Christ as a Different Consciousness

          As a child, I thought Christ was Jesus’ last name until someone cleared this up for me. Somehow it was conveyed to me that Christ was a descriptive designation referring to what set Jesus apart from us ordinary folk.

Just before A Course in Miracles came to my awareness, I was introduced to the idea that Christ was a state of consciousness, not the divinity of one man. This made immediate sense to me. I didn’t even question it and understood right away how Christianity had it wrong applying this consciousness to just one man. I also understood that Christ and Buddha were the same consciousness.

But just this point is what has made it difficult throughout my life to discuss my path with others not on a like path. To Christians certainly, but even to many non-Christians, Christ refers to Jesus’ divinity and that’s the end of it and any other idea is offensive or delusional. Most people, particularly in the West, have no idea that Divinity Itself can potentially be realized by anyone—and that this is what Jesus was trying to convey.

In fact, even in the Course community I run across students for whom Christ still means only Jesus. I do not know how they make sense of the Course, but maybe they do not. Since the Course is dense and difficult to understand even for those who know it says Christ is their Reality, perhaps those who do not understand this do not realize that this is part of why they find it difficult to understand!

But even among those who understand that a different consciousness is possible, there is a lot of misunderstanding about what it is. Yes, there’s liberation from the limitations of ego. Yes, there’s oneness and love and wholeness and security and an awareness of your immortality. All lovely things. But Christ Consciousness is not just you as you think you are now—a person—with the addition of those lovely things. There’s a “cost” to Christ Consciousness, and that is the reality you think you are in now. And that is not a small thing. The shift is disorienting, to put it mildly. Imagine everything you feel is true is gone. It is like the ground goes out beneath you and you have to acclimate to existing up in the air. Even with decades of preparation, as I had, the shift tests one’s capacity for the discomfort of facing the end of all that was familiar and discovering True Consciousness is unfamiliar.

Nonduality has become popular because people have tantalizing glimpses of the effects—liberation, love, unshakable happiness—of this other consciousness and declare, “I want to be there all the time!” It’s like it is the newest drug, and people are chasing it to be relieved of the pain of ego-consciousness. But they are chasing effects and not heeding the Source of those effects. As I’ve pointed out before, those effects can be induced by more than Truth, like drugs, stroke, brain tumors, and other brain diseases, revealing that they are only effects. Chasing them means making an idol of them. It's just another version of ego’s “What’s in this for me?”—seeking a higher state of consciousness for its own sake rather than waiting for it to manifest in its own time as an expression of Truth. There’s arrogance in the pursuit.

A genuine mystical experience revealing Christ Consciousness comes with the awareness of the huge shift that must occur for it to be permanent. This comes with at least a glimpse of disorientation and usually fear when one occurs. The more you have mystical experiences, the more you understand that they are only effects and do not confuse them with their Source. You see that without their Source, they are just another experience of consciousness.

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