The Wandering Monk

Kenneth Clifford

star kenneth clifford

Kenneth Clifford 

Movie Session: Invictus

The movie starts off where Nelson Mandela has just been made president of South Africa. There’s a huge conflict between blacks and whites. This has gone on for God knows how long, and now he’s coming in to deal with it.

The only way you can deal with it is through prayer, love, and forgiveness. To really know that he is the light, he has to know that no one’s going to be the light for him. No one’s going to do this for you, you have to know who you are. That’s the name of the game to know that you are the light of the world.

As Jesus says, in the beginning of A Course in Miracles, “know thyself” as the Christ is the goal. Let’s just think about it. We think about our meaningless conflicts that we have with ourselves while Nelson Mandela takes on an entire cultural country dilemma. He takes the whole thing literally on his own shoulders. Considering that he had been violent towards whites, he had protested, he had been angry, he had been a protester. And yet, he turned it all around.

Really that’s the conflict that we see in our own mind between hate and love. If you want to put it simply, the reason why you don’t know who you are, is because you’re addicted to hate. That’s what this world is, it’s a world of hate, made up by the ego, it is pure hatred. So your decision is to say, “I actually don’t want this hate any longer” and mean it truly.

Nelson Mandela is put in a position where he cannot have doubt in his mind. He cannot have this hatred any longer in his mind. He cannot tolerate it any longer. And that’s the whole point. The ego is made up so that you tolerate this idea of hatred in your own mind. You could call hatred, the separation. But it’s a tolerance of hatred. That tolerance will eventually give way. But that is actually your choice as to whether you’re going to give way or not. Whether you’re actually going to choose the love of God.

Mandela has been on the other side, he’s been in that hate. He’s been imprisoned and treated really badly. He has been in such a terrible situation that maybe most of us haven’t been in. And now he has to literally turn it all around through his own self-inquiry and saying, “I don’t want this any longer. There has to be another way.”

Clearly, he’s gone into his mind. And now he wants the real solution. “Make this year different by making it all the same.” See no differences and no separation between you and your brother at all. Seeing everything as completely one.

So now he’s dealing with seemingly the biggest ego dilemma in the world- the ego made up black and white. There are the blacks, and there are the whites. They don’t get on. Of course, that’s just a reflection of separation in the mind. This was Nelson Mandela’s contribution to his own hatred and saying, “I’m going to bring love to that part of my mind. I’m going to choose not to do this. I’m going to choose again, for real.” So, if you think you have a dilemma, think about that?

Maybe we want to really take this on as our forgiveness. Are you willing to forgive? Are you really, really, really willing to forgive? Because if you would be, we wouldn’t be having this meeting, it would be over, we’d be laughing, we’d be laughing together. There would be no teaching. We wouldn’t need teaching. Because we’d be laughing at these ideas of black-and-white separation, we would literally see that there was only one of us speaking in the room. We would feel so much joy and love for one another. And that’s what’s been completely and utterly offered.

In the meantime, we have to have this reflection of, “wow, how can we help? How can we help heal this?” This is step by step, moment to moment. We can see it as our life because, in our life, many decisions come every day. As Jesus says, some of them seem bigger, some of them seem smaller. In Nelson Mandela’s world, every decision counts towards, I will there be light. It’s a matter of hell or heaven because one false move, the whole country could be in an uproar because of what he thinks, he says, or he does.

That’s what Jesus is teaching us. Think of me. Be me. Reflect with me. Make no decisions without me. Be the light of the world. It is of me, and it is our Father in Heaven. So, clearly, Nelson Mandela had to rely on his true strength. He had to rely on something far greater than himself.

So just to begin with grievances, I just like to read a part from “I will there be light,” because he talks a lot about grievances in here, which is really funny. When we think, “I will, there be light,” we think great, he’s going to tell us how to be the light. It’s actually we need to look at what you’re actually doing, and how careless you are with your mind. This is what Jesus has to say, about “I will there be light,” and this is paragraph two I’ll read to you.

“Idle wishes and grievances are partners or co-makers in picturing the world you see. The wishes of the ego gave rise to it, and the ego’s need for grievances, which are necessary to maintain it, peoples it with figures that seem to attack you and call for “righteous” judgment. These figures become the middlemen the ego employs to traffic in grievances. They stand between your awareness and your brothers’ reality. Beholding them, you do not know your brothers or your Self.” W-pI.73.2.

This is perfect for this movie. Because you know that line, ‘these figures become the middlemen, the ego employs to traffic in grievances.’ It’s like any gap you give in your mind, the ego comes rushing straight in as the grievance is there. And this is exactly what’s going to happen to Nelson Mandela. He’s going to have to make decisions that others aren’t going to like. He has to stand by, knowing that it’s the light and knowing with conviction in his heart that it is serving the whole.

This is where the shift in your mind has to occur. Because you’re never really going to get anywhere if you think, there’s a person waking up. Because you’re in a “personal struggle,” and you’re not serving the whole, you don’t believe you’re whole and you don’t believe in everything. The course says this is a self-study book. Jesus never said that. That was actually Helen’s own words and then Kenneth Wapnick picked up on it. But actually, that wasn’t what Jesus said. Jesus never said, “this is a self study course.” It’s like these little things that people say, “Oh, it’s just for me to study on my own. I don’t need anything else.” Everything is you. So that’s actually a misunderstanding of what the Course is teaching.

Nelson Mandela, knew this and took his function on full knowing he wanted to serve the whole. So guidance isn’t personally for you. Guidance is serving the whole. Often with yourself, you’re like, “Jesus guide my life. Jesus guide me in helping me with my meaningless life.” Yeah and then it always fails. It always fails, because it’s actually not a high enough purpose, because the ego does not wake up.

We have to have a higher purpose. Let me serve the whole, let me serve everything, and know that I am everything. And so for Nelson Mandela, he can’t be serving himself because he’s seemingly serving the country. And now the seeming split is between the blacks and the whites. And he has to serve them. So how can he stay loyal, he can’t stay loyal to one without being loyal to the other. He has to stay loyal to God the highest possible guidance. So he can’t have the middlemen of the ego. He cannot be persuaded by anything outside of that guidance, which is literally serving the whole. When you do that, you will actually become happy. It’s actually really, really basic. If this is the one thing that you got from today, because I guarantee probably you’re not doing this, you will actually start to become happy more quickly. Because you will be serving the whole and not yourself.

So, this is what Nelson Mandela does. I am serving the whole, I will there be light, and I am coming from the love of God, and nothing is going to stand in my way. No matter what grievances, no matter what attacks, no matter what comes in my way- whether it be from family, whether it be from friends, whether it be from trusted colleagues, I am going to trust the light in who I am.

So I think this is a real huge opportunity for all of us to have a living demonstration that seemingly was in our lifetime, is phenomenal, in my view. And I think wow, that’s why I cried. Because I just felt like what he took on in the mind, and basically said, there are no grievances, and there’s only love. To bring a nation together like he did, to actually love one another, to be a demonstration of that love is phenomenal. So then we have to say, that is not a character outside of your mind. That is your mind.

As much as I’ve gone on about how much you’re not serving and thinking about your meaningless little self. Remember that there is the true part of your mind. Because we have to hear this? Do you want to know? Do you really want to wake up? It’s not a game. I’m just telling you what you do with your own mind. And it’s like, Oh, my God, do I really want that?

That’s why I was grateful for Jesus because he is very strict with me. He is like, “yeah, that’s not acceptable in your mind.” My God, you’re right. When you really listen to him, when you really listen to what he’s got to say and everything he teaches you, when you let him into your mind, he says, “You are hurting yourself. “That’s his underlying teaching. Do you want that? You are hurting yourself. And eventually, you’re gonna say, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be doing this any longer. Please for the love of God release me.” That’s why we look because the release is also in your mind.

We’re not looking at Nelson Mandela and the great things that he did, we’re looking at the greatness within your own mind. The love that you have, is endless. And that’s actually what you fear. He didn’t, he just went straight towards it and he saw every opportunity to share that love. So this is it, this is the inspiration. I don’t want you to look at him as being a character outside. Let’s take it inside. This is you, this is actually what you want. He’s showing you the power of your own mind. Before we start the movie, it’s about the power of the mind, the power of Jesus’s mind, the one that remembered the truth. That’s really what we want to be relying on. And so this is what he says about any situation. He says,

“Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dispirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is any order of difficulty in miracles. You do. I have called and you will answer. I understand that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love. My calling you is as natural as your answer. And as inevitable.”

That’s what Nelson Mandela did. He said, I’m accepting that there are no order of difficulties in miracles. Jesus says, in the Course, the Will is a miracle. That is what we join in. We join fully in the one miracle, which ends separation. That’s what the actual miracle is. And that’s actually what the Will is. They’re both absolutely identical. That one miracle joins you with the Father and it’s over. That’s what we’re doing. Okay, so let’s expect miracles. And let Nelson lead the way. Enjoy!

 

AFTER MOVIE:

I always say, “you have to set your goal, your spiritual goal,” there’s only one goal and that is a spiritual goal. Then, how you get there will be revealed to you if you keep that goal. For example, Mandela’s was forgiveness, and his was non-separation. To stop this divide, he said, we have to stop this “cycle of fear.” So he knew exactly what he wanted. He didn’t want a divided country, which is saying, “I don’t want a divided mind.” It only ever comes back to mind. So he was talking to himself and saying, I don’t want a divided mind anymore. And he’d experienced forgiveness in his mind. And he said, “That’s what I want to extend.”

Then from there, every single step was given. So his mind was completely and utterly open to that. Then he was like, all of a sudden, “oh, it’s the Rugby World Cup.” You heard he didn’t really know anything about it. How does it work? So they explain it all up to him. He was completely clueless. And he thought, “wow, this is one of the things that really unite.” Then he just followed those breadcrumbs freeing himself, because that was the reflection of his own heart extended out. That’s no different then what Jesus says, in A Course in Miracles. He says, “You are no different than me. And I think we actually have to take that on.

It’s not some far-off Jesus. You may say, “I can’t extend in the way that he does.” Jesus calls that arrogance. Quite frankly, he calls it a waste of time, that’s a delay to think that you cannot give everything in any given moment. Nelson Mandela was a complete demonstration, seemingly in our lifetime and he just said, I do not want any barriers to who I am. And then he has a reflection of that, which now ripples out to all of us right now. And his gift is still giving. It’s like that gift isn’t a separate gift. It’s the gift of who you are.

The thing is to actually take that on and then you are that demonstration, you are that demonstration over every single day. That power goes with you, wherever you go. Take it on, he says. He’s teaching you to learn the lesson and then you extend it. So it can’t be just about learning. That is what the ego does with A Course of Miracles. I need to study I need to learn it. You’re never ever going to learn it. But when you extend, you learn, you extend, you learn, you extend until you literally become it. And it literally is you and that’s where your determination is. He says we are open-minded, we can literally forgive everything and that extends to everyone. Everything in your power is completely and utterly limitless. That’s incredible that’s the beauty.

The incredible thing to remember is that everything that is not love is your imagination. Only your imagination is stopping you. There’s nothing on heaven and earth that can stop you. Literally, it’s your imagination making up things. And that’s how light it is. It is just your imagination.

– Excerpt from the Nov 15, 2023 online movie session with Kenneth Clifford and Nana Bregvadze