Are You In Your Right Mind?

OVERVIEW

Are you in your right mind? What does this mean? This is not a question as to whether you are right or wrong, good or bad. This is a question of self inquiry, where are your thoughts, beliefs, judgments, opinions and considerations coming from? Is your mind moving from the spiritual source of you which is love or is it coming from someone or something else? Most of the time we are NOT in our right mind, that is the mind of love, spirit and wholeness.

TRANSCRIPTION

But. You say, I’m strong when I think I’m weak. It speaks directly to the message we’re exploring today, this kind of internal dialogue that we have with our right mind and our wrong mind. This, um, this week’s topic is following and staying in this conversation we’ve been having on the heart of a Course in Miracles. And the chapter that I was assigned for this week was about right-minded and wrong mindedness. And this gave way to the talk title. Are you and your right mind, right? Well, I think you always are, but there’s always an opportunity to beg, to differ.

So are you in your right mind? What, what, what does this mean? This is not a question as to whether you are right or wrong, good or bad. This is a question of self-inquiry. Where your, where are your thoughts? Where your beliefs, where are your opinions coming from? Is your mind moving from the spiritual source of you? Or is it coming from something or some someone else? Most of the time we are not in our right mind. I include myself in that. That is, we are not moving from the mind of spirit, which is the mind of love, the mind of inclusion, the mind of trust. Today we’re going to discover how we can reclaim our right mind over and over again. But first, let’s start with what is wrong? Mindedness. And I have to admit, I’m challenged by these words right and wrong. It, it, it, it just puts me into dualism, right?

It it puts me into that space of, oh, there’s one thing that’s gotta work. It’s just the limitations of our language. So for the sake of sticking with the teachings in a course in miracles and in the heart of a course in miracles, we’re gonna keep using these words, but I guarantee by the end of it, we’re gonna have a different relationship with these words, right and wrong, right Mindedness and wrong mindedness. But the biggest thing that I want to acknowledge is that when we say wrong mind, we’re not talking about something that is inherently bad.

It’s just mistaken. A wrong mind is ill-informed. That’s it. It’s not bad, it’s just Ill-informed that wrong mind is not using its full capacity to live in the moment. Usually we’re only using one dimension when we’re in our, when we’re in our wrong mind. One dimension of our mind, one dimension of our being, the ego. Anyone familiar with the ego? Okay? This is that human personality part of us. You can’t get away from it. It isn’t fully bad or wrong, and it’s actually essential to our existence. It’s essential to who we are. And to only live from this place is to live in and from fear. That’s it.

Fear that we aren’t good enough. Fear that there isn’t enough of anything to go around fear of what those people might do if they get in power. Fear of what they might think of me, fear of losing them, fear of never getting the weight off. Fear of being alone, fear of what I might say, fear of running out of time, fear of running out of money, fear of being seen, fear of taking responsibility, fear of change, fear of rejection, fear of missing out, fear of hardship and challenge, fear of looking silly. Anyone ever experience any of those fears?

All the time. The fear list is endless. That was just a handful. I I I was contemplating like literally doing it for a minute just to kind of like beat us up with how easy it is for the mind to come up with fears. But the fear is endless in the mind of the ego. It’s always looking for something to fear. That’s all it really knows how to do. When we are in a state of fear, we are ill-informed. We are only approaching life in a situation from a single vantage point of fear. This is an unintelligent state of mind to live in that dimension only, I would dare say it wouldn’t be enjoyable. Whenever I’m in fear, I don’t enjoy it. I’m like, Ooh, I’m, I’m so excited for this fear I’m experiencing right now. It’s delicious. No, it kind of sucks and doesn’t kind of suck. It sucks outright, period. It’s not enjoyable. So we could say that it’s wrong, right? So wrong mindedness is living in fear. And to put it simply wrong, mindedness is living from our ego’s fear. Okay?

I came across a really amazing quote from Jay Krishnamurti. If anyone’s a fan of his writing, I want you to take a deep breath in and out and close your eyes. Let these words hit your head and your heart. And for those of you online, stop multitasking for a minute. Get present and hear these words. Fear is one of the greatest problems in life. A mind that is caught in fear, lives in confusion and conflict, and therefore must be violent, distorted, and aggressive. I dare not move away. It dare not move away from its own pattern of thinking. And this breeds hypocrisy. Until we are free from fear, we will remain in darkness, living in such a corrupt, stupid society as we do with the competitive education we receive, which engenders fear. We are all burdened with fears of some kind. And fear is a dreadful thing, which warps twists and dulls our days.

The second sentence in this really is a zinger for me. Let me read it again. A mind that is caught in fear, lives in confusion, con in conflict, and therefore must, it must be violent. It must be distorted and aggressive. No one wants to celebrate that, but he really points out how unintelligent fear is. It does not serve us. It makes us twist everything. Now, the language that he use here is until we are free from fear, I don’t think we will ever be free from fear in our experience, but we can be free from fear being the only thing that we live and choose from that’s moving into the right mind. We cannot deny that fear is a part of our ego. Our ego is not something that you take out like a splinter. It’s always here. It’s a part of our life. It’s a part of our humanity. It is a part of our animal, wild nature. It can serve us. But if it’s the only thing serving us, that’s where things get bumpy.

I, I I, I gotta read this again, I’m sorry. A mind that is caught in fear, lives in confusion and conflict. Is anyone experiencing confusion and conflict in their life? Are we collectively not experiencing a ton <laugh>? I wanted to use lots of expletives, a ton of confusion and conflict. If that is what we are experiencing, then we must therefore be violent, aggressive, and distorted. It’s not a choice when fear is causing this confusion. When we feel in conflict, we do all kinds of crazy stuff. Just turn on the television, you’ll see it. The ego and fear is based on the material world. The material world being the only true thing to the ego seeing is believing, right?

A couple talks ago I talked about flipping, that believing is seeing but in the wrong mind, the mind of the ego, the fear-based mentality seeing is believing. The only thing that exists is that which I can touch, taste, and feel. But the material world is not our only reality. It is definitely not the capital T reality. And yet we live most of our days experiencing what the material world, the place of the ego, the place where fear runs rampant. This is why the spiritual path and the practices of spiritual living are so, so important. The majority of our days in the material world, what we can touch, taste, and feel, that is what we say is true. The ego loves the material world. And for that matter, the ego doesn’t really understand anything that is not material.

Michael Mirada in the heart of a course and miracles continues with this thought, thought and says, we think and believe that the more we can touch and see something including people in our lives, the more real it must be. But in reality, the more solid it feels and appears, the less real it is. In other words, we simply cannot trust our human eyes or senses. These were designed by our ego to be two in number as a symbol of dualistic thinking. This is the opposite of what is called spiritual vision. That comes from the third eye located in the center of the forehead. It is the third eye, which symbolically, uh, which symbolizes spiritual vision. This must be open for our right mind to perceive the spiritual world and the spiritual world is the world of love and oneness. Zoe’s talking about what we teach here at Cityside Oneness.

There’s only one thing happening, but we cannot understand that only materially we have understand it with our spiritual selves. You here, okay, take a deep breath in. Exhale. So how do we open the third eye? How do we move into right mindedness? First off, let’s come back and you know, I love to define what is right mindedness. Well, simply, it’s the opposite of wrong mindedness, the opposite of living in and from fear. So what is the opposite of fear for you online? I want you to type it into the chat. A word or two. What is the opposite of fear for you? And I’d love a couple of people to call it out here in the room, what is the opposite of fear for you? Joy, love, freedom, peace, possibility, faith, courage, all of these words that you’re yelling out, the ones that you’ve written online, these are all words of spirit. We’d call them spiritual qualities, right? This is what we pray for. This is what we do in spiritual mind treatment. We are treating the mind out of its wrongness, out of its fear, base default mode, and reminding it of its nature, which is not based in the ego, which is not based in the material world. Bless you.

So right mindedness in our spirit is in our spiritual mind, but it w here we get tripped up by language. Again, the spiritual mind. The spiritual mind is not really a mind. It doesn’t have to think, it just knows. So when we are truly aligned with our spiritual mind, when we are in our right mind, when our third eyes opened, we don’t have to ask questions. Oh, is this a good thing? Should I do it? Shouldn’t I do it? You know, in the moment, this thing that I am stepping into saying yes to, or even saying no to is for the highest and greatest good of my expression right now. We just know it. You don’t have to go online and search on Google and figure something out. You have an intelligence and a wisdom that is greater. This is the worldwide web. You can tap into that at any point in time. People have been doing it for thousands of years.

The problem is the ego, the wrong mind only bases things off of opinion and senses. So if the human, the, the fearful mind doesn’t like what the right mind is suggesting, if the human mind doesn’t like what’s being asked of it, oftentimes it will override the right mind. You know why? Regardless of your age, the only thing you’ve been doing consistently every day is practicing being human, practicing being scared. I guarantee you could easily come up with so many reasons why you should be fearful of life. You don’t even have to effort. You’ve rehearsed, fearful things in your mind over and over and over and over again. It’s really quite easy to do. So to come back to our, our, our reading from this morning that John offered from the book, we entered this here into this conversation. One of the most helpful and necessary realizations in order to heal our lives and our minds is to acknowledge that we don’t like what we see or feel in our lives.

And then to acknowledge that we are experiencing this only because of our mistaken judgments about ourselves and our spiritual family. This realization creates a turning point for us. A holy instant. This turning point is unconditional responsibility. Unconditional responsibility for what we, what you experience, which can ultimately lead to a choice for unconditional healing. Until this point is reached, we live in karmic patterns and are inventing a world of suffering. I don’t know about you, but personally I would say all of us are in some karmic patterns and probably are experiencing a world of suffering. I know collectively we are for sure. So what can we do?

I just painted a really horrible picture. <laugh>, the wrong mind is so strong, it overpowers our spiritual nature. I don’t know what we do because those people keep screwing it up, right? You know who I’m talking about? Those people, the Democrats, the Republicans, the independents, you know those conservatives over there, those super uber lefty socialists over there, they’re screwing it up for everybody. You know those people, men, women, transgendered the poor, the rich, the black, the white, your family, your coworkers, your clients, everybody is screwing up life for you, right? Wrong. This is wrong mindedness. That’s suffering.

We suffer when we are victims to what someone else does or doesn’t do. And what is the single thing that we can do when we are in victim consciousness to move out of it or begin moving into some other state? We take responsibility. We take responsibility for our expectations of others, not them. We take responsibility for our expectations. We take responsibility for our opinions. We don’t give it to someone else to manage. And as we do that we acknowledge and invite the spiritual mind to partner with us. That’s all you gotta do is invite. There’s no manipulation. There’s no need to force anything. Do you guys remember those, uh, bracelets? I can’t remember if they came out in the, in the eighties, uh, when people started wearing the, the jelly bracelets and it said ww jd, what would Jesus do? And it became this huge movement in the Christian community. And on some level asking that question was inviting spirit to partner in the moment. Because in those moments, people were often realizing, I in my mind, my human mind, my wrong mind right now, I’m about to choose something that’s probably not great. So what would Jesus do? But it doesn’t just have to be Jesus. That was an example. You could say, what would Buddha do? What would Krishna do?

What would Amy do? Cuz she makes some great decisions. We call upon expressions of the spirit that we understand to help us transition and pivot out of that wrong minded thinking into right-minded thinking. And you only have to do it in the moment where you are. This is where we get tripped up again, because the ego’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute, but what about 10 years from now? What’s gonna happen if this happens? I’m like, dude, ego. I don’t know right now, this is the decision to make. Let’s invite the spirit, the love, the intelligence, the wisdom, all of those words, those spiritual qualities that you were just yelling out. Invite that into this moment in some way. When we do that, we are inviting ourselves to see beyond two or even three dimensions to experience the world as four, five, or even greater dimensions more than we know. This level of seeing, this level of living is living in our right minds.

So I’ll offer the talk title again. Are you in your right mind? Did you wake up in your right mind today? Did you take a sip of coffee in your right mind today? Did you walk into this room? Did you sign in online today, in your right mind, the last time that you said yes to someone? Were you in your right mind the last time you said no to someone? Were you in your right mind? Did your spiritual self, your loving self say yes or no? Or was it your fearful self? These small moments of inquiry and thus awareness when we realize that we just chose out of fear is where the miracles of life dwell.

When we choose again from our spirit and not from fear. That is miraculous. You feel me? Let’s go back to the reading for today. This realization creates a turning point for us. A holy instant. This turning point is unconditional responsibility for what we experience, which can ultimately lead us to a choice of unconditional healing. It happens moment by moment, instant by instant. We must practice this as much as we can so it becomes a part of our living and not a novel thing that we just do on Sunday morning or when we go to get prayer for, uh, from a practitioner. Or when we take a moment to meditate at this time of the day, it is something to do every day, all the time. And we aren’t throwing the ego away. You can’t really do that. We’re learning to even out the playing field so that it’s not all about the ego. We’re living in that multi-dimensional space, bringing your spirit, your soul, to everything, your relationships, your work, the mundane, anything. This is where systemic shift happens and the world can truly move towards working for everyone. But we must start where we are.

We must be aware and present with ourselves and choose spirit again. Again and again. This isn’t a one-time practice to nail and get right, and I got the dismount. Yes, my life is perfect. No, this is a way of living. It is a lifetime practice. And here’s some words of encouragement directly from the course of miracles. These words just, mm, they’re rich. You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself in the world totally without judgment release and deep peace. Anybody wants some of that? He goes on to say in the book, when we align ourselves with right mindedness, right actions are sure to follow. A lot of people get caught up in the actions first, but realize that before an action is made, before choice has happened, there’s something the mind. So when we align ourselves with right mindedness, right actions are sure to follow.

Being in your right mind does not mean that you’re living a life of hyper passivity, indifference or disregard for healthy boundaries, which is some Bs that our ego makes up and tries to convince us to come back over to the dark side, right? Minds and love isn’t about only saying yes either and just letting things happen, right? Mindedness and love does say no. It has boundaries. When we really let ourselves live from our right minds, our loving spirit, we can rest assured that everything is happening for our highest good. It is the right spiritual mind that reminds us that there is nothing against us. But the ego, ego will always beg to differ as we continue to get present awake and aware moment after moment of what mind we are moving from the book goes on to say, eventually we all will learn that before we take any action, the situation before us holds for us something to learn, namely lessons to restoring us to the right mindedness of our soul. So let this be some good cheer. The situation in your life right now, whatever it is, you know what it is, right? That situation. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s holding a lesson for you. Don’t fight it.

Most notably the lesson of choice. You can choose to be in your right mind no matter what the situation, no matter what the situation, you can choose to be in the mind of love. How awesome is this? Everyone’s like, okay, no. Think about it. It means that nothing is wrong with you. How often do you convince yourself that something’s wrong with you? It’s probably an incessant chatter that’s going on. There’s probably even some in there right now talking about it. This means that nothing is wrong with you. This means that nothing is wrong with them, whoever them may be.

That means that nothing is wrong with any of us. Nothing is wrong with life. Everything before you holds a lesson and an opportunity to return to your right mind. So again, are you in your right mind? I would offer that we are always in our right, but it’s not the only mind that we have access to. And unfortunately, right now, the easiest mind for most of us to access is the wrong mind. It’s our default. We don’t have to effort. So this work is not about being easy and comfortable to live a spiritual life. Some people even use the word warrior to be a spiritual warrior, to get up every morning and do something to connect to your spirit. It causes some discomfort.

And so often we beat ourselves up on the spiritual path because we’re experiencing discomfort. We think something’s wrong with us. Oh, that again, why am I feeling this? Why I, my God, we are not here. I love Michael Beckwith. They always says, we’re not here to be comfortable. You are not here to be comfortable. A lot of ad agencies, God bless them, will try to convince you otherwise and to have the perfect product to make you so comfortable right now. If you just take this pill, if you just eat this food, if you just wear these perfect shoes, your life is going to be comfortable forever. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that’s not what we’re here for. If you’ve ever read the Road Less Traveled, or if you’re familiar with the author m Scott Peck, circle back to him. He is good. And here’s what he has to say about some discomfort.

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, and unfulfilled. As anyone feeling uncomfortable, a little unfulfilled or maybe unhappy in their life right now, sweet. Celebrate that. The truth is that our finest moments are likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unfulfilled, and unhappy. For it is only in such moments propelled by our discomfort that we are likely to step out of the ruts of our life and start searching for different ways or truer answers. Yes. So get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That is to me what the spiritual journey is all about. Seize the opportunity in those moments of discomfort and say these words to yourself, I must have decided wrongly because I’m not at peace. When your nervous system and your body gives you this cue and you’re like, ah, man, I just am not feeling right in my skin. The people around me, all I have to do is breathe and I want to kick ’em in the face.

I must have decided wrongly because I’m not at peace. This is where you look in the mirror most of the time. It’s those people that are doing it right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we have decided something. So then once we realize I’m not at peace, I must be moving from a mind that is not right. It is fear-based. What can we do? We ask, how can I welcome spirit into this moment? If you don’t like the word spirit, whatever word you shouted out, how can I welcome love into this moment? How can I welcome trust into this moment? How can I welcome peace into this moment? How can I welcome joy into this moment? And usually asking that question is all that’s needed. It it, it, it evens out the playing field. We’re not just camping out in the world of fear where those people are driving us crazy.

We all of a sudden go, what? What can I do to be at peace? Oh, maybe I’ll just let them go and let them be crazy for a moment. And take a deep breath in. This may sound simplistic. It’s not. It may sound like it needs to be more complex. It is. It takes practice. I said earlier that you have been practicing being a human your entire life. Most of us have had some sort of spiritual connection, but have we practiced our spiritual connection as much as we’ve practiced being human? I don’t care who you are, where you live, how old you are, the answer is no.

I don’t get absolute about much. But when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you step into is your body, your Humana, your humanity. We forget. So we do spiritual practice to remind ourselves, has anyone ever learned an instrument? Has anyone ever tried to learn another language? Has everyone hurt their dominant hand and tried to feed or write with their non-dominant hand? It takes practice. You don’t just do it perfectly. This is the same thing. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice every single thing in your life as an opportunity to reconnect to your right mind. Are you in your right mind?

You are. Just remind yourself that you are one of the best ways to do it. The thing that is the undergirding practice of science, of mind and religious science as spiritual mind treatment. Now, a lot of times we’ll use the word prayer, but I want to use those words specifically. We’re gonna do one right now, A spiritual mind treatment. We’re treating the mind to come back to its spiritual inherent nature. Not just camp out in the world of fear and dualism in the material world. So whatever that situation is in your life right now, call into mind. Take a deep breath in. And as you exhale, if it feels right, close your eyes in this very moment right here. Right There is a very powerful capacity within every single person that can hear my voice. It is the capacity to choose, to choose in this moment love over fear, to embrace acceptance over fighting. So let us in this moment, right here and right now, connect to our spiritual nature, the love, the intelligence, the wisdom, the trust, the peace. And whatever this thing is in this situation in our life, we can bring our right mind to it. This situation may not even change, but there’s something within us that can change.

Bring your right mind, the mind of spirit, the mind of love, the mind that only knows oneness to the situation. Ask it to help you out.

So here and now, I bless the very situations in our lives that are giving us an opportunity to be in our right mind. May they serve us, may they stretch us, may they welcome us to in, into a space of discomfort that only brings us into the next level of our greatness. I affirm and no, all we need to do is say yes to this and it will be so. So I say yes to it for myself, for everyone in this room, for everyone online. We say yes to our spirit coming forward and we do it again and again and again and again. Each and every situation that we come up against, may we bring our spirit to it. May it guide and direct us. May it help us, may it support us. And we do this again. We do it tomorrow. We do it the day after that. And slowly but surely we step into a life that feels like a right mind all the time. And when we slip, we come on back. I’m so grateful to know that all we have to do is show up. All we have to do is be willing to ask spirit for support and all as well. So I release this word, I release our time and know and affirm that we are always in our right mind and we can choose to return to it every single moment. And so it is.

Amen.