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Conversations with Raj

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January 1st

Paul: Good morning, Raj — even though it’s one minute past morning.

Raj: Good morning, Paul.

Paul: Okay, what’s the order of the day — aside from having no plans of our own, on our own?

Raj: Paul, you must begin somewhere, and beginning with me is essential. And since abandoning “thinking” is on the table for you right now, we will begin there.

You must learn that no matter how much thinking you engage, none of it will mean anything, because it will only arise out of conditioning . . . the past . . . and therefore will bear no relevance to the actuality of now and what is actually appropriate in light of the Father’s Will.

Paul: But it is difficult to let go of all restraints of common sense and Listen with total innocence, because it seems to have consequences.

Raj: Nevertheless, we are not talking about letting go of being consciously attentive to Intelligence. Get it straight! It is independence which is the “letting go of order, invulnerability, safety, and miracles.” That is what one is doing before engaging in the two-step, the holy instant, and that is frightening and unwise.

We are talking about doing everything together. We are talking about staying home together. We are talking about going out together. We are not talking about doing anything independently. And, when we are doing it together, it is “in conjunction with” giving voice to the Voice for Truth, which is the expression, embrace and embodiment of the Father’s Will.

Where is the danger in that? And why isn’t it clear that the independence of thinking should be raising red flags and getting your attention?

You get my point.

Paul: Here I go! Does that mean that yesterday I wasn’t doing that? I thought I was, and yet there were no fruits all day long!

Raj: Yes, as you have just thought, this is taking up time and holding up any productive activity. But you started our conversation early today . . . and acting without guidance, without becoming clear, may be satisfying to the ego which wants control, and it may appear to give it evidence of having it . . . but stopping and engaging in the holy instant with me is the wiser course.

Stop letting yourself be controlled by conditioning!

Paul: So, what is the order of the day?

Raj: The order of the day is to engage in doing what fulfills Purpose — and that little capital “P” on the word means NOT what YOU THINK fulfills purpose, and not what you WANT to do that the holy instant has not revealed as the next step.

I will say this as well: Arguing about it “for the purpose of arriving at clarity about what you think the issue is,” does take up time, in the sense of being unproductive, delaying, standing against fulfillment, just for the satisfaction of “being heard.” Don’t do it.

Paul: Why am I so committed/addicted to thank-you’s, posting on the blog, keeping up on addresses, and generally being attentive to — in terms of being in active relationship with — those who come to the website and actively engage in support of what we do? And why do you never instruct me to attend to those things? It is extremely frustrating and creates feelings of guilt in me.

What am I not learning?

Raj: It truly is a matter of being at a change-line — a point of graduation. It isn’t that the things, the details, are addicting or compelling for you. It’s that the “act of control” is having to be released. Any activity which can be used for the purpose of reasserting control — asserting authority — instead of yielding serves the purpose of delaying that yielding. The saying is that “the devil’s in the details! And it’s the word “devil” which is the subject of the statement, not the “details.” The ego is in the preoccupation with any details it can distract you with. And although the details, as a focus of attention, appear to you to be the point, they are irrelevant.

The details — whatever they are, will be taken care of from the yielding perspective. Not because the details are important, but because it fulfills Purpose — the Father’s Will — for them to be attended to. If there is anxiety associated with attending to them, the impetus behind attending to them is the “devil’s” attempt to secure and maintain your bondage to it . . . and at that point, the details are absolutely irrelevant!

This is an important and imperative learning!

No, the point I have made is not an important and imperative learning. Yielding because you understand the point, IS!

Paul: Got it!

The ”point,” that is.

So, next step?

Raj: Get your stuff together. Shower. Head out and attend to the needs. Leave your pet agendas at home. In fact, abandon them right now! Try, for the next ten hours to gather your awareness of things — the Meaning of them — from me by paying attention to the Meaning through my perspective . . . to be gathered from me by the constant invitation for me to share It with you. Let’s just do this for the next ten hours — until the end of the first day of 2020.

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January 2nd

Paul: In limbo! What is going on? It’s like “no traction.” Purposelessness experienced yesterday. Things to do today — practical things — but what is the context? Who are we . . . the one’s doing them? What is our function? Are we husband and wife? Cooks, bottle washers, providers, parents?

None of the “normal” identifiers are present. We don’t even sleep in our bedroom, or on our bed, or at normal hours. Sue doesn’t have time to carry out her normal activities. I don’t get posts posted on the blog — even though there is a super-abundance of incredible information from you to share — or hold Study Groups, or get thank you’s sent out, or update email addresses. But day in and day out, we try to cope with meeting needs — with you, of course. And yet, here we are . . . and I’m asking these questions. It doesn’t make any sense.

I want to ask, “what’s wrong with this picture?” But the real question is: What’s the correction? Or maybe you had better tell me what the question is.

So, there’s my morning rant.

Good morning, Raj.

Raj: Good morning, Paul. And, in spite of it all, here you are. Here we are.

In our “togetherness” it is quiet. There is communication. Everything you have said is like a storm going on outside the safe, cozy warmth of Home, and one only needs to wait for the storm to subside, while enjoying being together in the meantime.

The real question is: Might you not try being here with me and, in the undisturbed peace of our togetherness, do the things which need to be done without overshadowing them with all the drama of wild emotional interpretations of misperceptions and conclusions which must necessarily be false because they’re based upon nothing actual?

Now, for the most part, you spent your time yesterday as I suggested you spend it — with me, without agendas of your own, without thinking and generating emotional reactions. You did it well.

The problem you’re having is wIth what you’re calling “the results”! They seem to have involved no correction, no restoration . . . and the false conclusion that you — or we, together — were fools, and simply made things worse.

Well, I’m sorry. That’s not the case. The practice during those ten hours was strengthening, and is allowing for us to have this conversation right now, while the “storm” on the world scene rages outside the safety of Home, and you are being able to be the expression of Sanity and stability. That is the point!

Again: None of this is about “results”! None of this is about some new form of control! It’s about being in a new way — different from the adopted, conditioned responses which have been governing you in “the unjoined state.”

I am going to be very clear! This is about abandoning, breaking free from conditioned responses which, up to now, have provided a sense of context — personal context. Context as a person, a body, an entity! That is not what Existence is about. It is not even what Existence is!

Of course, context is going to be lost! It doesn’t matter where you sleep, or who does or doesn’t’ do the cooking, cleaning, bottle-washing, providing, protection . . . or any of the myriad other things which were used to provide a sense of identity. No matter who you “thought” you were, YOU were there, undisturbed, unchanged, the “presence of Mind,” which needed no definitions applied to It.

You have always been as you are right now, here with me in the safety of Home, while imagination boisterously and noisily proclaimed its powerlessness. The difference is that now your attention is Here at Home, with me . . . and the Peace is palpable. The confusion of debris circulating wildly outside is not the least bit distracting. And the very meaning of debris is unattached, ungrounded, not connected to a Source — and therefore, not real.”

What is Real is inside our Home. And Here is where you are . . . and Where you are to be . . . and Where you are to be from! In other words, your actions, arising from Here, arising from our communion, will not address the storm or the debris. Contrary to that expectation, they will address the Movement of Creation . . . giving voice to or confirmation of It . . . and, the inevitable restoration of what was never lost, when it occurs, will not have been a matter of “control” in any way!

This, you are not familiar with the feeling of, and so it seems to you to be meaninglessness. It is this temporary confusion which must be endured as you persist in staying with me — knowing as you now do, that staying with me means Here, at Home, at the destination Which You never left . . . even though you got used to looking out the windows at the apparently “gathering energies” which you unavoidably experience when you turn your back on your Father (getting an imaginary divorce from Him by refusing to give your attention to Him) and then spending some time indulging in reveries of forever-threatened greatness — meaning the excitement of attempting to become great on one’s own, and the exhilaration of meeting and attempting to overcome the absolute and ever-present impossibility of overcoming it.

Paul: So, I’m going to interrupt. I’m looking at the clock. There are things to do . . . practical things, as I said. Am I to let you continue until you say something about these things, or ask, as I am doing?

Raj: Paul, nothing you need to do is bound to a clock. Time is as irrelevant as where you sleep or who does the chores. Again: Nothing you need to do is bound to a clock! Try to apply them to the structure of “time” and you will have bound yourself to an artificial bondage! Do you think the flower meets a deadline to bloom? Do you think the moon, planets or stars are headed to a predetermined destination, with a deadline to get there? It will all happen when it happens. Why? Certainly not because the timing is important! If it were, the element of surprise would not exist. The unexpected would never happen! And the very meaning of “Creation” would not have arisen.

Indeed! Consciousness would be a freeze-frame still shot of a permanently immovable image, without time or space, without objects, and without the capacity of recognition, acknowledgment or confirmation — all of which require utter and absolute freedom from immobile eternal changelessness. If there is nothing happening, there is nothing to be conscious of, and with nothing to be conscious of, there is no mind to be conscious of it.

This does not suggest that the movement of things gives rise to Mind or consciousness. It does not mean that the occurrence of the unexpected, of surprises, elicits the conscious experience of Being, either! It means that Mind, being Mind elicits out of the Unknown, elicits out of the Unexpected, originality which is unaffected by a past, and this is the divine Impetus — the Eternal Elicitor of Something to be Known. Creation! Pure Surprise! An eternal “A-ha!”

This creates Conscious Experience . . . and Conscious Experience is simply the observing, acknowledging, and confirming of the eternal Surprise! A Course in Miracles rightly names this “co-creation” and identifies it as your Function — as everyone’s Function.

Here it is: Mind eliciting the eternal Surprise AND the resulting Conscious Experience of It — is The Father and The Son. And the Holy Spirit is your Mind — the Mind of the Son — held in trust while He gazes out of the window in a reverie, indulging in a state of distraction from Reality, or “dallying with the ego,” as I have put it.

Now you have a better understanding of what it means to be at Home, not looking out of the windows or being distracted by the disturbance. You have been doing it now since the beginning of our conversation. You have experienced the Peace. You have experienced the soundness, the stability, the lack of vulnerability involved. And yet you also are aware that there are practical things to be taken care of, which can be taken care of from Here — acted out in Peace, with perspective that doesn’t introduce defense of any sort, which allows “what is done” to arise out of Love instead of fear.

Doing it will take a little more attention on your part, because there will be more activity to embrace without introducing habitual practices of self-protection that you have trained yourself to hide up your sleeve or stash in your back pocket in case they are needed.

“Fortified presence” is useful only to one who intends to overcome the impossibility of overcoming something which isn’t really there.” Abandoning it is your task for the rest of the day, today.

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January 3rd

Paul: Good morning, Raj.

Raj: Good morning, Paul.

Paul: Okay. I’ve got defense up my sleeve and in my back pocket. No . . . it’s actually out on the table. I am defended against hearing what you might have to say. A repeat of yesterday is not worth it, no matter how wonderful the information you share may be.

Can you quickly get me back on the beam?

Raj: Well, the first step is to realize that events in your day, yesterday — the ones right there in your home — were not the disrupters. Nor are they what is calling for defense this morning. “They” are the “storm” going on outside in the world scene. You’re not looking out the window, but you are “feeling” it and, to that degree, distracted.

Thank you for bringing your attention back to us, Here, inside.

Paul: Would you suggest that we not watch the news?

Raj: For the time being, yes. You will need to be informed, but not until our connection is secure and “the order of the day” is in motion.

Paul: Okay.

Raj: . . .

Paul: I’m hearing nothing — caught in mental immobility. Actually, as I pay attention to it, it’s a feeling . . . a feeling of hopelessness or uselessness; lack of justification for hearing anything, and just going back to bed, instead. Is this more of the “sounds of the storm”?

Raj: Exactly. Remember, storms never prevail! They bluster and blow and die out every time. It is peace which prevails. It is intelligence which prevails. Even in the dream! It is very important to remember this. Remembering it provides the justification for abandoning your fixation on the storm and returning Home . . . bringing your attention back to Us — you and me. That is the purpose, the function, and the great value of the holy instant.

As you noted, it is the feeling — because it is almost physical — which causes one to forget that although storms “demand” dedicated commitment of your attention, THEY are NEVER consistent or permanent. They are always transitory, like bullies — a punch here, a punch there, and then the silence . . . the wait . . . in suspense . . . for the next punch . . . OR NOT WAITING!

And we’re talking about the
NOT WAITING!

Fear is not compelling. Curiosity about fear is! But curiosity is a matter of attention . . . which everyone has complete control over! The Course states that a miracle is “a sudden shift of perception,” and sudden shifts of perception are the evidence of “sudden shifts of attention,” and sudden shifts of attention are synonymous with the holy instant . . . engaged in!

It’s that simple.

Greet today, and meet today with me from the holy instant — your commitment to be joined.

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