A COURSE IN MIRACLES
STUDY GROUP

WITH RAJ

Good evening.  And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.

I’m going to talk about a simple subject tonight.  Certainly one we’ve talked about before.  It’s the subject of Love.  Not Pollyanna love, not airy-fairy impractical love, but grounded dynamic healing Love.

It used to be that there would be hot spots of distress around your globe, but they would be a very small percentage of the general movement of life on your globe.  But today distress, violence, greed, anger, stress itself is present in about every quarter of the planet.  And the tendency is to look at it and say, “Oh, these are the signs of the end times.”  And in a rather perverse way, that recognition is enjoyed in the sense that it means that the illusion isn’t going to last much longer . . . as though it’s a sign that no matter how rough it gets, no one will have to endure the illusion much longer: It will suddenly, magically be over for everyone because these are the “end times” that have been predicted and described.

Be careful, it’s not going to be magically over.  It isn’t a movement pre-designed that was set into motion that would occur whether anyone liked it or not . . . and everyone would simply find themselves governed by this movement which would bring about the end of illusion.

Now, let’s also be practical.  The signs of the end times are truly no different from the signs of the orphan mentality – the orphan mindset, the ego frame of reference.  The signs of the end times are simply the selfishness, the self-righteousness, the attempt to make something valid out of oneself when one has divorced himself or herself from his or her Source, the Father.  It’s back-biting, it’s controlling, it’s manipulating at the expense of others, climbing on others’ shoulders to get to the top so that one can be the greatest or the most significant, even when it comes to spiritual matters, and let us say, promoting Awakening. 

It is a mean-spirited attitude.  Why?  Well first of all, it isn’t your brothers that need correction.  It’s their illusions.  It’s that simple.  Remember that.  It isn’t your brothers who need correction.  It is their illusions, their misperceptions.

Now, I want to remind you that Love is not a means of control.  Love is what occurs when control is abandoned, when self-righteous self-assertion is abandoned and one says, “Father, what is the truth here about my brother?  What is the truth here that needs to be known?”  One shifts into a yielding place where Love, by virtue of its very nature, transforms.  Love is the universal solvent, as it were, which dissolves everything unlike itself, without dynamics to it, without force, without stress, through inspiration.  Inspiration softens the heart.  Inspiration softens and illuminates the soul.  That’s the nature of Love.  And the call is to Love one another.

As you look around and the world situation seems to call for the exercise of forceful control to bring things back into order, you must catch yourself, because in the act of taking control, you will become thoughtless.  You will act off the top of your head.  You will act out of habit.  You will act out of your conditioning without ever having taken the step – the two-step – of stepping beyond your conditionings, reaching beyond your best judgments and saying, “Father, what is the truth here? Father, when I look at my brother or my sister in the way they are acting, I can’t see the Holy Spirit there.  What is the truth?”  And the Father says, “The truth is, that their behavior doesn’t govern what you see, your Vision does.”  Wow . . .

Love turns the attention in a direction away from the tendency to belittle and scold and correct a brother for his ignorance . . . and the correction ends up being punishment of some sort.  You see?  But the Father says their behavior doesn’t govern what you see, your Vision does. 

Someone is behaving in a manner that could be expressed as two times two equals five.  There’s a call for correction.  Is a call for correction to say, “Stop doing that! What an idiotic thing to do! Now start over again and do it right!”  No, the one having made the mistake does not need to be corrected.  The answer, which is four, needs to be provided together with the explanation as to how that conclusion is arrived at from two times two.  You see?  The answer that Love provides when one engages in the two-step is the one that illuminates and puts at rest everything because clarity is experienced and recognizable.

“Oh dear, well that means that I’m obviously going to have to listen more significantly, more deeply than I have in the past.  Because if I need to listen for the answer that is clearly true, that’s easily recognizable, Oh, that might be a problem.  That might be more than I am capable of.  When I look at my brother or my sister, it certainly looks to me like there’s going to be a lot of resistance and they’re not going to easily recognize the truth.”

Well, there you are.  You’re letting their behavior and your perceptions of it govern how you feel, instead of your vision.  And that’s not your Vision, that’s not your clarity.

The problems aren’t really complicated.  The complications arise when great defense seems to be needed.  And so the defense becomes complicated and confusing because that provides an armor that becomes difficult to penetrate.  But Love, well, when you’re willing to look at your brother or sister and want to know what the truth is, with an acknowledgement that they are worthy of having the truth no matter what behavior they’re presenting, well, you put yourself in a different context.  You put yourself in the context of Reality.  You put your attention in the context of the Father, the Father’s Perception – the Truth.

That’s how the end of illusion happens.  That is what will mark the end-of-the-end-times.  Nothing automatic is going to happen to you or anyone else, where suddenly everyone is Awake without their having wanted to know more than they currently knew and reached beyond their current best judgments and even their current best spiritual understanding.

It says in the Course: 

You will never give this holy instant . . .

You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of your relief while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers on behalf of THEIRS.  For the instant of holiness is shared and cannot be yours alone.  Remember then . . .

Remember then when you are tempted to attack a brother, that HIS instant of release is YOURS. 

The politicians, the governments, oh-h, the solutions of austerity, the weather conditions . . . all of these things seem to justify withholding love.  All of these things seem to justify waiting before you honor any of these things enough to be present with them wanting to know the answer.  The answer being, that which illuminates fully the truth so that there is no misunderstanding and there is no temptation to hold onto ignorance.  The answer is what is obvious. 

You know, in the “Pogo comic strip” in the late Sixties, a statement appeared that continues to be remembered to this day:  “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”  Well today we could say, “I have met the enemy and he is me.”  Why?  “Because I’m insisting upon looking at my brother’s behavior and basing my conclusions about him on his behavior and I’m totally ignoring the investigation of my Vision of genuinely and honestly looking at my capacity to knowing the truth and wish to know it because my brother is the holy Son of God, my sister is the holy Daughter of God and deserves that kind of attention from me.”  You see?

So, hey, hopefully the end times are here.  But don’t jump to conclusions based upon appearances or behaviors.  Recognize that what you are experiencing is simply providing you with the opportunity to want to know the truth, to want to know the actual answer:  Four as the answer to two times two instead of five, together with an understanding as to how that happens, how that correct answer is arrived at, because it is simple and it is understandable.

You know, you can go into a poverty stricken area of a large city and you can find all of the elements that could be identified as end-of-times elements, but because they’re located in a rather confined space one would not say these are “end times.”

Ego dynamics, whether global or individual or in a community, are all the same.  And they’re all constituted of ignorance's which have answers.  And all of the elements identified with the end times will cease as soon as each one of us decides to practice the two-step, whether we can see our brothers’ or sisters’ divinity or not, so that we might be able to bless them with the answer which brings equilibrium to them and to you.

Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”  Today we can say, “We have met the Savior and he is us.  I have met the Savior and he is me.” But not unless you care enough to love your brothers, to love one another, exonerating them from whatever they believe they’ve done and whatever you believe they’ve done, so that in innocence you can listen for the answer that is the specific release, but has the Meaning “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”²

Love one another.