We’re going to be talking about an interesting topic, one that in many ways we’ve talked about before, but not quite the way we’re going to talk about it tonight.

Now even though we have discussed this at length, there is a persistent habit of perception that gets in the way of the fulfillment of the Meaning of those words.  The persistent perception is, that you are human beings – that you are born, that you grow up and as you grow up you learn.  And a lot of your learning is done through classes and books.  And as you move into adulthood, the sorts of things that you choose to learn about become more varied.  And you choose books about all kinds of topics including spirituality and religion.  And you gain comfort from your learning as you age and eventually die.

And you don’t challenge that sort of moving picture, that perceptual lifetime that you, as one of many human beings, go through and carry on a tradition of, we’ll say, spiritual learning.  But nevertheless, you do it as you age and die.

Now, when I have referred to you as being holy Sons and Daughters of God, I mean that you are something quite different from that perception that you carry with you.  And if the perception isn’t challenged, there can’t be breakthrough into the experience of what those words Mean.

Now in the Christian tradition of religion and religious study, there is a concept:  the concept of the Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – called, “the three Persons of the Trinity.”  And as you study A Course in Miracles and you read about the Holy Spirit, you continue, in spite of what the book says, to perceive the Holy Spirit as a part of a Trinity that keeps It separate from the other two parts, distinctly Itself.  And this gets in the way of what needs to happen.

Nevertheless, many of you turn problems over to the Holy Spirit.  Many of you ask, as you do the two-step, as you practice the holy instant, you ask the Holy Spirit, “What is the truth here?” or the Father, and you listen for an Answer.  The Answer always comes as a realization of truth clothed in words because that is what you have asked for and that’s the language in which you are listening.  In other words, the mode in which you are listening is that of paying attention to hear language – words that express intelligence.

Now the Trinity is not an eternal fact.  It was an accommodation to the choice that was made to be an independent agent, when you said “Father, I’d rather do it my way.  Father I would rather determine what this is and what that is.  I wish to create my own meanings for everything.”

Now I’m going to suggest to you that when you ask the Holy Spirit, “What is the truth here?” that you ask to have the experience of Truth, not an intellectual understanding.  I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you Its experience of the Truth about you, of the Truth about every aspect of your world, of the Truth about your Brothers and Sisters, so that the two parts of the Trinity, called, “the Son and the Holy Spirit,” collapse, and there is just the Son, which is the Holy Spirit or there is just the Holy Spirit, which is the Son.

But the wonder of it is, that the Trinity totally collapses into a Unity where the Father, Being the Movement of Mind that constitutes Creation, is the Source and the Manifestation.  God Is what is rendered visible and tangible as Creation.  It’s all One.  And yet in that collapse from a Trinity into a Unity, Creation does not lose its infinite manifestation, its infinite recognizability.

Now, if you have been seeing yourself as a human, a mortal, going through life reading books, praying to a Father which is part of the Trinity, and reaching out to the Holy Spirit which is part of a Trinity, and thinking that the Son is Jesus Christ and not You, you have a wonderful and essential discovery to make.  And that’s the point.  You are going to realize your divinity.  You are going to feel it.  Your holiness will be inseparable from and indistinguishable from you and your conscious experience of Being.  Your conscious experience of being with . . . being in relationship with your Brothers and Sisters who it is very clear to you are also the Christ.

It is wonderful to think of yourself as being holy.  It’s wonderful to think that your true status is that of my full Brothers and Sisters.  But, do you want the experience?   It’s an important question.  And especially since I’m stating it so clearly: that the experience awaits you, that the separation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is not actual.   You see?

Now as you study the Course, or without studying the Course, if you have leaned into the Silence within yourself wanting to Know the Truth, you have taken the first step – that of looking for gold.  Having found it, as it is revealed to you, you have to "stake your claim."  In other words, you have to acknowledge that the experience of what you call “Guidance” is Real and is actually being provided to you by an Awakened Brother or Sister who is performing the very same function as the Holy Spirit.  Or, it is direct from the Holy Spirit.  That’s the way you stake your claim – you consciously choose to have this experience.  

Then registering your claim means the step we’re talking about tonight, where you move beyond the level of information about your divinity and about the divinity of all things and you ask for the experience of the divinity of everything.  You ask the Holy Spirit – that which is nothing more than your right Mind – to share with you It’s experience of what everything really Is . . .  It’s experience of Truth.

That’s the way you register your claim to your divinity.

Now, it’s a popular idea among Course students that when that happens the universe will disappear – things will cease to be.  But it’s not true, because the infinite Expression of God is eternal, identifiable, experienceable, actual.  The experience of It awaits you in every single moment.

Now, you holy Sons and Daughters of God, I want you to realize that your embrace of your holiness is the means by which you escape the distorted perceptions which have been the result of you believing that you are something other than holy.  And your reverence for your perceptions, after all it’s quite a concept isn’t it, that mankind is through the ages growing spiritually, and someday mankind, as this sort of developing group through the ages, will discover the Truth and be transformed into something new. 

You’re not on a long journey, and you’re not on a long journey that mankind, whatever that group is that has been moving down through the centuries.  You’re not that!  You are the point of conscious awareness.  You are at this very moment, the presence of Mind – and I’m going to capitalize that word “Mind” because the Mind that you are, the Mind that is you is God presencing Himself right where you are.  And so the experience of what God Is, is presencing Itself simultaneously in that very instance.  You see?

You know, in an allegorical way you could say that before the crucifixion, there was the Father and the Son.  And at the end, when I was leaving, we will say, I said that I would provide a Comforter.  The Comforter was the Holy Spirit.  And of course, the Holy Spirit has been present since the moment you got your divorce from the Father and said, “I would rather do it my way.”  In that moment when you acted upon your decision, you lost your experience of your divine infinite wholeness.  And because it couldn’t be affected, it remained, but you were unaware of it, and it was what is called the Holy Spirit – that which is nothing more than your right Mind.

It’s the undoing of that that we’re talking about.  And you need to understand or be clear that the doing of it is something you’re doing now, it’s not something you did in the past, way back in “the beginning.”  You can think of it that way but that will bind you. 

And so, time cannot trap you.  Time is not delaying you.  Your holiness is actual at this moment and your practice of the two-step is the way you lay claim to your divinity.  Step one of the two-step, of the holy instant is, shut up, isn’t it?  Abandon your conscious active creation of meanings, of definitions, of explanations, of interpretations that give everything apparent substance, but only to a deluded awareness.  It never becomes actual.  Nothing ever ceases to be what God is Being.  Because in the holy instant, the point of conscious awareness, we will say, in the now . . . in the now . . . in the now . . . is Eternity, is infinity.

I’m going to end with something important.  The experience of holiness is not complicated or strange.  It is not outlandish.  It is simple.  It can best be described as an experience, a humble experience of everything, of yourself and everything you see.  As an experience of infinite Creation that is infinitely and specifically incredibly holy, beautiful, harmonious, perfect, inviolable.  And nothing is more important than anything else, because holiness is whole.  Holiness is ultimate. 

Don’t be afraid to embrace your holiness.  Do not be reluctant to ask for the experience of You in your right Mind.  You will become, for lack of better words, a more genuine presence, whose presence is a blessing to all things.

And so, in your house, or your apartment, or your tent, or the back seat of your car, you can stop being “a human  living through a lifetime that will end in death,” and, instead, everything can become truly meaningful and truly transformational just because Love is its fundamental and actual nature . . . and you see it!  And you behave toward it with that "understanding," I will say, which has come from the experience.

Let what will be the wonderfulness of you come forth and don’t worry that it will make others jealous, or envious, or angry with you. The Presence of God heals and transforms.  And the Presence of God is what the Son is.  It is what you Are.  Let It in.  Consciously invite It so that you can be in your house, or apartment, or tent, or the back seat of your car in a new way that changes everything, by turning the creation that you see, which appears to be infinitely conflicted, into a Unity of perfect harmony.  And let your Brothers and Sisters be the reason you engage in embracing your holiness.  Let your desire to uncover the holiness of your Brothers and Sisters be that which facilitates your discovery of your holiness, unifying what had been chaotic.

I love you all, you holy Sons and Daughter of God, my Brothers and Sisters. 

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