 As long as the mind is deceived about its identity, it's in a very, very confused state, very confused, not mildly confused. It's extremely confused. It's so confused that Jesus actually at one point in the Course says, you can't judge your advances from your retreats. You can't even judge your advances from your retreats. Now that's pretty confused. The ego can be kind of insulted with that, but it's like you can't even judge the advances from your retreats. I'll start off with an idea where Jesus says, whenever you feel the need to become defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion. Let's expand on that. Whenever you feel the need that you're confused or uncertain about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion. Whenever there's a sense of mixed feelings, you have identified yourself with an illusion. Every time you have a sense where you feel like, oh my God, I'm clueless. I don't have a clue what to say or do here. Holy Spirit, help me. You're identified with an illusion. The Buddha talked about emptying the mind completely. Jesus says the same thing in Lesson 189. Simply do this, be still. Lay aside all thoughts of what you are, what God is, everything you've learned about the past. Hold on to nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught or one idea, belief that you've ever learned before from anything. Forget this world. Forget this Course. In fact, if you're identified with a Course in Miracles and it's conceptual theology and everything, you're still identified with an illusion, even with the Course. So, this is a pristine state of mind. Mary Bakeretti, I loved, she called it science. She would use science as synonymous to Christian science, which was really like Gernes Holmes' science of the mind. And Jesus is kind of like giving us the science of the mind. It's not mysterious at all. It's not unpredictable. It's not a quagmire. It's not a muddy water. It's not foggy at all. He says, this Course is even easy. He says at one point. And this Course means exactly what it says. This is a Course of Love. Clearly, the mind that's, we'll say, taking on the Course and taking on Jesus for help, it has to first admit that it hasn't a clue about anything. That would be the most honest thing it could admit. It is completely clueless about anything. And what I mean by that, too, is also it's not to try to presume or assume anything that you know anything about anything. And that's, for me, been my whole work with the Course. I would immerse with it. And I started off in the helping professions as a case manager. I've worked in social services and very similar kind of things for years. And when I first got into the Course, it was the most humbling thing I thought. Wow, I don't really have a clue what healing is. I was raised as a Christian. I spent my whole life in Christianity. I don't know how to pray. I don't know what compassion is. I could use the word. I wouldn't know truly what true compassion is. And I certainly wouldn't know what love is. When people say be loving, it's a good idea to have a clue about that when you are totally bewildered about that. So they talk about Zen beginner's mind. We have to first come to start to realize that there's a misperception going on. And the only way that we can let the Spirit pour through us and what to say and do is to do a lot of clearing. We've got a massive, massive clearing to do before we can honestly say with confidence, I am the light of the world. I bring healing to everyone, everything I look upon to honestly say that. It takes a lot of clearing. So that's exactly what we're doing because what I would say is that what I found in the healing profession, so to speak, and all the social services and everything was, I was trying to be helpful with really with no clue of how to be helpful. I was like in the dark, you know, stabbing in the dark trying to do the best that I could do and feeling quite overwhelmed actually many times and quite out of my league in terms of true healing. And what I discovered was it's all about identity. Like I can be with Armelle and watch her go through the day and watch her interact with people. And it's just at times it's just like one of these old swords. It's so swift and so uncompromising. People have said that she's controlling. She's just absolutely ruthless. You know, I can give all these adjectives and everything, but it's just like this with the sword just slicing through the even silk, you know, slicing the silk up and everything. Because in order to heal you have to be absolutely, positively uncompromising. There can't be any gray areas. There can't be, there's no wiggle room. You have to come to such a pristine state of mind that you actually question all beliefs that there's causation in the world. That the world can cause you to feel anything. Good, bad, right, wrong, whatever. You know, you have to like let the spirit wield the blade kind of like in, you know, Den Milman's, you know, whole movie and book. It was really the blade of discernment. Let that blade slice, slice and dice through illusions so that it's all shredded and all you see is the light shining through. It's always about identity. I know through all those different roles that I seem to play, I always felt in some sense that I was compromising. I didn't quite understand how I could get out of it. You know, I would tell Jesus, I've got to eat, got to earn money. You know, okay, I'm a counselor now. Okay, I'm a case manager. Okay, I'm a tennis instructor. Okay, I'm, I'm this, this, this, and he's, you know, you know, it's like empty the mind of everything, every thought, every concept. So that's what my journey has been is completely emptying my mind of identifying with anything of this world. And the only way that you can, can really feel that, that certainty, that joy just bursting forth from your heart, where when people would bring somebody where I've had people bring a dying, there was a dying man. I've worked in hospice. I've thrown myself into spirits, put me into all these situations, only for one reason, all these seemingly separate situations scenarios, just to see that I was the living Christ, just to see that the dead could arise in front of me. I could witness the raising the dead experience. I did. Just to see symptoms fall away instantaneously into immediate remission, not something over time. Because why? Because, because identity is not a matter of time. The holy instant. The holy instant. We were talking the other day, we were just sharing, somebody was sharing in Los Angeles with us about a new movie where it was, it was called meant to be and it was about, it was kind of a Christian movie of, of the whole movie was, there was an abortion, a mother aborted a child, a little an embryo, but it was a little boy. And, and then the whole movie was, was meant to be what if the abortion hadn't occurred? And what if the child was born and all the people and met all these people and everything? And so she told us the whole movie, the premise of the movie, and Armelle went, that's all of us. None of us were ever born either. Now, let's go into that. That's an experience. She's also had that experience when somebody would say, oh, when I was like a little boy, she would look at him like, you were never a little boy, almost like, don't fool with me. You were never a little boy. It's, it's so undoing this linear time thing, so coming to the Holy Instant, so coming into the presence of the Spirit, the joyful presence, that, that there really are no options. It's not that we're going to be able to acknowledge linear time and try to figure it out and come to healing when the atonement is the awareness that the separation never happened. God didn't create linear time. We're, we're dealing with a sticky, messy, linear situation of the ego's making, and, and the only way that we let it go, the only way we heal is to see the absolute impossibility of it. In order to, to really heal, we have to really come to an experience that, that the future is just a figment of hypothetical thoughts, and so is the past. This whole world is hypothetical. We don't get all bent out of shape when somebody's giving us hypothetical options, you know, like when you go to a restaurant and you go to the waitress, you say, what's good? There's a menu and everything, and she gives you like, well, I like this and that and this and this and this. We don't get, we don't get upset when she gives us five hypothetical choices. We're just grateful. Everything in our world is hypothetical. We have to actually allow ourselves to be convinced that this is a hypothetical world, or more like that movie I just mentioned, The Man Who Knew Too Little with, with Bill Murray, where it's all improv, you know, theater, and the realm, he's aware that it's all theater, so they try to poison him, strangle him, drug him, choke him. I mean, they come, the world comes at him, it rob him. The first scene is they take, give me your wallet with a knife, and then in the middle of the scene, he's got a little fear coming out, then he's got this mindset that it's all improv. It's all, it's theater coming at him, and he goes, oh, let's do the scene over, and the ones with the knife, they've run off and flee because he has absolutely no fear. I mean, they, they try to do everything to him, but he's in the state of mind that it's like a fun game, and he's so, you know how Bill Murray can be, he's so playful with everything, no matter how they try to come at him. And that's what we're doing. We're just training our minds into that same kind of playful state of mind where we can have fun with the hypothetical world, because it's hypothetical.