 Okay. Hello everybody. Welcome to our old-day movie workshop. Pleasure to have you here with us again and I'm Peter. I'm going to be the host today and yeah we've got a got a new movie which looks beautiful, very exciting and yeah I can just let everybody know how the day is going to flow if you're new here. So we'll start with the movie with David and afterwards we'll have a 10-minute break. Then we're going to have our breakout rooms where you can express any emotion you have or anything that came up during the movie. Then we'll have a longer 45-minute break and then we'll go into the closing session with me with the Q&A. So I'm going to pass it over to you now David. Thank you Pete. Hi everyone. Welcome. Welcome to another great adventure, movie adventure. We have so much fun and I actually think the value of doing these movie experiences together and teaching and learning together is because the movie characters provide the parables that help you transfer the training to your mind for the movie that you're watching which is the movie of your character and time and space and you know Jesus says in the Course he says you can learn from my experiences and you can learn from the experiences of your brothers. So what he's saying is I think this is a key to transferring the training. Many of you have used the Course in Miracles as your practice but at some point you start to discover this is not an intellectual enterprise. This is not an intellectual endeavor. You're not told to memorize a bunch of ideas and just be able to spout them you know go around and tell them on the street corner or go to your local church and say hey pastor I got some radical ideas for you sit down. No it doesn't really work that way because you are here to inspire and to bless and only to inspire and bless and that's why it's important to remember that the Holy Spirit is the great corrector and the correction is happening in our mind. It's not happening in form. We're not really asked to correct people. Isn't that good news? Don't you feel relieved that you know you don't have to correct people you don't have to correct your your partner your spouse your children your parents you don't have to correct your neighbors you don't have to correct the government you don't have to correct anybody at all but the Holy Spirit is the great comforter and the great corrector and the correction is always peace of mind isn't that simple too it's not like an intellectual correction where you have to know the right words all the Holy Spirit wants you to do is be happy be joyful and be peaceful and not believe that you have to provide the correction as a person because that's a futile task if you think you have to somehow learn how to be more spiritual or more loving or more kind as a person that's going to drive you crazy literally crazy as you as the ego rants in your mind says you're not living up to this you're you're you're not close to that ideal you've got for yourself you can just respond to the ego and say well i'm quick i'm finished with ego ideals i'm not even going to try to be a spiritual person i'm just going to try to relax and enjoy my experiences and enjoy everything to the maximum and i'm good i just want to feel peaceful so i want to welcome all of our friends i see friends from england and spain i see friends from Mexico uh sweden just all over the place uh where it's a global gathering for a beautiful zoom workshop today and we have a brand new movie it's hot off the press it's just came out uh very very recently i think it came out at the beginning of this month it was its american release so we're not that far into june so this one is hot off the press it's it's probably in some parts of the country in the world it's just uh it's still in the movie theater so you're getting to see a fresh movie that's just out and how we came to this movie before i tell you what the movie is is of course you voted on the the poll you voted on the themes in in the english poll in the spanish poll and the tribe poll and this week coming in number one is actively choose the spirits thoughts no matter the seeming circumstance that received 88 votes far and away the most important theme that you voted on was actively choose the spirits thoughts no matter the seeming circumstance and i think why that's so important is because jesus tells us that this whole world of time and space and this whole cosmic universe is is basically a self concept it's it's an identity he's telling us our eternal identity the christ is it's an eternal being of love and joy and light it has no beginning and no end and then the cosmos as we know whether you call it a big bang or you call it a expanding uh set of gases to turn into solids or however you want to scientifically describe time and space but jesus is saying that's a self concept that god didn't create because everything in time and space is relative and temporary and who we are is not relative and not temporary at all hits eternal so we're here to wake up from the amnesia of forgetting our eternal being of as the christ and we're here to wake up from this idea that we're time space creatures that we're bodies even the idea that you're in a body is just a concept and that's why i say we have to go beyond the concepts because as long as you study even the great scriptures of the world you know the the bible the bhagavad gita the Vedas and of course in miracles and ancient um nondual chinese teachings if you study these great nondual teachings the ego will just try to turn them into another theology and say that's all right okay now you want to believe in nondual go ahead as long as you just cling to the concepts and you don't go into the actual experience the ego is quite happy it doesn't matter even if you just want to spout nondual principles uh you know it it's okay with that it just doesn't want you to live in nondual principles that's the main thing it doesn't want you to experience the oneness the joy the connectedness you see so that's why we have to go beyond theology and we thank all the great traditions of theology that that point us in the right direction there are trampoline but but there comes a point where you want to spring off the trampoline and go past the words into just beingness just spiritual beingness oneness so the first one is important because to actively choose the spirit thoughts means to be in the miracle because the miracle is is a thought that comes from the Holy Spirit and it comes through your mind through consciousness and then it radiates out and it basically shows you that there's nothing to get hung about as the Beatles said in strawberry fields forever that's all the miracle does the miracle just shows you there's nothing to get hung about and and that also brings you joy because once you realize you don't really have any reason to be upset you give yourself permission to feel joyful that's important eternity is joyful so we want to feel joyful as we awaken to eternity now the problem that seems to confront us is that the projected world is what Jesus calls the the world the dream that you gave away so he says the self concept has actually two parts and one part is called the dream that you dream in secret and one part is called the dream that you gave away so what's so frustrating is the dream that you dream in secret is the unconscious mind and the reason it's unconscious is because it's dark it's black it's pitch black what does Jesus call the unconscious mind he says it's draped with sin even though he tells us sin is really not possible because you can't separate from God if you believe that you can separate from God then you have this dark shadow of unconscious belief that Jesus you know he would equate with the unconscious mind so that's one part of the self concept is the unconscious mind and the reason it's unconscious is because he says you're not paying attention to it you don't know it you're actually afraid to know it you're afraid of the luckness monster because because you're afraid of miscreation you actually believe that you could use the God given power that your mind has and miscreate with it and that's why you push it out of awareness that's why it's unconscious it's too frightening to to think oh I have invented the world I see so if I perceive a war I I have invented that war that's not something even the manifesters don't like that one you know I mean I manifest all the good stuff just don't tell me I manifested war please I'm not ready for that you know I'm dealing with mosquitoes in my backyard and I don't really want to take on that I I have invented the world I see in all aspects of it so the second part of the self concept is the dream that that you gave away and that's the projected world so most of the time when people go to a movie theater or watch a movie on their screens like we're doing today they do see that they call it a movie and they do see it's external to their mind they don't look outside their window and see a thermometer and go oh today I've chosen it for it to be 79 degrees they they look and they see that the thermometer is telling them that outside at 79 but they don't realize that everything that's perceived is part of a a wish to be separate until you forgive until you see the big picture so that's the value of watching movies because when we watch the movies you can watch your emotions come up and you can watch your thoughts and then you can pay closer attention to your mind and then let go of the thoughts that really don't serve you anymore you can just say wow I don't need those abandonment thoughts anymore or those betrayal thoughts those rejection thoughts those those thoughts are not bringing me happiness and then you start to realize that that in experiential way that that the world is not outside of you that as you mind your mind and you pay attention to your consciousness you actually become what the buddhist calls mindful you became you become very attentive to the contents of your consciousness and while you're attentive you also become forgiving you release the contents of consciousness that don't bring you peace and happiness so the second theme is relax you can't mess it up isn't that fun I'm going to say that again because it sounds so good relax you can't mess it up wow that's a comforting idea as you're going through all this dismantling it's great to feel you can't mess it up that you're at the right place at the right time no one is where he is by accident you there's nothing out of place there's no such thing as chance there's no such thing as luck and thankfully you can't mess it up that's where the relax comes in the third one is be vigilant against mind wandering distractions yeah this world is distraction bill so as you go on your spiritual awakening journey the ego will always try to tempt you and distract you with dead end pursuits which really is putting your mind energy believing that there's something in the world something in idols that can bring you eternal satisfaction that can bring you lasting value and since it's a world of idols that's why we have to be very attentive and vigilant against mind wandering and distractions the next one you voted for was be a turtle for god infinite patience produces immediate results that may seem to be a mindbender but actually that's because of the belief in time when we think of patience we tend to think of time but patience for jesus is a present moment experience if you're in the beatitude if you're in the state of mind of patience you can afford to watch anything you can watch anything in the world anything in your memory you can watch anything on tv anything in any movie with the sense of calmness peace tranquility because you realize that it's not something that determines who you are you're happy and content to watch and watch with patience you're not concerned about outcomes you're not even going to try to judge or figure out the outcomes you're just gonna you're going to watch with peace and tranquility and the last one is embracing the healing as it comes so part of healing is just allowing yourself to be present allowing yourself to move through these dark emotions and then they disappear you you go through the clouds or rather the clouds pass through your awareness and then they're gone so that's our themes and what movie do we have to to address these delicious themes this week it's called hollywood star girl it's from Walt Disney it just came out this month and I when I saw this movie I was so happy because I thought wow this is a really good teaching movie for the state of mind that is the miracle and that's what we want we want the state of mind that is miraculous why is this movie so good well there's the two words that come to mind to me from a course of miracles that jesus talks about that apply to this movie and to our our healing themes this week are collaboration and involuntary those are the key key ideas collaboration and involuntary so what does jesus have to say about collaboration he actually says in chapter 4 salvation is a collaborative venture so the whole reason that we do our spiritual journey is to come to the happy dream salvation a dream of non-judgment and and salvation is is usually it sounds very much like a christian word and so sometimes people think that salvation involves penance or punishment but it doesn't salvation is is just another word for the correction in the mind and jesus is very good with telling us what salvation is he says salvation is always in the mind and it always involves peace those are the only two distinctions about it it's always for the mind you don't have to save the trees save the whales save the snails i'm starting to sound like john george carlin you you don't you don't have to save anything in the world you don't even have to save people you know people sometimes will say are you saved and if you're happy you can say yes i am and if you're not happy then say i'm working on i'm working on i'm working on salvation but all it really means is coming to peace of mind that's what it means to be saved you don't have to worry about saving persons or saving people's souls because there's only one soul and god created that soul it's a spirit and then when that mind fell asleep that that sleeping mind is in need of correction it's in need of peace and happiness and that sleeping mind needs salvation so remember this salvation is a collaborative venture because this movie really shows us that in order to be happy we have to open up to collaboration with the holy spirit in Jesus and he will bring people into our lives he will bring characters into our dreamscape that we're to collaborate with i mean if we're going to learn how to be happy we must need to learn how to collaborate with our mighty companions you know isn't that fun so he's coming right out and he's going yes actually that that's that's what i want you to do is be able to collaborate with your mighty companions and then in chapter eight he also says healing does not come from anyone else you must accept guidance from within the guidance must be what you want or it will be meaningless to you that is why healing is a collaborative venture so now he's telling us if healing is a collaborative venture you see he's really big on the collaborations here not only salvation is collaborative venture but now healing too he says jesus says i can tell you what to do but you must collaborate by believing that i know what you should do only then will your mind choose to follow me so he's basically saying i have to reach you with your interest i have to reach you with what you find interesting i have to reach you with the right words with the right situations with the right people because you have to want to collaborate with me in order to experience where i'm taking you you see if you don't want to go where the holy spirit and jesus are taking you then you'll just feel regret resistance you might feel you're even coerced you might just grumble and say i don't want to do that i know i don't i hear i hear you no i don't want to do that and jesus is saying well then i'll just wait until you do feel you you want to join me you see jesus is not pushy he's not going to push anything he he just will not push or force anything he's just saying join me in mind and let's collaborate and let's shine and share our joy with everyone let's let's let the joy spill over into the dream my it starts in your mind but let it spill over into the dream and then some of you know there's 50 miracle principles at the beginning of a course in miracles he also says in in miracle principle number five miracles are habits and should be involuntary they should not be under conscious control wow that's very important miracles are habits and should be involuntary they should not be under conscious control maybe you think about your breathing and you think wow that doesn't seem to be under my conscious control i don't go through the day and out and in breath and out breath and another in breath and another out breath you know it might get a little tiring if you were paying attention to every in breath and every out breath and and you might say well that's involuntary i don't pay attention i assume i'm going to be be breathing i just that's a baseline assumption you know but jesus is saying yeah miracles need to be the same way you need to be in such a willing and open state of mind that you wake up in the morning and you're like okay jesus here we go another day of miracles bring it on i'm ready come through me come through my mind let's radiate this love and light to everyone and everything and jesus is saying that's good that's the way i want you to think i want you to greet every day with joy with enthusiasm with excitement because really the only purpose for the day is the miracles i know you may have a to-do list that's not the purpose for the day i know you may have some goals personal goals sorry that's not the purpose for the day the day should be reserved for miracles and only for miracles and that takes a little while for us to buy that you know at the beginning it's like let's see let's just see if your plan will work i remember very clearly in 1991 after i was working with the course for like five years i remember very clearly jesus said we're taking a road trip and and i said a road trip are you kidding how are we going to take a road trip i i i don't know if i'm at the place of peace pilgrim or i can just go take walk out of the of the house and and start walking with you jesus and he's like no first i'm going to take you to a car dealership and we're going to get a little tiny car and then we're going on a road trip and and i said where are we going he said i'll tell you let's get the car first don't don't ask too many questions and then once i got this little three-cylinder car it was gold it's a little gold car uh and and it was called spirit and it was three cylinders great gas mileage it's kind of car you need nowadays i could drive that thing on fumes i could be on empty for like an hour before the car would stop because it was such a small engine a little just for driving me around and so back in 1991 i was guided to take a trip i didn't know how long the trip would last and i didn't really know exactly where the trip would go but i was told to drive west from Cincinnati and by the time i got back to Cincinnati i was on the road for five and a half weeks with this little gold car being taken into people's homes being fed being given money for gas and all kinds of things lodging places to sleep and so forth food everything and and one of the places i stopped was Los Angeles California so i was like maybe a third of the way on my trip a little bit over a third of the way and i went to uh Los Angeles California i went to venice beach i went to wilshire boulevard and i had so many miracles i met i met a guy who was the lead singer for a group i used to listen to from the 1960s called the loving spoonfuls i i didn't know anybody out there but i made so many friends and i i had so much fun and at one point i was on this road called wilshire boulevard which is a very long road in Los Angeles and i had so many miracles in one day which included me realizing that i was not in charge i i had a moment in there where i could see that i was to have no expectations and it was so glorious that i i just was like oh my god and later on people would tell me where were you when that happened and i said i was i was in Los Angeles on wilshire boulevard and they said you know what the nickname of that stretch of wilshire boulevard is and i said no i don't know anything about nicknames they said it's called the miracle mile you i was in the miracle mile in Los Angeles and having all these miracles with jesus and it wasn't till later that i found out it was called miracle mile when i watched this movie with uh it's called grand canyon with uh kevin kline uh that's when i saw that movie they showed the miracle mile wilshire boulevard and i was like oh my god the wonder jesus i still am realizing there's miracles there so the movie for today is called hollywood star girl just came out and the main character is is star girl that's her name star girl and and she has a mother named ana and her and her mother have been traveling from place to place for much of her life and um i think star girl in this movie she's about like 17 it's summertime they've just moved to Los Angeles and she's feeling a little bit sad star girl is because she she had to leave her best friend behind and every time her mother and her moves she has to leave all of her friends behind so she feels like her mother's saying isn't it great it's an adventure life is an adventure and star girl is saying listen i don't i don't want my whole life to be an adventure i want i want to have friends i want to make connections i want to have the deep heart to heart connections i'm not interested in just having a adventure after adventure and i think she's a little bit uh worn out by the all the travel but her mother just just got a new job working on a movie making costumes for a movie out in Los Angeles uh with the best pay that she's ever had and and basically ana she just wants to take care of her teenage daughter and to pay the bills so in order to pay the rent and and pay the bills you know she's taken this this job out there and that's our context for this amazing movie of collaboration and the involuntary nature of miracles in this movie you will see what it means to surrender control of of your world because that's what stargo has to do she's showing up in LA she's got an optimistic attitude she's willing to connect to make friends and she's looking to make friends which is really the the attitude that that jesus wants from us if we're just in the attitude of we're looking to make friends we're looking to be friendly and make friends with everyone we meet that allows the miracle to come through us if we're trying to analyze and figure out the dream we're not going to have any space for the miracle because we'll just be an analyze mode uh all the time and analyze mode you might have noticed gets you very pessimistic the more you try to analyze this world the more you feel down you feel sad you feel depressed afraid guilty you know you're you feel defensive when you try to analyze the world and jesus is saying well it's just a backdrop for miracles so don't don't get too concerned about what's happening or what you believe is happening to you don't be concerned with what your past interpretations are of the world because i'm going to give you a fresh new interpretation and it's going to make you indescribably happy so all you have to do is is be friendly and be open to making friends and i will do the rest i'll handle everything so when they arrive in LA you'll see that they have two landlords deafening and george the husband and wife team are the landlords of the apartment where they'll they'll move into and deafening and george have two sons evan and taro and evan is the same age as stargirl so they have like an immediate connection and terrell is working many many jobs he's working at a lounge a venue for for singers and a restaurant he's working at a pizza place he's working a lot of jobs but terrell is a filmmaker and evan and terrell are going to be the brothers evan the younger one wrote the script for this new movie and terrell is the older brother who is like the director producer of the movie he's the steam behind it and um and they're going to ask stargirl to be in their movie so so it's going to show how musically when she arrives there everything opens up very nationally for stargirl i'm sure if you and i had a name like stargirl or star guy and we went to los angeles in 19 you know whenever it was i think this is more recent times but if we went to los angeles with a name like star in front of our girl or guy you know that's kind of a nice symbol i know a lot of people out there would go right right oh well great the star is here now wonderful hollywood star great you know good luck good luck but she's actually very open-minded and she loves to sing and these two two guys evan and and terrell they want to make a movie they're very excited about making a movie or maybe even just like a a little love it's called a sizzle reel you make something that's just a short version a short reel of something to take around to producers in los angeles and say hey look i got a great idea wash my sizzle reel and uh and then we can make a movie you know they're they're just with their hollywood dreams and so we're going to find also that as they move into this complex they're gonna there's going to be a man downstairs who's played by jud hers who's he's he's kind of grumpy mr michael's kind of the grumpy neighbor downstairs from from star girl and then when they go to this it's like a nightclub kind of restaurant it's a it's like a little place where there's music and there's drinks and there's food and so there's going to be a lot of interesting characters one of them is rock san who was a singer who recorded a cassette back in 1991 and the name of the cassette was miracle mile the same thing that i experienced when i was out there so uh also star girl has a cute little pet it's the pet's name is cinnamon and he's kind of like a a big mouse or a rat it's an unusual a new unusual pet but this is her beloved mighty companion uh because she travels so much so she has to leave her friends behind but she gets to take little cinnamon with her wherever she goes so that's like her mighty companion so i want you to pay attention in this movie to a couple of things number one notice how willing star girl is to collaborate she seems to be very open hearted and open minded notice how the characters just come into her life to help her with the collaborations in other words it's not that star girl has to figure out how the collaborations are going to go and the lesson is that you and i we don't have to understand how the miracle will happen we don't need to know the the dynamics we don't need to know the specifics we just have to want to experience happiness and joy and freedom if we just want it if we just desire it everything else will be given to us all our collaborators will be given to us all of our collaborative projects will be given to us and we'll see in the movie that they not only collaborate at making a movie but they collaborate on writing a song for the movie it turns into one giant collaboration that is a lot of fun and you can start to just feel the presence of the spirit behind it all because they're learning lessons to not try to control it and not try to use their past learning to to tell themselves what it should be like they start to let go of all their concepts of what it should look like and then they're delighted to experience of what's happening without a preconception of thinking they should know ahead of time how it should go how it should unfold how it should look that's I think that's how Jesus backed me into a course of miracles I mean of course I was I was reading the book and I was opening up and using it you know as an oracle but Jesus could see that if I just stayed at that level of just reading it and getting answers to questions that I wouldn't really tap into the mega power of the miracle that I had to get out of my comfort zone and I had to travel even though I didn't particularly like to travel I had to I had to be willing to connect and open up even though I was shy I had to speak up in certain situations even though nothing in my life ever had shown me that I could speak up I was very shy and and that's what I thought that's just a fact I'm just shy and Jesus was like no that's not a fact and I need to use your body so so just join with me and let's do this collaboration together he said I'll speak the word through you you don't have to figure out what to say he said yeah I don't know how that's gonna go you know do you always pick shy guys you know for this kind of road trip you know he said I am not mistaken in my choices okay I'm willing then I'm willing to give it a try so enjoy the movie I will pop in from time to time it's a very very good demonstration of involuntary collaboration and most of us quite frankly we just have not known what that means involuntary collaboration but this movie is going to show us so enjoy the movie