I know You cannot violate my free-will. I invite You to do everything You can to reach me in my willfulness and I will do everything I can to abandon it.” As I said last time, none of this is simplistic, all of it is simple. I look forward to being with you next time. A Course In Miracles (reference pages)
Chapter 19 – Section: HEALING AND THE MIND
1 Sparkly Book – p.450, Last Par. / JCIM – p.188, 6th Par. / CIMS – p.379, Par. 6
Chapter 19 – Section: HEALING AND FAITH
First Edition – p. 372, 1st Full Par., Line 10 / Second Edition – p.399, Par. 5, Line 9
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A Course in Miracles Study Group with Raj, June 3rd 2012
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TRANSCRIPT & AUDIO 06-03-2012
General Discussion -> Transcripts & Audio 2011-2012
