Conversations
with Raj
Vol. 9, No. 6 / November 2001
a
“You all need each other to
witness
for each other with
commitment.”
_________
[The following is from the Kingston Gathering
held on August 18th, 2001]
RAJ: You know, I just won’t let us
get away from this subject of Love. The Bible says that I said: “As I have
loved you, love one another.” And of course one of the commandments says, “Do
not bear false witness.” Rather than approach this from the negative, “Thou
shalt not,” I want you to think about loving one another as witnessing for one
another—standing with another on his or her behalf.
That
means that when your brother has chosen not to bear witness to his divinity,
but rather to the worst in himself, you don’t agree with him! You don’t look at
him and say what a bastard he’s being. That’s not witnessing for him. That’s
not being the Presence that can transform and heal your brother or sister.
Or
let us say you run into someone at work.
You haven’t seen them for a couple of days, and they really look awful.
They look like they need to be home in bed—puffy eyes, red eyes, you know,
groggy—obviously not in the best health.
What
are you going to do? Are you going to
tell the first person you meet how lousy so-and-so looks today? “Boy she must
really be feeling terrible.” What are
you witnessing for here? Are you witnessing for less than that one’s divinity?
What are you standing with that person for?
If
you pass the news around as to how sick this person looks, you not only are not
being the Presence that could heal instantaneously, you’re reinforcing the
general attitude about that person, so that now everyone in the office is
witnessing against that person’s health, against that person’s inner experience
of her divinity.
Everyone’s
witnessing—for or against another—is a teaching. Do you want to teach your
friend that indeed she looks terrible and ought to be in bed, and is ill and
has no choice about it? Or do you want to have gone within and remembered that
the reason she’s in your experience is to have her divinity recognized, and as
a result of recognizing it within yourself, having behaved in a manner that
inspired her to realize she has a different choice, she has a different
experience available to her—one of health?
When
you witness for somebody, you end up convicting that person. You can either
convict that person for their lack, or for their problem, or for their bitchy
attitude, or formtheir illness, or you can convict them for their health, their
wholeness, their divinity, because at least you didn’t forget who she really
was—the direct expression of God, in whom God is well pleased, and from whom
God has withheld nothing of what He is perfectly being right there where she
is.
You
have the option, and you enact the option by how you choose to witness for that
other one, how you choose to stand with that other one. You do it all day long.
You always stand with another on behalf of what they truly are or on behalf of
what they think they are. And at the moment I’m not going to go into the fact
that sometimes you witness for what you think they are, whether they think they
are or not. That’s another matter.
“As
I have loved you, love one another.” It’s the extension of love that changes or
will change the world. And the way you witness for or against another
determines how blessed the world is, and how much the world can bless you.
Now
I’m bringing this up for a reason. Not just because of the truth of what I’ve
already told you, and that it doesn’t hurt for you to be reminded of it, but
because there is a tendency among those who are metaphysically oriented to
become very heady and intellectual in their approach to life. As a result, they
become inhumane, because they forget that they need to witness for their
brother or sister, and they need to witness for their brother or sister
especially when their brother or sister is suffering from something, and
therefore isn’t the most pleasant person to be around—whether the
unpleasantness is that the person is crotchety or angry and not expressing
pleasant thoughts, or whether it’s someone who isn’t feeling well and therefore
isn’t the best company because there isn’t the energy there, and the person is
feeling lousy.
You
know what? When your brother is down is when your brother needs a witness. When your brother is not in the best place,
that’s when your brother needs a witness—somebody standing with him or with her
through the thick of it, and making commitment to stand with that one until
they come through on the other side of whatever the problem is.
You
all need each other to witness for each other with commitment. That’s how you
love one another. That’s
how you love one another. You witness for each other, and you choose
wisely as to what you are going to witness to about your brother, so that you
don’t end up witnessing to the worst in him—whether it’s the “worst” in him
that you are thinking about him, or whether it’s the worst in him that he is
thinking about himself.
This
takes application. This takes effort.
This takes work. This requires commitment. But you know what? Each of you is worth it!
What
do I do all the time? I witness for you on your behalf by not bringing up all
your faults and your flaws and condemning you for them, but by reminding you of
who you Are, and not agreeing with you when you express unclear concepts about
who you Are. And I don’t agree with you when you believe those unclear
concepts. But I also don’t say to you, “That’s a flaw you have.” I say, “It’s a
misunderstanding you have that you can become clear of if you will remember who
you divinely Are.” And I talk and talk and talk about what you divinely Are,
and what your relationship is with your Father, Who is the Source of your
being, right here and right now.
I
say, “In spite of the fact that you see yourselves as physical organisms, you
are not. You are divine beings right here and right now, and this physical body
you think you have is nothing more than pure, divine energy, which has the
Intent to identify what God is being right there, perfectly. And that
therefore, it’s your ally,” that it is something that will always identify you,
eternally, because just as God, unidentified, is nonexistent God, you,
unidentified, are nonexistent you. And since you’re the expression of God, and
are therefore, as eternal as God, then, what you see sitting here and what you
feel sitting here in these chairs is eternal also.”
If
it seems to you to be capable of becoming sick and dying, I’m telling you it’s not
a divine fact. It’s an illusion that each of you has the option to let yourself
have the experience of. And so I’m
constantly witnessing to you on your behalf, so that you don’t get bogged down,
or remain bogged down, in unclear concepts about who you Are and what this is
[indicating the body].
When
you don’t get it, I tell you again. I don’t get frustrated with you. You don’t
need someone being frustrated with you when you’re not getting it. You need
someone who talks to you in a way that makes you feel like, “Yeah, I didn’t get
it, but no big deal. And therefore I can persist in trying to get it. I don’t
have to defend myself. I don’t have to waste my time being distracted from
getting it by proving to you, or somebody else, that I am not as bad as you
think I am.”
Now,
the way I am treating you is the way you need to treat others. Do you feel
inspired by the way I treat you? I see you keep coming back. So, obviously I’m
not pushing you away.
Most
of you, when you’re here, are on your good behavior. But I know you when you’re
not here, and your bad behavior doesn’t distract me or deter me or frustrate me
or keep me from saying, “Hey, tain’t so. You don’t need to behave the way
you’re behaving, and here’s why. Here’s the good news.”
You
know what? Your brothers and sisters and the people you work with, they need to
hear the good news, too. Not Bible-thumping good news, but someone who stands
there with them on their behalf with unending encouragement no matter how
discouraged they get, with unending encouragement no matter how nasty they get
because they believe their discouragement, and someone who, by their lack of
criticism, conveys that the other one doesn’t need to be self-critical, and
conveys that here’s a safe place to be, and that therefore less defense is
needed. And in the absence of defense, there’s a greater willingness to see
things a different way.
Love
one another. Bear witness to the truth of them, with persistence.
All
of you, at one time or another in your lives, have been in a place where you
could not conceive that you had a capacity to be something more than you were
at that moment, and somebody else, you would say, “had faith in you.” Well,
what did that mean? It meant they bore witness to what they knew was true about
you, that went beyond your concept of what you were capable of. And by virtue
of their witnessing to that, you were inspired to take a step you didn’t think
you could take. You discovered that you could take it, because, as you say, they had faith in
you. Well, they loved you enough to bear witness to the truth of you, and that
is always healing.
Some
of you have had the experience of being unwilling to embrace a possibility, and
you were unwilling for five years to embrace the possibility. And someone else
stood there with you for five years, in your declaration of your incapacity,
and said “Tain’t so. Yes you can. I can see that you’ve got it in you.” They
persevered, day in and day out, year in and year out, for five years, until
finally, at some point, their conviction about you was able to be received by
you and become your conviction about you.
Love
one another that way, and remember, that the place where this kind of love is
really needed is where your egos say it’s the least deserved. It’s when your
friend, or your neighbor, or your boss, or your children, are persisting in
presenting their worst perceptions of themselves. Just as when you do the very same thing, you deserve to have
someone say there’s a way out of your terrible sense of yourself, you need to
be the ones that do it for others.
You
know what? It may be wonderful to talk about spiritual concepts, and how things
work spiritually, and how different schools of spiritual thought treat things,
and which ones are right, and which ones are wrong, but none of that means a
hill of beans, because until it comes down to the place where you are relating
to your brother and sister, here and now, in the ugliness and beauty of unclear
thinking that goes on, and you persist in witnessing for that which is true
about your brother and sister, until you do that, all this spiritual talk is
tinkling brass, and there’s nothing to bring it to life, here and now.
Every
single one of you is worth having someone stand and persistently, consistently
witness for the very best in you, because the very best in you is the only
thing that’s really here. All the worst of yourself that you think exists here
is nothing but your imagination, and isn’t real. But as long as you are
convicted by it—as long as you are convicting yourself to those poor
concepts—you will suffer. And it’s needless. But you need someone to tell you
it’s needless, so you can realize, “Oh, there is a different way to see this.”
I
know I’m repeating myself. But you don’t get it, and so it needs to be
repeated. I gladly repeat it, and you need to be willing to gladly repeat it to
each other. You
need to be willing to gladly repeat it to each other.
You
know what? You can stand on the behalf of your brother and sister without ever
using one spiritual word. Until you get that, you’re going to get hung up on
your spiritual words, and you will lose the meaning. Hugs. Give hugs, a hand on a shoulder, a
willingness to stand unmoving by the water cooler, or by the copy machine in
the office, while someone is going through their shit, and being there for them
wordlessly—just being an ear that is willing to listen.
What
does that say? Without saying a word, without any metaphysical mumbo-jumbo,
what does that mean? Well, first of all it means that they, going through their
shit embarrassingly at work, aren’t scaring you off. What are you teaching?
You’re saying, “You’re not scary when you’re in this position. You’re not
scaring me. It’s okay.”
It’s
also teaching them, “You’re not alone.
You don’t have to be in this all by yourself, here at work.” It means,
“We don’t have to talk about anything. You can just be feeling what you’re
feeling, with me.” This is where the transformation occurs. This is where love
is extended and experienced. This is where your willingness to witness for your
brother and sister, demonstrates in the world that they’re not alone, that
they’re worthy, that they don’t have to be afraid to be in the spot they’re in,
that someone cares. And all of this without a word being spoken.
All
of these words in the Course, in the Bible, all of these words mean nothing if
they aren’t going to be translated into the human experience.
You
know something else? Any teaching that says the world doesn’t exist, or this is
all an illusion . . . if the meaning of those words isn’t carefully and wisely
sought out, you will discount the very arena in which love can be extended, the
very place where all of this spiritual talk has relevance.
If
it’s all illusion, you won’t stand there at the water cooler saying nothing.
You’ll say: “Aach,” and you’ll go back to your desk, and you won’t bother to
witness for each other. You’ll have some quick, spiritual platitude: “Oh!
That’s an illusion.” And you’ll satisfy yourself that there’s no requirement
for you to do anything more, because in your realization that it’s all an
illusion, that should heal. You’ll go back to your desk feeling pretty good
with yourself if . . . if you’re that insane.
The
opportunity is missed, not only to be transformational for your brother, but
you miss the opportunity to find your capacity for persistence, your capacity
for walking the extra mile, the extra hundred miles, your capacity to make such
commitment to your brother or sister that you never, ever, have to abandon them
again . . . forever.
Ah-h,
now we’re talking about transformation, aren’t we, of you. But hey, this is
where the glory is! I don’t mean the glory of God. I mean, here’s where the
gloriousness of existence awaits your experience.
Most
often, metaphysical, spiritual truths are used as a means to disengage you from
involvement with each other, and this is a serious mistake. I didn’t say: “Love
your metaphysical, spiritual truths.” I said, “Love your brother. As I have
loved you, love your brother.” Don’t
love the truth more than your brother, because the truth doesn’t mean shit if
it has no relevance to your brother, and if it has no relevance to you. If
truth is imagined to be different from your brother and sister, it becomes a
harsh taskmaster that will grind your sense of your very own humanity down,
until it crumbles and you become a hard-hearted teacher of irrelevance.
I
have chosen my words well so that you might understand exactly what I mean, and
so that you might grasp the fact that truth is not meant to be that which
separates you from your brothers and sisters. Rather, it is not platitudes or
words, but that which is revealed to you. Truth is revealed to you when you’re
willing to remember that the only reason your brother or your sister comes into
your experience is to have his or her divinity recognized.
You
see, you don’t know how to recognize their divinity all by yourself, so you
have to say, “Father, uncover it to me. Remind me of it. Help me to remember it
so I may witness to it.” You see? Truth is a revelation, not a platitude. Truth
is a direct experience of what is Real, rather than a string of words in a book
that can be rattled off piously, or self-righteously, or as a justification for
not dealing with the illusion.
Truth
is a revelation, and it’s the revelation of that which is Real in your fellow
man so that in the experience of it, you can bear witness to the truth about
your fellow man.
“As
I have loved you, love one another.” And even when it pushes your limits, even
when it seems to require you to go beyond your capacity to persevere and to
Love, be willing to do it because they deserve it, just as you deserve it.
I
love you! And I’m speaking firmly so that you might get the feel for how much I
love you, and how important it is to me for you to be less confused about
yourselves, so that you won’t suffer from ignorance about yourselves, so that
you can gladly bear witness to that which is true about you, and not require
everyone else to be willing to stand and bear witness with you when you’re
being difficult.
I
have more to say about bearing witness.
There
are two kinds of bearing witness. We’ve
talked about what you might call bearing witness privately, meaning one-on-one,
where you stand witnessing for the truth for someone else. Bearing witness privately
is as important as I made it sound. But there’s a form of bearing witness which
is in many ways even more important, and that is bearing witness, true witness,
of your friend or neighbor to another. And you could call this bearing witness
publicly.
Sometimes
it is absolutely essential to stand with someone, bearing witness to the truth
of them, to others. In some ways this is even more difficult, because usually
the place where that is called for is when others are challenging your friend.
So you have to put your mouth where your values are, and speak up.
You
know also it says in the Bible: “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” You
may not have realized it, but one of the aspects of the meaning of that
statement is, you must come by someone who is going to stand up for you. Not
that the Father requires that, but because it is essential to have one stand up
for you because you can’t stand up for yourself, all alone.
You
see, the dream, the dilemma you’re all in, the human condition you’re all in,
is a result of your having stood up for yourself, all by yourself—independence.
The
reason you can’t come to the Father except by me is because essential to your
coming Home is that you’ve got to be willing to abandon standing up for
yourself, all by yourself.
You
know the saying, “Pride goeth before a fall”? Well, you could say pride went
before The Fall—self-satisfaction. “I’d rather do it my way.” “I want to be a fully self-realized person
on my own.” And that was what precipitated The Fall.
You
didn’t really do it that way. You said, in so many words, “I want to play with,
I want to toy with the experience of independence.” You’re now so deeply in the habit of independence and
self-authorized actions, and selfrealized personality, all on your own, that
it’s humiliating to need to have someone else vouch for you, speak on your
behalf, and have that be the only way you can come Home. You can’t come Home
under your own steam. You can’t come Home alone. Someone must stand with you,
speak for you.
You
might say—and this is not utterly, absolutely correct—that the Father must see
that you have no element within you of private, self-authorized self-assertion,
that you are willing to be part of the Family instead of a proud, independent
outcast. You see?
So,
this subject of witnessing for your brother is extremely important. And you
know what? You really won’t fully understand the dynamic of having me witness
for you as you come Home, until you dare to involve yourself enough with your
brothers to stand for them on their behalf, and witness for them and their
integrity and their value and their divinity and their worth in front of
another.
That’s
where the test comes, in a way. Because
although it can be difficult witnessing privately for another, one-on-one, continuing
to be there on their behalf with encouragement and inspiration, it isn’t really
like you have to lay yourself on the line. But when you witness for another in
front of someone else . . . now you’re putting yourself on the line in front of
others, and that’s exactly what I do with you as you come Home.
You
might say that what was called the crucifixion was my putting my life on the
line for you, as an illustration. Makes you stop and ponder, doesn’t it?
What
if you can’t get Home without someone else witnessing for you? What if you
can’t get Home all by yourself? Think about it. Contemplate it, rather than think about it. Let it sink in. Let
it be real for you. Then, remember what I said: “As I have loved you, love one
another.” Make the extension of witnessing for another in front of someone else
for the purpose of declaring your commitment to what is true about your
brother, and putting yourself on the line along with your brother. This is
love, and not just talk, you see. This is putting it into practice. This is
caring.
Talk
is cheap. “Oh, I love you.” Well do you love him enough to stand there with
him, on the line with him, on his or her behalf? Again, that’s where the work
is, that’s where the commitment is. None of this is “nice ideas,” or you lose
any value that there might be.
Now,
there’s another aspect of bearing witness, and that’s something you do utterly
privately. That’s when you’re at home and you start thinking about so-and-so.
Well, if you’re not thinking appreciation about them, if you are grousing about
how they treated you today, if you are contemplating how difficult they always
are, you’re bearing witness. You’re bearing witness. And how you choose to bear witness in the
privacy of your own mind makes a difference.
If
you want to bear false witness by rehearsing in your mind all of the negatives
about so-and-so, you become completely blocked as an agent for change in that
person’s life. You’re occupying your mind in a way that is unprofitable for
you, and causes you, for that period of time, to be in a miserable state of
mind—totally unproductive, a totally insane use of your mind.
But,
if you’re thinking of so-and-so who has been unpleasant, or seems to be ill, or
whatever, and you are utilizing that time in your consciousness to remember
their divinity, to remember what is true about them, and to contemplate that if
there’s anything at all there where your friend appears to be, that it has to
be God present, and that none of the behavior, none of the physical
circumstances which are less than the best represent what God is being there,
and therefore they can’t represent God, and therefore they can’t be Real in any
divine sense, then you are using your mind in a way that causes it to be in
harmony with the Truth about them that God is expressing. And it becomes
possible for you to easily slip from your clear thinking about them to a direct
experience of what God is seeing and being them as. When that happens, you
become a healer.
Your
Presence and your attitude and your witnessing for the truth for them, puts you
in a position of experiencing realization of the truth of them—not thoughts
about the truth of them—and because minds are joined, and one with God is a
majority, healing can happen. Healing
is the result of true witnessing for your brother. And that happens in the
absolute, apparent privacy of your own mind. You see?
So
you can bear false witness, accomplish absolutely nothing, and be in a
miserable state of mind yourself, or you can bear true witness of your brother,
and because your true witness, in your thoughts, is so close to the truth,
Truth Itself can penetrate and give you the realization of the truth about them
that heals.
So,
this is a place where persistence is required.
Within yourself, persist in choosing to be conscious of the truth about
your brother, rather than idly letting your mind run over old tapes of all the
lies about them, all the things that God isn’t being right there where they
are, all of the things that even they seem to be insisting on expressing. You
must be persistent on behalf of your brother.
Now,
when you stop to think about it, if you’re utilizing your mind to witness to
the truth on behalf of your fellow man, you’re not going to be in a miserable
state of mind yourself. And, if the
result of doing that is, you experience a realization, you might say, “direct
from God,” well that’s not a miserable thing either. So do it! And do it with
commitment. Do it, knowing that it’s blessing not only you, but your brother or
sister. Okay? This really is what you’re here for.
I
don’t mean you’re here on this planet or here in this lifetime for that
purpose. You exist for no other purpose than what I’ve said before, glorifying
God. And the way you glorify God is by witnessing truly about each other—acknowledging
God right there, where five minutes before, you were willing to see a bastard,
or a bitch, or whatever. This is where it’s at! Fortunately, there is an abundance of opportunity to do this.
The world has not blown up, and there’s only two of you left. There are
millions of you to witness for.
Everyone
has a daughter or a son, or a parent or a boss or a friend or a relative that
really gets ya where it hurts. If it’s getting you where it hurts, it’s because
you are choosing to use your mind for some purpose other than witnessing for
what is true about them—not because of what they’re doing. This is a very
important point. You suffer because of what you’re choosing to witness for. It
is never because of their actions.
As
I look around the room, if I were to be coming from an ego standpoint, all of
you provide me with ample opportunity to reject you. Yet, all any of you really
need is someone who refuses to do that, and—in the face of all the
justifications you provide for my rejecting you—I inspire you to a different
viewpoint. Well, you know how that
feels. You keep coming back for more.
You
know what? As horrible as you all are, from an ego standpoint, you all know
that you’re worth this kind of encouragement and this kind of brotherliness.
You have no doubt in your mind. So does President Bush! And so do your
daughters, and your parents, and your sons, and your relatives, and Aunt
Minnie, bless her soul. So . . . again, this is where it’s at.
When
you believe the ego presentations that another gives, and you bear witness to
that, you are doing nothing to change the situation, and if you don’t like the
situation, and you’re doing nothing to change the situation, don’t be mad at
the bloke you’re mad at. Take responsibility, and do what will make a difference.
Now,
when somebody gives you an ego presentation that you don’t like, and you
confirm to him that he’s a bastard, you’ve got a game going. Your behavior
elicits more of the behavior you don’t like. When I speak to you and share with
you what’s true about you, doesn’t it elicit a different kind of behavior than
the behavior your husband or your son or your daughter or your relative elicits
from you? Doesn’t it?
You
can make a difference by your response, and the difference will depend on
whether that response is witnessing for what is true, or witnessing for what is
false, because whatever you witness for, you convict that one to. You can
convict one to waking up. You can convict one to healing.
Convict
doesn’t mean putting them down, and proving it. When you convict someone the
way I’m talking about, you inspire them to have a new conviction about life.
They become convicted about something. Do you see what I’m saying? You all have
the means of convicting others into the very best about them.
If
you’re not doing that, then stop complaining because they’re such bastards,
because you haven’t been willing to stand there with them, for them, day after
day, month after month, year after year, until your steadfast conviction so
clearly expresses to them that what you’re convicted about, about them, must be
true, and they say, “Okay! I believe it!
I’m willing to stop thinking about myself the way I was thinking about
myself.”
So,
remember this: You can’t witness for yourself, and your fellow man can’t
witness for himself. Someone else has to witness for him or her. Someone else
has to witness for you—one-on-one, privately, the two of you together in front
of someone else publicly—and you must be willing to do it because that’s your
function, to glorify God right there, and pronounce it, express it “out into
the world,” so to speak.
Glorify
God right there because that’s your function.
“And
God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was good.” I’ve shared before
that that means: “God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was verily
God.” God being is a process, you might say, of God recognizing Himself. So the
Movement of God is a Movement of God being, which naturally takes form as God
expressed, or God expressing. The expression is in motion—God expressing, and
God seeing the expression, and God recognizing Himself. God recognizing Himself
is God glorifying God.
Now,
if you are God expressed, then your function must be the same thing as the
Movement of Creation is, which is God recognizing God. God glorifying God. So
that’s why I say glorifying God is your function, which means recognizing God
in each and every thing. You see?
That’s
why it’s so important to be curious when you look at everything, like a leaf or
a tree or a pair of eyeglasses, and not assume you know what it’s about, if
you’re not seeing God there, and being curious to see what of God is there,
because that’s the way you open yourself up to recognizing God in everything.
Then you’re no longer at odds with God by seeing what you have decided you want
to call everything. You see?
It’s
your function to glorify God, because there’s really nothing else for you to do
except to recognize God in everything . . . and bear witness to it.
Okay.
I’ve said enough.
AMERICA’S NEW WAR
a
“This
is not war.
It’s
a sloppy use of words.
It’s
a gang of bullies who do not
have the capacityto wage war.”
[The following is from the Kingston
Gathering
held on September 22nd,
2001]
RAJ: I understand that you
have a new television series, here in the United States, called America’s New War. And I’m wondering how
many of you are already addicted to it?
Remember
that no matter how much factual information is provided on this new series, you
are still being fed a lot of propaganda. You are being encouraged to see things
in a “certain” way. If you are aware that teaching is occurring, then you can
be cautious in what you choose to learn. If you do not know that teaching is
occurring, you may take everything that is said, hook, line, and sinker, your
perspective will be changed whether you want it to be changed or not, and you
are no longer in control. What I mean
by that is that you’re no longer being conscious.
As
most of you know, the Course
says that
everyone is teaching all the time. Every single one of you is teaching at every
single moment. Right now, in your
quietness, you are teaching each other that it is appropriate, in this setting,
to be still. You see? If there were a few in the room who were chatting amongst
themselves, they would be teaching that in this setting it’s appropriate to
listen or chat. So, teaching is going on all the time, and learning is going on
all the time. Be conscious of this fact, so that you may sort out what you wish
to learn and what you do not wish to learn.
Why?
Because what you learn, you will embody in the world.
Now,
in the last Gathering we spent a great deal of time talking about witnessing
for your brother or sister and that it is witnessing for the very best in them
that promotes healing. And that the way to witness to the best in
your brother is to become still within yourself, and listen to God—whether it’s
through your Guide, or directly—for His perspective about your brother, and not
choosing to rely on your best perception of your brother in order to have the
picture you would hold of him or her.
Now,
I would ask you: Since September 11th, how much of your time have you spent in the quietness
within, asking God what is the truth about your brother? How many of you have
remembered that you have the option to know and hold in your mind the very best
about Osama bin Laden. Or how many of you have, with the pride of Americanism,
joined with those who are saying, “Kill the bastard.” Of course, they’re saying that because they’re relying on their
best perception—or they’re relying on the best perception they choose to use.
They are rallying with each other, as a group, because they think that gives
them force and power to get even.
Now,
as it happens, Osama did not witness to the best in himself. But make sure that
his poor witnessing to the truth about himself doesn’t cause you to witness to
the least best in you, and thus become a force for terrorism against Osama bin
Laden, or the Afghans, or those in the Middle East, or those who look like they
are Middle Easterners.
If
there’s one thing I want you to go home from this weekend remembering, it is
that your witnessing to the truth about your fellow man—the witnessing you give
to him that has been derived from your connection with God—heals, transforms,
regenerates. You have the capacity, for lack of better words, to be a “force
for good” in the world that is transformational. If you know that, it will be a little bit more difficult for you
to choose to become reactive and to fall into an aggressive search for justice.
If
you go for justice, you will not get healing. Is that clear? If you go for
justice, you will not get healing. If you go for healing, you will always get
justice. But justice will be that which blesses everyone involved. It will
never be a matter of “getting even.”
Now,
be careful about the words that are presented to you: America’s new W-A-R—war.
“The new kind of war for the new millennium.”
This is not war. It’s a sloppy use of words. It’s a gang of bullies who do not have the capacity to wage war,
in the sense that war has been defined by world wars.
The
use of the word “war” is made because everyone here in the U.S. and in the rest
of the world is being rallied to bring their attention and their energy to do
something about the neighborhood bully. But if it remains clear that what is
being dealt with is a neighborhood bully, and not a nation, it will be clear
that the response will be very different from real war. It will also elicit
less fear. It will actually elicit more support from all citizens around the
world, because they know it needs to be done. But they also know that if the
sloppy use of the word “war” is used, it will potentially allow for greater
force than is necessary to come into play, which would be a great mistake.
If,
in a schoolyard, there are three or four bullies, who are starting a fight,
what happens? Ah-h, the adults in the
arena come out. They are not swayed by the energy that the three bullies are
exhibiting, and they are not sucked into a response that is equally emotional.
No. They, in the garb of their
adulthood, use intelligence, and restrain the bullies from their activity.
Do
they burn down the school? No. Because it’s clear to them that this is a
handful of children out of all the population of the school who are behaving in
a way that does not express the best in them, because they are not feeling the
best in themselves. They know that the
answer is to help educate those boys into a better understanding of the best in
themselves.
Now,
I want you to know something: As long as you hold someone or something
responsible —whether it’s a person, or a disease, or an accident, or Mother
Nature, in terms of a hurricane, let us say—as long as you believe you know
what is responsible for the problem, and can place the blame there, you cannot
heal those who were injured in whatever event occurred. You cannot claim a
victimizer without having a victim.
If
you want to demonstrate, through healing, that there is no victim, you must
release the so-called victimizer from your definition of him as something less
than the best that he is. If you exonerate, through healing, the perpetrator of
the crime, the crime vanishes, and the effects of the crime vanish.
If
a virus has invaded your body, and your
body is deteriorating, and you, let us say, see the virus clearly as
what it divinely is—or that it has no existence at all because it doesn’t
express any of the authority of God—then the disease, the deterioration that it
had precipitated, will vanish.
You
see what I’m saying? You must not only heal the effects of a terrorizer, you
must heal the terrorizer. You can’t heal only one or the other. So, you cannot
wish for the best for the victims, and still hold the victimizer as being
totally responsible for the victimization.
It’s
a simple fact that if you’re in an accident and you have whiplash, or a
physical problem generated from the accident, that those who go to court to
“get justice” do not heal as fast because they must rehearse over and over to
attorneys, to the court, the fact that they’ve been damaged, the details of the
damage, and how it was unjust. Their healing is delayed. Perhaps, it’s never total, because they must
continue to hold the victimizer guilty, and in order to hold the victimizer
guilty, they must be able to show the effects of what that guilty party did to
them. Do you see what I’m saying?
So,
if you want healing from something—whether it’s an external victimizer or an
internal victimizer called a virus—or even an internal mental victimizer called
the practice of hate or fear, you’ve got to clear everything. You must see the
innocence of everything.
You
are here to recognize that which is Real in each and every thing. Each and
every thing. Love is the recognition of
that which is Real in each and every thing, and you don’t have the right to
sort out which things are worthy of your loving.
You
say, “Well, that’s really hard under the circumstances.”
Well,
you know what? Osama will tell me the same thing, because he didn’t do what he
did for no reason. He’s angry. And I’m not going to go into whether the anger
is justified or not. How he chose to
deal with it, was not appropriate. But
that there was something to be dealt with is as clear to him as it now seems to
be clear to all of you that there is something that truly needs to be dealt
with in terms of terrorism. Do you see what I’m saying?
So
be careful before you think you’re too much better than he is. Be careful that
you do not make the assumption that he has no legitimate justification for his
anger. His reasons may be faulty, but all of you have experienced faulty
thinking that you have been able to justify and see as totally legitimate.
Whether
you choose to deal with things constructively or destructively is your choice. But if you choose to deal with them
destructively, you’re going to be met with a demand for correction of that
choice.
So,
there is a need for correction here. But how that correction can be effected,
will depend upon whether or not you’re gathering your perception of the
victimizer from God or from your egos. If you’re choosing the perspective of
your ego, you’ve made the wrong choice, and correction will be needed. If you
follow through on it before correction is made, you will have conflict.
Now,
I want to come back to this point: Your
choosing to witness on behalf of every one of your brothers and sisters, and
your choice to do it from God’s perspective because you have been willing to
abandon your emotional reactions and get into your peace so that you might
connect with your Guidance, which reflects the Father’s Will, that is not only
what your responsibility is, that is not only what your function is, but it has
power to heal. Why? Because you are
embodying that which has real Meaning in the world, because the Meaning is
being gathered from the Father and you are witnessing for your brother.
Now,
it might mean that this brother, who was not expressing the best of himself, is
captured. It may mean that he goes to
jail. It may not mean that he has a sudden transformation of his mind. But his
ability to continue to act out his legitimate distress in a destructive way,
will be stopped, and the opportunity for learning, and having transformation in
his mind, can occur.
It
is not your job to assume what the outcome of your willingness to witness to
the best in him is going to look like. But you can count on it that the threat
will be removed.
So,
you have the power to make change. It’s not a personal power. It’s a reflected
power. Your ego thinks you have
personal power, and it tells you that you have personal power, and that’s the
way it victimizes and terrorizes you.
It terrorizes you by suggesting that you have authority of your own
apart from God—apart from the very Source of your being—and if you buy into it,
and you begin to try to act independent of God, then you are immediately and
forever in some degree of fear. To live in ongoing fear at one level or another
is terrorism.
Now,
you have the power to change, by reflection—meaning that when you choose to go
within, find your peace in the midst of the most horrendous events, so that
nothing is more important to you than feeling and experiencing God’s point of
view, then your conscious experience of God’s point of view does become
embodied . . . not by any power you have personally, but because you’ve allowed
the only power there is to be the only power present in your mind.
If
you let this sink in, it will become apparent to you that if it’s your task, if
it’s your function, to do this with Osama bin Laden, whom all of you have a
certain amount of feelings about, it will become clear to you that the
“bastard” you work for isn’t nearly as bad as you thought he was, and is much
more tolerable than you thought he was. At least your perspective will have
improved regarding your boss, or your spouse, or your children, or whoever it
might be who might be being difficult, but not nearly as difficult as Osama has
been.
As
I said in the last Gathering, when you make the choice for listening to God,
and experiencing the influx of His perspective, not only are you being an agent
for embodied change in the world, manifest change in the world, you have the
blessing of experiencing peace, while the world is being blessed by something
you’re not personally capable of, but
which you are capable of allowing to manifest through you. You see?
When
you choose to listen to the TV, and all the propaganda, as well as the grief
that is being shared, and you become reactive, you don’t feel good. But you
also become ineffective as an agent for change. You might say, “Well, if I’m
not feeling grief, I must be insensitive. I must be being inhumane.” Let me
tell you something: If that is what being humane means—that you suffer and
grieve along with everyone else—and it means that you cannot be an agent for
change, which means that suffering must continue because nothing can change it,
then how humane is that?
Someone
might say: “Well, I don’t understand how you can be so peaceful in the midst of
all of this. Aren’t you paying attention?
Aren’t you alive? Don’t you know what’s going on? Doesn’t it mean
anything to you?” And you say: “Yes, I’m aware of it, but I’m choosing to be
aware of it from my most grounded inner place, where I am not so upset and
reactive from my emotions that I can’t think clearly, and I can’t think
intelligently, and I can’t see what really needs to be done. I’m not doing
that. I know that I am more available to be the place where exactly the right
thing can be done. It’s my choice to be that place where what I do matters, and
I don’t do anything that doesn’t
matter.”
Now,
I’ve given this piece of advice before: Don’t watch more of the news, don’t
watch more of anything that is distressing, than you can lift from yourself
within twenty minutes after you have stopped exposing yourself to it. If you can only watch three minutes of the
news before you have enough of a load of reaction that it will take twenty
minutes to get back into your peace, then turn off the TV at the end of three
minutes. If you can watch it for an hour, and it still only takes you twenty
minutes to get back into your peace, watch it for an hour, if you are so
inclined. But do not, do not, do not expose yourself to that which overwhelms
you, because when you’re overwhelmed, and you’re out of your peace, you’ve lost
your capacity to be the agent for change, which is what everyone is crying for.
I
am going to suggest a broadened meaning for the word “patriotism.” Patriotism
is a pride that a group holds—a nation. Let’s expand that to global patriotism,
world patriotism.
What
do patriots do? They stand together, don’t they? They stand together in
conscious appreciation of their unity, don’t they? The only thing is that when
it’s national, it means that they stand together in appreciation of their unity
. . . against the rest.
The
times are calling for worldwide unity being consciously felt as love for
everyone in the world, so that that unification brings into the world or
embodies that which nurtures health in the unhealthy spots, because love is
what is motivating the actions within that unity.
Love
is the willingness to recognize that which is Real in each and every
thing. Everything! Everything is a Wholeness. It’s a Oneness. When
a country has pride in what it is, it supports and nurtures what it is with its
“membership,” you might say—its population.
The
events on September 11th
were
something the whole world felt because it was an attack on peace—not an attack
on the U.S. It was an attack that the whole world felt, and that was its point.
So you see a unification occurring. Even though there is bargaining and there
are political aspects to it, nevertheless there is a greater feeling of unity
worldwide . . . and everyone needs to stop being afraid of world unity.
There
is a fear of world unity. There is a fear of loss of national pride, of
national individualism, and so on. And it’s got to go. It’s got to go, because
every single individual on the face of this globe is really the visibility and
tangibility of God. Therefore, everyone together is Family that no one can get
out of except in their faulty imagining.
Don’t
be afraid to band together in unity—not against anything, but as a most
desirable invitation to those who are still trying to be separate from the
Family, to come back Home into the Family.
Interestingly,
the fact that none of you are totally Awake is because you are holding yourself
separate—for pride, for the hit of experiencing imagined authority, for any
number of reasons. None of us who are Awake have dropped any bombs on you yet,
nor have we ferreted you out of your tiny little caves. But we do invite you,
by helping you to see yourselves in a new way, as what you truly Are, and
helping you to see that this clearer view of what you Are is safe for you, that
it’s not dangerous to give up your autonomy.
It’s
not dangerous because your individuality will not be lost in the process. The
specific uniqueness of the expression of God that appears as you is absolutely
essential to the Whole. For it to dissolve or disappear would constitute the
lessening of what God is, which is impossible. So, you are being invited to
come Home, into your right mind, and experience unity.
Now,
some of you did really asinine things this past week, but you’re still worthy
of my invitation and my encouragement and my love. You know what? Osama is
somebody’s son. Well, I know,
people want to forget about that. Let’s not . . . let’s not see him as too
human. Let’s not see him as “like us.” He is somebody’s son, who’s worthy of
being, let us say, worried about, concerned about, cared about, and endlessly
provided the encouragement to see things in a better way, and to behave in a
way that works better. If you’re worth it, he’s worth it.
So
when you come Home and you yield to God, and you say, “Thy will, not mine be
done,” you will find all the things that you didn’t do, which you thought you
did, brought into perspective. Either they will disappear, or you will see the
unction of Love that was God showing up there, even when you thought you were
doing it all by yourself, and what was done will still stand to be valued.
Now,
I’m going to become very extreme here. If enough people were willing to be an
agent for change—meaning by that that they were willing to abandon all of the
feelings that they had been encouraged to have, not only by the events
that happened on September 11th , but by all of the
propaganda that has come forth since—and you listened for God’s perspective,
you would find the two towers there, fully present, undamaged, and everyone who
had died in them, at their posts. The grief that everyone has been feeling
since September 11th would vanish, even though
a remembrance that the event occurred would remain.
I
am telling you that there is no limit to the power of clear thinking. There is
absolutely no power to unclear thinking, and unclear thinking will change
nothing. I am letting you know just how radical change can be as a result of
your willingness to say, “Thy point of view, Father, not mine, be done. Let me
see Your point of view,” and knowing that in doing that you are going to have
to release Osama from everything you have felt, and be willing to see him the
way God is seeing him.
Dare
to be radical, because healing is radical.
Waking up is radical, which is why you’re not letting it happen—at least
not letting it happen all at once.
Nevertheless,
I want you to be utterly clear on your “power”—the power for healing that you
are able to be by saying, “Not my point of view, Father. Not my reactions
Father. Not my will, Father, but Thine be done. Let me experience what It is. I
will set aside all of my reactions. I
will set aside all of my extremely justifiable hurts and griefs and anger about
all of this, because I know it will not heal a thing, and I am hurting from
engaging those feelings.
“I
want to know the Truth that will exonerate everyone from the negative effects
of one person’s poor assessment of himself, and I am willing to see him the way
You see him, Father, without reservation.
“I’m
willing to give up my right to have my private, personal feelings about Osama
bin Laden’s private personal feelings, because acting on the basis of personal
feelings generates nothing but conflict. And as long as I am feeling conflict,
I am miserable—which I choose no longer to be—and I know I cannot be an agent
for healing.
“I
refuse to remain within the confines of justice, because I want healing.”
If
the Twin Towers do not reappear tomorrow, don’t stop. Keep embodying your
function because it does transform. It means you’re on the beam, you’re not off
target. You are fulfilling your divine function. Of what? Of glorifying God by
insisting upon looking for and finding God everywhere you look.
a
is
not the one portrayed
by
the costume being worn.”
[The following is from the Kingston
Gathering
held on September 22nd,
2001]
QUESTION: I wanted to ask a
question about witnessing again. I heard some of your last Gathering, and you
were talking about witnessing. And I may have heard it wrong, but I thought
that I heard you say that you cannot witness alone, or for yourself. Did you
say that?
ANSWER: I did, indeed.
QUESTION: Well, would you
explain that to me?
ANSWER: The reason you
can’t witness for yourself is because you are not a “stand-alone.” There is no
“you” separate from everything else, to witness for itself.
When
you do think that you are separate, then you think that you can witness on your behalf—you can witness for yourself
well, or you can witness for yourself poorly. Depending on which you have,
you’re either having a happy life or an unhappy life. But the fact is that the
true experience of Being is that you are the Presence of God expressed. So
Being is a matter of God witnessing for you by being all there is to you.
The
reason you can’t witness for yourself is because you don’t exist separate as
something that you can witness for.
Now,
another can witness for you by . . . what did I say? By going within, and in
their peace, listening for God to reveal His experience or perception of you.
So, what happens there is that another, asking God to reveal the truth about
you, is asking God once again, you might say, to witness for you, and nothing
else.
When
you are willing to stop trying to witness for yourself as though you were
something on your own, then you’re in a position of yielding to God because
you’re not busy carrying out your private, authoritative sense of life. You
see?
So,
another can witness for you by saying, “I want to see the Presence of God right
there.” Not asking you to show the Presence of God, but letting it be a prayer,
an inner prayer: “I desire to see the Presence of God right there where Jackie
is” and letting God reveal it. If you are willing to let another witness for
you by uncovering God right there, and you hold no further right to witness for
yourself, then awakening can occur for you, where you do come back into your
right mind.
So,
Love is something you extend to another by desiring to see what is Real right
there where that other one is, by asking God to reveal it to him, or her.
Love
is not self-centered. Love has an object of its affection.
So,
when I look at you, and want to see God, I’m not only glorifying God, but I am
standing as a witness for you. I have an object of my affection.
Do
you realize that when you are able to imagine that you are independent and
solated, and capable of authorizing things, you no longer need to love, you no
longer have to have an object of your affection, because you consume your mind
with thoughts about yourself, and how you’re going to survive, and how you’re
going to have to deal with this, and what you want to have happen in your life
and then making it happen, and so on.
It’s
entirely selfish. What it means is that if another is in your experience who is
in need, if there is another in your experience who’s embodying not the best in
himself or herself, but the worst, and they are at a point where they truly
need someone to witness for them, you can say, “See you later buddy. It’s your
problem. You created it.” You are able to avoid the work that there always is
in involvement. You can stay
uninvolved.
Somebody
earlier, after the first break, said that everything that I had said sounded
like a great deal of work—that witnessing for another, that being willing to
ask for God’s perspective of Osama bin Laden, that having to be willing to
recognize what was Real in other individuals in her experience who are being
difficult . . . that this is an awful lot of work. This doesn’t sound easy.
Well
if one is “enjoying”—and I use that word sarcastically—if one is “enjoying”
autonomy, one doesn’t have to do the work. One can stay uninvolved. That seems
much easier than involvement that never ends, involvement that arises out of a willingness
to hang in there through thick and thin, consistently asking for God’s
perception of the truth of that individual, and being there, day after day,
providing support when that one doesn’t have enough faith to believe that he or
she is valuable and divine, and not all of the horrible things that he or she
thinks he or she is.
Yeah!
From the standpoint of the ego—in its autonomy and a complete lack of necessity
for involvement—involvement looks like work.
But what you don’t realize is that the involvement which comes from
inquiring of God to have revealed to you the truth about another, so that you
might have that experience from which to relate with that other person, means
that along with the insight comes an experience of what I’m going to call blissful
Love, which makes the work effortless, makes the involvement nonlaborious, even
though it is involvement deeper than anything you usually engage in with
another human being.
So,
the work that the ego sees it as, is really an activity that brings with it the
sustenance, the nurturing that makes the activity buoyant and nonlaborious.
So,
I can say to you: It’s not easy. At least not from the vantage point that
you’re currently looking from. But it’s worth it, because when you go ahead and
dare to engage in it, you will find yourself being infilled with that which
nurtures and supports your commitment, so that although the involvement is
total, it isn’t debilitating, and it isn’t strenuous, and it isn’t frustrating.
What
better thing do you really have to do than be the Presence of Love, in the most
practical terms, with your family or your neighbors or your fellow man?
Oh,
I know! You’ve got to cover your ass.
No,
you don’t. You might be here to cover your brother’s ass. You might be here to
wipe your brother’s ass. I mean that sometimes that’s the literal kind of the
ongoing Presence of Love that has to be extended to a brother if he cannot do
it himself. And you do it, knowing that it’s Love. You do it because that other
one is worth it. You do it because in the extension of the Love, it is teaching
your brother something. It’s teaching
your brother that he can let go of his sense of unworthiness of that kind of
Love, so that his better sense, his improved sense of himself is evidenced as
physical improvement so that he can wipe his bottom himself.
You
are all disgruntled to one degree or another, just as Osama is, because you
know everyone will not witness for you, and therefore you think you have to
always have some sort of defense ready when they actually don’t do it, when
they actually withhold their Love. And
some of the self-protection becomes aggression.
Some
of it becomes whining. To tell you the truth, if you have a multitude of
whiners, you almost begin to develop a desire to have a large multitude of
those who are aggressive. Whining is . . . whining is pitiful. Vocal aggression has
some life to it, at least. Whiners tend not to get off the dime as fast as
those who are aggressively expressing their distress. They’re ready to move.
Their energy is in place to move.
If
someone has the clarity to see what the real need is, then they can provide
direction to this aggressive energy, which will encourage it to move in
constructive ways that resolve the distress. You see?
The
expression of Love always motivates and nurtures a constructive move out of
whatever is distressing—whether it’s a physical debilitation, whether it’s a
mental disturbance, or whether it’s a conflict of international attitudes.
That’s how important it is, what we’re talking about today.
Don’t
say, “Well, I can’t do anything about what’s happening out there.” I didn’t ask
you to do anything about something out there. I’m asking you to watch how
you’re using your mind, so that as more and more of you are being the Presence
of Love, embodying the revelation of Reality that the Father is providing you
with, the mind, you might say, “of the population,” shifts. As the individuals
shift, the population is identified in a new way.
Not
only that, because of the fact that the shift of your perception is impulsed by
God, and therefore embodies Truth, then, because there is no defensiveness in
you in your consideration of the world that God is revealing to you, and your
Love is not diluted by fear or anxiety or hate or anything else, your benignness
becomes obvious to everyone around you, and they feel safe with you, whether or
not you’ve said a word to them. The mood changes, and the ripple extends, and
it’s transformational. You see? You
count!
I’m
not appealing to your ego. You know, when there are tragedies, and when people
are going through the sort of thing that has happened since the 11th, and people feel lost and
vulnerable, any good psychologist will tell you that there needs to be some
venue or arena for boosting your morale—I’m talking entirely on a psychological
level—and so there needs to be communication that empowers you . . . but it
empowers you as an ego.
I’m
telling you that you count, not to empower you as an ego, but to remind you of
the truth of you which was the truth of you before September 11th, and is still the truth
of you, and is what will ground you in your safety and in your willingness to
dare to extend Love—the willingness to witness to the best in everyone, even
when it seems to be against overwhelming odds.
For
those who have been doing this consistently, let us say long before September
11th came, the events of the 11th and since have not thrown
you for as big a loop as those of you who had not done it before, and are
having to scramble to cope, and
ultimately find that you’ve got to back off and move into your peace and
get your own balance before embracing what’s going on out there.
So,
what was true for you before this happened is true now. And if witnessing for
your brother in the way that I’ve been describing is new to you as of today and
you’re having to employ it under stress, at least be glad that it’s being
shared with you today, so that if, for any reason, there were another situation
that was stress-producing, you would have already spent a long time getting
into the habit of witnessing for your brother, and of gathering the Facts of
Being from God, rather than the media. You will be able to be in your peace and
be of more help under those circumstances, whatever they might be.
I
do not want you to construe what I’ve just said to have reference to another
attack, because the next stress might be something totally personal. It might
be an illness, it might be a family member who’s going through a trauma, and
because they’re your family it’s severely undermining to your peace. I am not
suggesting another world situation.
The
point is: The sooner you get down to the business of choosing for your peace,
especially when there isn’t trauma going on, the better prepared you will be to
see through the illusion of threat of any kind, if and when threat appears.
That’s all.
Remember:
That which God creates has as its function, to glorify God—to be the full
expression of God that God is being right where each of you is. The willingness
to embody that—I’m going to say, to internalize that, to let it be the
all-consuming fact about you—brings with it all of the energy that is needed to
do it as you extend yourself to your brother, with Love, for the purpose of
healing.
It
will mean, as I said, involvement like you’ve never comprehended before. But
ultimately it is an involvement that is so total that the infiniteness of it
becomes the infiniteness of you. Any sense of tinyness and separateness will
become absolutely nonsensical, meaningless, absurd, and you will experience
freedom from the suggestion that you could ever be tiny and vulnerable again.
There’s
a different way we could talk about witnessing, and I’m going to put it this
way: The ego is like a garment everyone puts on. It might more clearly be
described as a Halloween costume. Today I’m going to be “A Terrorist.” Well, I’m going to be “A Princess.” Well I’m
gonna be “The Good Guy.” Well I’m going to be “The Responsible Businessman.”
Well, I’m going to be “The Best Darn Mother In The World, If I Have To Die Doing
It.”
The
ego is a sense of self that each one of you adopts . . . and embodies. It’s a
costume that covers up You, and creates a certain presentation to the world.
Now,
when I say you need to witness to the best in your brothers and sisters, and
that you’re to call on God for the inner experience of what the truth is of
them, I am talking about having revealed to you what is underneath the costumes
that all of you are wearing.
Mind
you, when you’re wearing the costume, you attempt to behave in the manner that
the costume suggests. So obviously, then, your behavior doesn’t represent the
You that’s underneath the costume, either. The simple fact is that without the
costume, you’re all very humble. Very few of you look so beautiful that you act
with arrogance when you’re naked.
So,
the ego, in order to be validated, must become attached to or identified with
the wearer of the costume. You see? Otherwise it’s simply obvious that it’s
your best friend looking like Dracula, and you’re not fooled. Now, the tendency
is to look at Osama, and all you’re seeing is a costume, and you’re saying the
costume is him. “Get the bastard! Kill him!” You see?
To
validate the costume, you have to personalize it. It has to become attached to
a person. It has to become identified as the person wearing it. Otherwise, it’s
just a costume. So, if you want to heal someone, whether the costume that’s
being worn is “A Dying Person With A Disease,” or whether the costume is, shall
I say, “An Attorney”—whatever it might be—in order for healing to occur, the
costume must be impersonalized.
In
other words, the costume must be separated from the wearer of it, so that you
are not confused about the individuality who’s wearing the costume, for whatever
reason he or she may be wearing the costume. The wearer of the costume is not
the one portrayed by the costume being worn.
Now,
let us say that someone is wearing the costume of “A Thief,” and breaks into
your house and steals a possession of yours. Let us say that it’s something
that you created—a painting that you painted, which you are very proud of. And
he steals the painting. Now, you are affronted. You are experiencing a loss of
something you felt some pride about. You are more than upset at the invasion of
your space. You are upset at the personal affront to you that the stealing of
this painting has constituted.
Well,
now we have an individuality in the costume of “A Thief,” and we have an
individuality in a costume of “A Self-righteous Ego.” If you want healing of
the situation and the return of your painting and the resolution of the
problem, you’ve got to impersonalize the ego in yourself. You’ve got to
separate your costume—your ego reaction—from you, as well as separating the
individuality wearing the thief ’s costume from his costume. Do you see what
I’m saying? If you don’t impersonalize the ego, you are going to be stuck with
the results of apparent ego dynamics.
To
be willing to see the very best in another by being willing to let God provide
the vision as to what is true about them is what renders the costume a costume only, rather than the identity
of the one wearing the costume. That’s what allows for healing to take place.
But as long as you say he is responsible, or she is responsible—and the costume
is not separated from the individuality—you are caught by the illusion, and the
illusion can’t evaporate. The illusion cannot be rendered null, void,
meaningless, and therefore not something under which you must suffer. This is
very important.
When
something happens in a relationship or with somebody you know, or even with
yourself, the first thing you must do is to impersonalize the ego, because the
costume is distinctly separate from and different from the one wearing it. The
one wearing it is whoever he or she was before she ever put on the costume,
before he or she ever adopted an ego sense of himself or herself. What he or
she was before the costume was adopted, and who he or she still truly is
underneath the costume, is the Presence of God and nothing less.
Now,
you can grasp what I’m saying, and so you have a “tool,” you might say. You
have something you can practice. So, when you turn on the TV and you hear a
commentator, or someone who is supposed to be noteworthy, make some derogatory
remark about Osama bin Laden, you have two things you can do. You can separate
the costume that’s portrayed for Osama, and you can impersonalize the costume
of “A Commentator,” who’s speaking as though he knows the truth about Osama bin
Laden, and recognize that both of them are whatever is revealed to you when you
have caught yourself and been willing to listen to God to find out what is the
truth about both of them.
The
truth about both of them is, under those circumstances, that they are working with
faulty information, and they are acting it out, making it sound as though it’s
true, and that therefore, you have justification for being afraid and becoming
defensive. And when you see that that’s just a costume, you realize, “I don’t
have to believe that. I don’t have to be moved by the presentation.”
Again,
I want to be perfectly and practically clear. If Osama is unwilling to change
his costume, and if he insists on personalizing his costume and claiming that
it is him, and acting in terms of what the costume presents, then your
willingness to see the truth about him will bring order into play, which will
quell disorder, and he will find himself restrained in one way or another.
This
is not a matter of saying, “He is a perfect child of God, and everything he did
was an illusion, and therefore I don’t need to react, and therefore, nothing
needs to be done. Everything is as it should be.” This is some of the faulty
metaphysical thinking that does occur. Disorder, chaos, is chaos. And order is the absence
of chaos. Order
is the law of Being, or
God. Disorder is like darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. It’s not the
presence of something else. Therefore, order is the law. Order dominates.
When
you have impersonalized yourself, and you have said, “I refuse to act as though
I am a reactive ego,” and you have chosen to become still, and go within and
reach your peace, and then listen for the truth from there, you have, in
effect, impersonalized what seemed to be your ego, and have reached that which
is underneath the costume. You’re in a place where there is no reaction. You’re
in a place where you can hear the truth.
Then,
in hearing the truth, your perception of your brother becomes clearer, and his or
her costume becomes just that for you—a costume, rather than that one’s
identity—and you are no longer fooled by the costume or the behavior, even if
they persist in the behavior. That causes, for lack of better words, order to
supersede chaos, and whatever is necessary for order to be embodied or manifest
in the world, such as capture and the subduing of this inappropriate behavior,
will occur. You see?
The
way it happens is by recognizing that the ego is a costume, different from the
one wearing it, and your insistence upon coming from your costume-less Being
while you consider and witness for another, regardless of his or her costume.
You see? Is that clear?
a
“The
ego is the only
terrorist
there is, and its
job
is to terrorize you.”
[The following is from the Kingston
Gathering
held on September 22nd,
2001]
QUESTION: I seem to have
more trouble dealing with ego attacks than I hear you addressing.
I
was at work, and you know I work in a prison. And a couple of days after
September 11th, the administration
decided to have a shakedown in which, at that point, my job was to sit at a
table, and one of the inmates would bring a bag of everything she owned, and I
would go through it, and I would throw away anything that she wasn’t allowed to
have.
And
I attempted very consciously to stay in my peace, and if they had put coffee
into the wrong container, I had to throw it out because it wasn’t in the right
container. Several times, if a woman didn’t have a whole lot—or just the
feeling on the inside of me—I went ahead and let her keep it. A couple of times
I even took it out of the trash can and gave it back to her—different
items—always being able to stay in a real comfortable place.
And
I did a wonderful job at being able to stay connected with the inmates, and
with the other people that I was doing the shakedown with—with Security. Then,
Thursday morning, a woman came in to my table, and she had an attitude. She was
brash, she was loud, and she was pushy. And she was telling me what I was going
to let her have or what I wouldn’t let her have. And I went “there” instantly.
And at one point . . .
ANSWER: You went into
having an “attitude,” yourself.
QUESTION: I joined her.
Exactly. Yes. But you see, I have all the power. I have all the control. I’m
staff, and she’s an inmate. And I looked at her straight in the eye, and I took
her items, and I just threw ‘em in the trashcan, whether they were contraband
or not. And I just looked at her, ‘cause if she so much as talked back to me,
it’s gonna cost her a year of her life in prison ‘cause I’d write a misconduct.
And
I got real sick in my stomach. And I realized that it was as if it was bin
Laden—the brash, loud, pushy, upstart—and the USA—me, the staff, all the power,
all the weapons, all the control, all the authority. And what I ended up doin’
was I ended up goin’ to my classroom and hiding. I didn’t participate in the
shake any more.
I’ve
tried to forgive that with how I understand the three steps of forgiveness,
which are: Step back, look at it, realize that her thoughts and my thoughts are
in the same mind, but dismiss that mind as a false mind. And then let it be
replaced. It hasn’t been replaced.
And
on one hand, it’s like Raj never seems to talk about the ugly nasties—that it
feels like it hits me in the gut with real malicious badness. And I would like some help with it.
ANSWER: Well, certainly,
after all this time of my sharing with you all, it must have become obvious to
you that the ego is the only terrorist there is, and its job is to terrorize
you. Its job is to scare you enough to
keep you from returning to your right mind. Its job is to create an
undercurrent of vulnerability so that you become permanently preoccupied with
saving yourself, defending yourself.
It
is the ego which has said you can refine your soul. It is the ego which
suggests to you that you have a cause to fight for, and a fight to win, and
that you can win it. And the cause that you are to fight for is ultimate,
absolute safety at your own hand—in other words, as a result of authority you
are actually capable of having. And, of course, that seems to be worthy, and,
from the ego vantage point, something to be sought after, because it would be
very satisfying to be absolute authority. It suggests to you that that is your
function. And you all get sucked into it.
You
have to develop the ability, when the ego whispers in your ear that you’re
worthless, but that one way or another you can work your way out of it—or
whatever it whispers in your ear that’s negative—you’ve got to learn to quickly
say, “Shut up,” and then, turn your attention to God. Sometimes even turning
your attention to something practical like washing the dishes is helpful
because, like I’ve said, the one thing the ego can’t protect itself against is
disregard. But the ultimate disregard of the ego is to ask for a second
opinion. Go to another Source for your information. Which of course means
saying, “God? Help.”
I’ve
said the ego isn’t your friend. I’ve said it’s untrustworthy. I’ve said that it
is always working against your best interests—not to trust it. Again, at the
bottom line: The ego is the fundamental and only terrorist there is. So! You
need to be alert. You need to be alert to what voice you’re listening to—the
Voice for God or the voice for fear. It is a terrorist which is the voice for
fear. And then you must choose.
It
isn’t always an out-and-out war. Most of the time it’s subtle. Just enough to
keep you off balance. Just enough to keep you from having any self-confidence.
Just enough to have subtle doubts about yourself so that you abandon
self-respect. And sometimes
it gives you
good swift kicks.
Again,
because it has no source, and therefore has no birthright . . . You have a
source, and you have a Birthright, but the ego has no source. It’s imagined!
It’s the result of imagination. The ego is the result of trying to imagine what
it would be like to be on your own, and then following that imagination to its
conclusion. The ego can never enforce itself upon you. It can never force you
to do anything.
So
how does it work? It works through suggestion. It suggests that you are unworthy. It whispers: “I deserve this.” But
it whispers it in your mind, and so you think you are thinking, “I deserve
this.” When you do not realize that you are only listening, and that you’re
listening to one of the only two voices there are, you think it’s you. And you
are caught.
But,
if you realize that it is not you saying it, because you’re incapable of saying
anything at all on your own—because you don’t exist as an independent entity
that can speak on its own—then you will realize that you are the Listener, and
you’re listening to one of the two voices, and it’s not the Voice for Truth.
Then you can choose to not validate this voice.
You
can choose to disregard it by saying: “Father, what is the truth here? What is
the truth about me, as You see me? What is the truth about me as You are being
me at this very moment, because I know I have no existence at this moment
except by virtue of Your authority and
Your expression of Your Self, which is all there can possibly be right here where I thought I was all by myself.”
That’s how you shift your attention to the other Voice, and engage in
disregarding the ego.
The
ego’s function is to survive. I know I’m speaking of it as though it‘s an
actual thing, but “the imaginative mental construct” called ego has one
purpose, and that is to ensure its existence. In order to ensure its existence,
it must convince you that you are it—the ego—and it must convince you that
there are more important things for you to do than to be conscious of your
Birthright.
If
it manages to get your attention, and you move out of your Birthright because
you’re not giving your attention to It, you immediately feel terrible. You
immediately feel conflicted. Then you are fair game for the ego, because it
will tell you that the overcoming of this feeling is your Purpose, and you can
do it, and—it doesn’t say it this
clearly—that your reward will be everything you had before you separated
yourself from your Birthright, and you will have it without the Father having
anything to do with it. You see? And that’s the prize!
Because
this “imaginative mental construct” is a defense mechanism, it will see
Everything There Is To See as though It is what it must defend itself against. The Kingdom of Heaven becomes that against which
you must defend yourself. Now that’s real terror. And that’s real terrorism.
But I don’t mean Real. I mean, if there is anything such as terror, that is
what it is.
So,
you must become alert, as I said. Be quick. When you feel kicked in the side,
and the air sucked out of you, and the wind out of your sails, you’ve got to be
quick and say, “Shut up ego. Shut up ego.” And immediately turn your attention
to something else. Again, the best “something else” to turn it to is God, with
a request, a reaching out beyond the boundary of the ego structures, and
saying, “God, You tell me what’s the truth about me.” And lean into the answer.
Become a dead weight that leans into and falls into the answer, without
reservation—like you leapt off a building or a cliff. Leap into the Father’s
answer, over and over and over again.
So
what if the ego punches you and “does ya dirty”? It’s nothing but a bag of hot
air. It can’t back itself up. It can’t enforce its point of view. It makes
suggestions, like a hypnotist makes suggestions. You, at all times, have the
right and the capacity to say, “No, I don’t buy into this,” or “Yeah, yeah,
yeah. I buy it.”
You—the
only thing that there is Real about the whole thing—must bring your willingness
to validate the voice you’re listening to. You give it all the life it has
because you’re the only part of the equation that is alive. The ego has no
life. It isn’t a thing. It is a non-existent imagination. It is powerless. It
must borrow its power from the only thing that is Real, and that’s you. You all
give it your life and your energy, and you validate it, and then you cry and
cry and cry because of how tough things are, and how mean the ego is.
You
know what? When the ego punches you, it punches you with your own hand, using
your own muscles because it doesn’t have any of those things. You say, “Yeah,
yeah, yeah.” Punch. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am awful”. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not
worthy.” You give the voice to it. You embody it. You’re the one who brings
forth the manifestation, because you’re the only part of the whole equation, as
I said, that’s Real! You see?
Just
because I talk about the ego, just because A Course In Miracles talks about the ego, just
because psychology talks about the ego, doesn’t mean we’re talking about
something actual. It’s a group hallucination and it’s an individual
hallucination. It’s the Sons and Daughters of God taking the energy of God and
using it to validate something that doesn’t exist, and then suffering from the
misperception that follows.
There
is no ego. And no matter how great and lengthy a definition you all—through the
use of your imagination—can come up with, you’re still describing something
nonexistent. You’re talking about nothing! Whew!
Is
it obvious that such an endeavor or activity is a total waste of time? It is an
activity that isn’t even really happening. But while it isn’t happening, and
you’re making it seem to happen —you are forgetting to say, “God, what’s the
truth here?”
Be
careful that your definition of the ego doesn’t become so clear to you, and so
understandable to you, that you feel overwhelmed and totally incapable of
shifting your attention to something else— simply shifting your attention to something else—and in
doing that, disregarding the ego, disregarding nothing, disregarding that which
doesn’t exist.
Why
does that weaken the ego? Because you’ve withdrawn your energy from it. You’re not giving it any life anymore!
a
“Trust
is the antidote
to
control.”
[The following is from the Kingston
Gathering
held on September 22nd,
2001]
QUESTION: Well, I have had
a question. I would like for you to expound on this idea that every garment,
every role, is one issue, and it’s about power and control. So whatever change we
make in terms of garments, the real issue is to keep the suggestion that we have power and control,
in any shape or form, real
before our
eyes.
ANSWER: Not only before
your eyes but before your brothers’ and sisters’ eyes, yes.
QUESTION: So then it dawned
on me that the perpetrator of this crime is being met with the same challenge
of power and control, even though he may see the United States as the perpetrator of power and control.
ANSWER: Yes.
QUESTION: And the other
idea was that then the issue becomes control versus trust. And I just wondered
if this is correct, or if you had anything more to say about it?
ANSWER: You really have
expressed it quite succinctly. Always, the antidote to control is trust. But once again, trust is
something you don’t do in your head. Trust is something you don’t do
conceptually. Trust means you actually are willing to put yourself on the line
where you do not have confidence in the outcome.
Overtures
of trust and overtures of trustworthiness must find genuine expression in order
to make a valid invitation to “the enemy” to sit down at the table and negotiate. That’s the way you break the
power struggle.
But
somebody has to begin to make the overtures, the invitation. Someone has to
actually put into the air an expression that says, “In spite of your behavior,
I will dare to respect you enough to trust you, and in doing so, convey to you
that I believe that you are trustworthy. I extend this trust of your
trustworthiness to you so that we might stop fighting and sit down and begin to
talk.”
Someone
has to make the investment of trust. And as is almost always the case, a
situation of conflict exists because both parties have exhibited a lack of trustworthiness. So the overture or
invitation to trust will not necessarily be received well, initially, and the
invitation must be persisted in.
In
other words, the willingness to witness to the best in your brother sometimes
will need to be persisted in over and over and over. The very willingness to
persist in it over and over and over, without responding in any other
retaliatory way, is the only thing that will prove that the trust which is
being extended is trustworthy. So, you have to care enough to do the work of
reversing something that, in most cases, you helped put into place.
If
the lack of trust in you, is not a result of something you have created, but is
the other individual’s own baggage, you cannot sit there and say, “You’re just
going to have to trust me.” You cannot sit there and say, “You can’t behave in
this untrusting way, this ugly way, this unpleasant way with me, when I’ve done
nothing to occasion it.”
The
fact that the other one isn’t feeling trust needs to be addressed by patiently persisting
in being trustworthy, in language of trustworthiness that the one not trusting
can understand.
Your
ego can tell you that taking that time is not justified because you didn’t
create the situation, and whoever did create it should be the one to take the
time to uncreate it. But the fact is that this brother or sister of yours who lacks
trust needs someone—not necessarily the one who took the trust away—to care enough,
to love enough to express the trust and persist until the lack of trust is so
weak that they say, “Okay.”
Now,
I said this at the last gathering. You don’t trust God. You don’t trust me. I
mean, if you did trust me, you would have all awakened during this Gathering.
You still have reservations because you are afraid for yourself of what will happen
if you totally let go of control and take off your costume. If you trusted me
implicitly, you would have already done it. That’s what I mean when I say you
don’t trust me, even now.
Your
lack of trust, and your unwillingness to be as loving of me as you are capable
of, your unwillingness to be in greater harmony with me, your unwillingness to
share yourself with me fully—and the list could go on—all constitute choices
you are making to be rather unattractive, unpleasant, ugly, even if you’re not
being obtuse about it. Your holding yourself separate from me causes you to be
a less effulgent light source in my experience.
The
light may not be as dim here as it might be in one of Osama’s camps, if I were
there, but by comparison with those of the Brotherhood who are Awake, you could
say you’re a rather dull, uninteresting, bland sort of light that’s not nearly
as pleasant as the Light which is so effulgent from those of my brothers and
sisters who are Awake.
So,
I’m trying in a kindly way to provide a comparison without insulting you, so
that you might understand that even at your best, right now, I could, if I were
inclined to come from the ego, feel a preference for those of my brothers and
sisters who are putting out a more radiant and stimulating and glorious light
than you are. I could hold you in lesser esteem. And if I held you in lesser
esteem, I could say, “Why bother with them when there’s so much glorious light over
here?” You see? But I don’t. None of us who are Awake do.
So,
we persist with every single one of you. Even if some of you haven’t been
caring to listen and hear anything new for two or three lifetimes, we haven’t
gotten discouraged. Discouragement is a meaningless word. So we hang in there
with you, because you’re Us. And you’re worth it because we’re worth it.
The
Us-ness of the Brotherhood is worth having every single aspect of It, every
single part of It, “fully lit,” if I can put it that way. We can’t experience
the fullness of Being when you aren’t. And your brothers and sisters, who are exhibiting
less than the best in them, are part of you, and you need them. You need them
to be encouraged, to dare to risk the chance that if they let their costume off
or they let go of some of their control, that they will be safe. They deserve
your unending encouragement— loving, unending
encouragement—until they can finally say, “Okay.”
You
know what? I suppose you could think that you can wake up and that’ll be it.
Wonderful, glorious, magnificent. You know? But when you wake up, you’ll
realize it’s not over, because there are others who are part of the infinitude of
You who are sort of a dull, bland . . . not lowlife, but “low light” who, it’s
perfectly obvious to you, deserve to be experiencing the fullness of the Light
that they are. And you will join with us in extending to them what we’ve extended
to you that has helped you wake up. You see?
You
don’t have to wait until you’re awake to start loving your brother and sister,
and loving them enough to embrace them when they seem to be unembraceable, and
persist in finding ways that convey to them, in language of their present
perception, the encouragement that will register with them and help increase their
trust so that they can dare to let go of a little more control, and receive the
blessing of your caring.
Trust
is the antidote to control, but trust doesn’t happen spontaneously when the
very mode of your being has been based on lack of trust—in other words, fear.
You must understand that, so that you will dare to unendingly persist in
offering trust, and being willing to back it up by being trustworthy, yourself,
as the offerer of trust. You’ve got to stop saying, “It’s too much work,” or
“Why does it have to be me?” And do it.
It’s
usually easiest to do it with family. Because in one way or another you say,
“Well, they’re part of me.” But when it gets beyond the family, you say, “Whew,
they don’t have anything to do with me. Let their family take care of it.”
So
you have lots of little groups of families, and you justify circumscribing your
love to your immediate family. Hey! The Brotherhood of man is the Family of
man, the Sisterhood and Brotherhood of mankind. We don’t have good words for
it.
You
had better start caring about the Chinese. You had better start caring about
the Mexicans, you had better start caring about the Puerto Ricans, or the
English or the Irish, because you are all Family. You’d better care enough to
make the overtures of peace.
You
make overtures of peace by allaying fear, and you allay fear by extending what
could be called unwarranted trust. Not stupid trust, but trust that doesn’t
seem warranted at the point where it’s most urgently called for. Continue to
make the overture until your trustworthiness—your true intent—is uncovered clearly
enough to the one who isn’t trusting, that he can say, “I will risk the chance
that you are trustworthy, that I can trust you. I will invest a little bit of
trust in you.” You see?
Now,
you don’t have to take on the whole world. You don’t have to swallow the
elephant whole. You can swallow it one bite at a time. So start with the person
next to you. Start with the irritating grocery clerk, who’s irritating but not really
a pain in the ass, and love her, or love him by asking God to help remind you
what the truth is about her or him. Do it in uncharged situations.
I
know I’m repeating myself, but you know what? I’m not going to stop until you
get it. And I’m not going to be irritated with you for not getting it. But
please don’t ask me to give you some new truth, because this is the ultimate
truth, and the one that needs to be addressed.
The
search for a more ultimate truth is just a way of avoiding getting down to the
business of offering trust to others in an apparently untrustworthy
situation—to witness for your brother when your brother is not witnessing to
the best in himself, and is insisting upon holding his costume tight about him
and saying, “The costume is me. Accept it!”
ab
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