 Okay. Hello everybody. Hi. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to our all day movie workshop. Yeah, we have a large group of people here. Once again, because we're on our online retreat weekend, we have this Retreat the Mystical Heart of Christ. So we have a longer than usual, sorry, a bigger than usual group. And also we have a bit of a new setup for today. So for those who are new, I'm Peter. I'm hosting today. And yeah, I can just let you know the flow of the day. So we're going to start with the movie and David. And then today we're going to have a Q&A session after the movie. We'll have a 10 minute break or so and then we'll have a Q&A session with David. And then after that, we're going to have a longer break, but we're going to have a worship session where we can share music and just prayer and joy. And so that's going to be coming up a bit later at the day at 4pm MDT. And so there's going to be a bit of a longer break then. So but to start with, we're going to have the movie with David. So I'm going to pass it over to David now. Hi, everyone. Welcome. We're going to have a great day today. I can tell you with a lot of new things happening, we have a new website that we've just done veiling. When I arrived down here, they said, Oh, our app got accepted into the Apple app store. So we have a new app that just is available. Now we have a new cat in our community called Lucy. Some of you remember the movie Lucy with Scarlett Johansson. So we're all ooing and on like watching the cat, the young cat Lucy to see the transformation happen. We have fiber optics, too. And I landed, we've been waiting at one of the properties QDS for fiber optics for about five years. And it just came in when I landed here in Mexico. So we're just enjoying a lot of beautiful symbols. And today, we have a really a beautiful movie, the most reluctant convert. And it's basically the story of like a bioptic movie of CS Lewis, Clive Staples Lewis. Clive, I like that. And Clive is going to really take us on a deep dive. Clive has taken us on a dive because when we come to this world of time and space, all we know from birth, and while we experience is through the five senses. And as I've been teaching for many, many years, our five senses are invented by the ego. So talk about a closed system. If if your five senses are showing you separation year after year, decade after decade, and then there's something underneath that is your true identity that wants to be found wants to be discovered. And yet, all you've known your entire life is we'll call it materialism. All you've known is materialism and what the five senses show you. And that's a pretty strong evidence for separation, because the five senses constantly are showing a fragmented perception. They're constantly showing division, constantly showing conflict, war, arguments, constantly showing difficulties. And imagine if your true identity had nothing to do with anything that the five senses show you that that the ego was so ingenious that it invented and projected a linear world of time and space to keep you from knowing who you are. Quite an ingenious tactic if who you are has nothing to do with the five senses or the world of fragmented differences. Who you are has nothing to do with multiplicity. Who you are has nothing to do with variety. We were raised with this idea that variety is the spice of life. I'm going to reinterpret that now for all of us. Variety is the spice of death. Because only a death wish could cover over absolute oneness, absolute unconditional love, absolute perfect spirit with some kind of a veil of forgetfulness that involved multiplicity and variety. And then if you want to just come a little more basic than that then you could say duality. I mean even a world of duality is a cover over of who we really are. So the movie today is going to be the life of C.S. Lewis. And the more I look at this movie and the more I look at the life of C.S. Lewis, it reminds me of my own journey of I think many of us can relate to. We come to this world, we seem to have parents. In C.S. Lewis's case, he had a very gentle, caring, loving mother and kind of an outrageous father. And when you see what we perceive through our five senses, it's no wonder that we grow up kind of confused. As children were pretty confused, if we seem to have a good home life, a good family life, that's a good launch point for us, but we're still kind of frightened of things. Then we go to school and we meet people, we meet teachers, we have friends, we have colleagues. And as we move into our perceptual life as a human being, we move so with trepidation, with some fear, some doubt, many challenges. And that's what's so great about this movie. I will give commentary on it, but this is a gem of a movie we're watching today. This movie can help wash away your doubts about God. It's so well done. This movie can, it uses wit and humor. It uses the great thinkers and the great poets, it utilizes the great poets and thinkers, the great rationalists who basically were trying best to use rationality and logic to find meaning only to discover that their first premise was missing. So there are many, many great thinkers who were experts at rationality and logic, but they didn't realize that the rationality that they were applying to this world was as if the world was real and as if the world had some kind of meaning in it. When you apply rationality to meaninglessness, it goes nowhere. Some of us have tried. We've tried to be rational creatures in an insane world. And at times we wonder, this is absurd. This is ridiculous. How am I ever going to find meaning in such an insane world? So Jesus has helped us out. He tells us this world is backwards and upside down. And he tells us that we will never find our true identity in this world. This is a veil drawn over the truth to blind us from the truth. And so he's basically giving us permission to drop it, to drop trying to find meaning and understanding in the world. And he said 2000 years ago, the kingdom of heaven is within you. So he was pointing us towards prayer. He was pointing us towards meditation. He even said in the Bible, when you pray, go to your closet and shut the door. That's a pretty graphic description from 2000 years ago to have a very strong prayer life and a very strong meditation life and go inward into contemplation. But do it with the spirit of God show me, show me the truth. Everything that I've perceived with my five senses has not taken me to the truth. But there is a way. There must be a way. Because you said knock and the door shall be opened. Seek and ye shall find. You have assured with your word and your promise that we can discover the truth. Now today in this movie we're going to see C.S. Lewis. He's kind of got a nickname in the movie. They call him Jack as a child. And then even when he's in Oxford in the university, he's kind of his nickname is Jack. And he's going to grow up with the mother Fiora, who's a very kind, gentle, compassionate woman and kind of an outrageous father, Albert, who basically seems pretty bothered with his children. He's pretty outraged at his children. He's got his own ideas of things. And then C.S. Lewis or Jack has a brother warmly. And basically his brother is going to be part of a mystical experience that he has when his brother brings him a gift of like flowers and almost like a little gift basket during the summertime. And C.S. Lewis will have this huge mystical experience where he gets the taste of joy out in nature, like a lot of the nature mystics like St. Francis. And that will be in his heart as he moves through a very learned life, a very intellectual life. He will turn into a bookworm that reads so many books and becomes so well educated. But even with that fantastic spectacular education, he's going to have to discover the poets. He's going to have to discover Yates. And the poets will probably be the ones that help the Holy Spirit uses to reach his heart, that there's a world beyond this world. Even though all his rationalism and his intellectualism is basically saying there is no God, there's an experience with his brother that he had in nature with the flowers and the basket. And then there's going to be the poets that come into his life. And then it will eventually reach him in a very deep, the core of his being, the core of his heart. And that's part of the turnaround that we all experience when we doubt the meaning of life, when we doubt that there is a purpose, when we doubt that there is anything worth striving for. There is something inside of us that comes in and it basically takes over and it beams us back toward the Source, towards God. Thank Heavens. The Spirit has a plan and that plan will reach us when we're ready to be reached. So today, the movie themes that you voted on, the top theme was devoting my life to following Jesus Christ with 54 votes. And this is a perfect movie for that, devoting my life to following Jesus Christ because many of us, some of us were raised Christians, some not. Some of us have had very, very interesting journeys with Jesus, where we've learned things about Jesus or been told things about Jesus. But as far as our actual direct experience with Jesus, there's quite a range of experiences that human beings seem to go through. But coming to the point where you can devote your life to Jesus Christ requires some really deep, direct experiences, I think, when you start to realize that Jesus Christ is just a symbol for who you really are. And who you really are is an eternal being that has no beginning and no end. As Jesus said, before Abraham was I am, or I am the Alpha and the Omega, that one point in A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, you are the goal the world is searching for. And at another point, he basically is telling us that when we recognize who we are, then the whole world is healed, the whole world is saved. That the world is not some kind of a linear solid construct, but the world is just a projection. And when you realize that who you are in spirit is the salvation of the world, when you realize that I am presence is the salvation of the world, you realize that everything that you perceived as a problem in this artificial world was never a problem at all. It was just, it was just a projection of a tiny mad idea. And there were no financial problems. There were no relationship problems. There were no hunger issues. There were no political struggles. There were no wars. Everything in time and space that is perceived to be a problem is just a projection of the belief in separation from God. Wow. That's why we follow Jesus Christ, because that's who we are. We are the Christ. And Jesus was simply a symbol, a wayshower. It's appeared seemingly in time and space, but the I am presence of Christ is with us right now. And it's going to be showing and commenting on this movie today, which is, it's all of our stories. When I look at the story of C.S. Lewis, I think, oh my gosh, that's, that's my story. That's, that's my story of awakening. And the Holy Spirit does have to do use contrast. Like many of us were raised in a, in a family when we were growing up, where we had some major issues with our mother and or father or siblings. And I know for some of you, you, it was pretty horrific. You, you went through some pretty horrific experiences in childhood. You see how tight the ego is building its case against God. It's, it's projecting out people that don't seem to be integrists, people that don't seem to be in harmony and love all the time. They, there's quite a lot of distortions that appear even in our childhood scripts and childhood dreams, so to speak. And then oftentimes the same distortions replay themselves over and over and as we move along. So it's quite, it's quite a veil of forgetfulness to forget that you're the Christ. But eventually we start to turn inward toward the light and say, wait a minute, this, this can't be the truth of who I am. The second theme is being humble enough to have a change of mind. Wow. That's really where we're moving. We're moving towards humbleness. But in order to be humble enough to have the change of mind, we, we have to become so humble that we can admit that we were wrong about everything, not wrong about some things, that we were wrong about absolutely, positively everything of this world. We were wrong around about electrons and molecules. We were, we were wrong about the Milky Way. I'm not just talking about the candy bar either. We, we were wrong the milk. We're not talking about a Mars bar. We were wrong about the Milky Way. We were wrong about galaxies. We were wrong about linear time. We were wrong about our parents. We were wrong about our children. We were wrong about our careers. We were wrong about our relationships. We were wrong about the people we hated. We were wrong about the people we loved. We were wrong about our romantic relationships. We were wrong about absolutely, positively everything. And that's what I think it means by being humble enough to have a change of mind. Jesus says the purpose of this course is to change your mind about your mind. What does that even mean? Change my mind about my mind. Maybe he means accept that your mind is eternal. Accept that your mind is one with the mind of God. Accept that your identity is a creation of God and God hasn't changed his mind. You're still spirit. You always have been spirit and always will be spirit. You are the I am presence and all you have to do is be wrong about everything else to accept that God was right. If God is right about spirit then everything else must be wrong. Wrong minded I'll call it. But it's just a mistake. Mistakes are meant to be corrected. It's not a sin, it's a mistake. Mistakes are meant to be corrected. The third theme for this movie in this week is be willing to question every value that I hold. So as we've talked about at the beginning, what Francis was mentioning, it's not so much that you have to keep letting go and giving up everything of the world. It's just that you have to start to realize that spirit is valuable and the temporary things of time and space by definition are value less. Some of you might have done the workbook of A Course in Miracles. I will not value what is valueless. That's workbook lesson 133. And in that lesson Jesus says, at times it's good to bring the student back from the theoretical to the practical. And he gives us a practical lesson in what's valuable and what's valueless. The criteria is very simple. If it will last forever, it has value. If it will not last forever, it has no value whatsoever. Thank you, Jesus. That's as practical as it gets. And you may say, wow, how am I going to apply that one? That's a humdinger of a lesson. 133, I will not value what is valueless. Now, if you've been doing the lessons, you did lesson 128, which is five lessons before that, the world I see holds nothing that I want. You see, he's not just surprising you by saying the world is valueless. He's saying, no, follow along. The world I see holds nothing that I want. The only value that this world holds is that I pass it by and I will not value what is valueless. I will only value what is eternal. Think how calm you'll be if you say to yourself, and you mean I will only value the eternal. Imagine how divorce looks when you only value the eternal. Imagine how death looks when you only value the eternal. Imagine how losing your job looks when you only value the eternal. Imagine how war looks when you only value the eternal. That's the key is to see the world as the Holy Spirit sees the world and see it as Jesus sees it. So I remember when I was reading the course, I started, okay, God creates eternity and the eternal spirit and everything that God creates is spirit and the ego makes the world of time and space. And then when I was reading the text, then I saw the phrase maker of another world and the maker was capitalized and I thought, wait a minute, how does that fit in? How is the maker of another world capitalized? And he was basically saying that's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has made the real world for you. The Holy Spirit has made the happy dream. The Holy Spirit has made a world where there's no judgment and that's what you should focus on when you're doing the Course in Miracles. Don't worry about eternity. God will take the final step. God will wake you up, but you first have to accept a happy dream. You have to accept the forgiven world. You have to accept a world without judgment. The same world without any judgment. So there are workbook lessons that teach, you know, today I will judge nothing that occurs. Lord, let me not be your critic today. Today I will judge nothing that occurs. So that's what it means to be willing to question every value that I hold. The next one is called intellectualization versus allowing Christ into my heart. What a great movie. We are going to see one of the sharpest minds. We are going to see a man who is well-read, well-learned, who has studied all the classics, who studied the poets. He studied English, his native language, French, German. He is so well-rounded in his education, and yet he still discovers he has pride. He still has distortions in his mind. Even all that learning did not bring him peace of mind, did not bring him joy, a lasting experience of love. And therefore he surrenders, he opens up and succumbs to the light of heaven, the light of God's love. And that's all of our lessons. So intellectualization can take you and carry you to a point, and then you reach a point where you realize, wow, maybe I don't know anything. Maybe everything I've learned was not the thing that I needed to accept. And there is something greater than everything that I've learned about this world. And the last theme is seek and you will find. Hallelujah. It is inevitable. You don't have to worry about not remembering who you are because it's the destiny. The destiny is to forgive the world and remember the self, as the ancient Greeks said, know thyself. So this is such a precious time for us in our ministry. We're just starting to lift off. And then going down the runway, the plane is taking off, and we're just soaring up, up higher, higher, oh, higher above the clouds. We're getting into Christian mysticism. We're going to have some fun. We're going where the mystics have gone. I hope you're ready. The plane has left the runway. I hope you are willing to think of yourself as a saint in training. I hope you're willing to see yourself along with St. Francis and St. Teresa, along with, oh, we're up in Muji land. We're in Parma Hansa Yogananda land. We're up, oh, look at this. Jesus, where are we? We're going high, high, high, the high altitudes. And also we're going into worship. I mean, anyone who goes into Christian mysticism goes into worship. So we're shifting from, we went from first gear, second, third, fourth. We're going into fifth gear, which is worshiping God, not just with words, not just with music, but worshiping God with our happiness, worshiping God with our joy, worshiping God with our laughter, our humor. God created us as a joyful, playful, peaceful, happy being. And when we acknowledge that that's who we are, we are worshiping God. We're not just saying words to God, because God doesn't have an ego to receive the words. God is a presence that's beyond words. Words are symbols of symbols twice removed from reality. So we can't reach God through the words, but we can reach God through the joy in our heart, and that's what it's about. So in the past we've done our online retreats, the first weekend of every month, and then we've had every Saturday we've been having movies, where we had movies and breakout rooms, and we followed it up with some Q&A in the afternoon. Today we're going to show the movie with commentary, then we're going to have a slight pause, maybe 10 minutes. We'll open it up for Q&A so you can share or ask anything that you want in the Q&A. Then we'll take a pause for lunch, and then we'll continue on with a worship service today. The other thing we can say is we do have a new website and we have an app. We have a new app and it just got published the day I landed down here in Mexico. So lo and behold, just for this presentation. So here is the app. I'm going to hold it up. Let's see if we can get a camera shot. There it is, there it is. And with this app, there's a live function. So every time we go live, which will be on Saturdays and as well spontaneously throughout the week, wherever you are in the world, if you have your smartphone or if you have your iPad, you can also be on a computer, laptop, computer, and you can go sign in and go into our live feature. And the website has lots of features as well, but we really like the spontaneous live. So if you have friends or family that you think might like to join us later on today for the worship service, you're all going to be here in the Zoom room, but if you have other people that you'd like to let them know, let them go to the app store and just type in Living Church Ministries and then you'll see a little app with a logo that has a beautiful little star. It's kind of a yellow background with a beautiful star. And then you download it and then whenever we go live, it just comes on to your phone. You can check it out. And we hope that this is a way that you can really join us in this celebration, this worship celebration. I know for myself that's what my days are like. I feel like every day is just a day of worship and a day of happiness and joy. It doesn't really matter the form because God knows not form. We worship God in our heart. We worship God in the chamber of our heart. When you are gleeful, when you are joyful and happy, then that is worshiping God. And when there's another emotion there, that's fear-based, that's just an opportunity to forgive. It's just an opportunity to take that emotion and put it on the altar and say, Holy Spirit, please take this from me. I would rather be joyful and gleeful and happy. I would rather worship my Creator than try to resist. So I hope you enjoy this movie today as much as I do. Every time I watch it, my heart is really just stirred very deeply because I see this parable of C.S. Lewis as a parable for all of us that have gone through the sleep of forgetfulness. And I see the glee in C.S. Lewis' face when he finally hears a voice in his mind that says, I am the Lord. I am that I am. And simply I am. When we feel the presence of God's love, that is the beginning of the end of the belief in the ego. From that point on, the ego will be rinsed, rinsed, rinsed from our mind. It will fade and fade and fade and disappear from our awareness. And I think this movie is a good example, a good demonstration of that progress that we make as we begin to value love more than we value fear and hatred and guilt. So enjoy the movie. I will pop in from time to time. And what a ride. If you've ever had any doubts in your mind, C.S. Lewis is going to voice all your doubts for you, your doubts of Christianity, your doubts around your parents, your doubts around all aspects of this world. C.S. Lewis is going to show that you can let them go in the end. You can surrender them. So I'll see you soon.