 The question too is almost like using course lessons as mantras or affirmations and basically in this book that I wrote called Awakening Through Course in Miracles, I talk about these rings of consciousness and just under the perceptual ring, the gross perceptual ring is the emotional ring and basically there's a lot of people that find themselves sliding towards intellectualizing the course as a defense. There's some really intense emotions that are under the surface but they've been pushed out of awareness for a reason and that reason is because of their intensity and because of the hurt and woundedness around those emotions it can seem like the mind is cut off from those and so this intellectualizing defense is very, very common and in one sense it's not even surprising that a lot of people that are drawn to the course have got this predominant defense going on because it's, you know, even Helen Shuckman in the scribe of The Course in Miracles was said to have explained at one point, ah, less a pathway to God for intellectuals. So, you know, the book itself is kind of the Holy Spirit's answer to the intellectual defense against God. That's not to say that atheists find it easy reading because, you know, the God word is all the place and it's not to say that people who have a lot of intelligence find it easy reading. I know people that have like three degrees and then they pick up the course and it's like Pig Latin. It's so different from the mindset that it's almost like it doesn't make any sense. It's completely not understandable and then a lot of times very, very sincere Christians will pick it up and they'll read just a little bit and it sends off all kinds of triggers and red flags about cults and sex and that this is the work of the devil because it's not in a prescribed pathway that ministers and priests have told, you know, be aware of books that talk about this or that and so forth. So, once, if you haven't sent off any of those alarms, you just have your basic intellectual defenses which is basically the ego doesn't want you to really tap into your feelings and I would put myself in that category after ten years of university. So, basically, after all those papers and committees and exams and all the books I read and all the things, projects I did, it's like, you know, first of all I had to take a lot of time and get myself a lot of spaciousness to really be guided by the Holy Spirit and what means and what mechanisms that I really enjoyed that would help me start to break through into these emotions and I would have to say the two most effective ones that I found were music and movies because I love the music and I love movies and the Holy Spirit has to use what you love, you have a strong attraction to and so I found the music, I would be guided to all different kinds of music and I found my heart opening up and I found the tears coming and I found I could get really emotional with the music almost like it was reaching past the intellect and just going right into my heart and I felt how hopeful that was. It's like a heart opening experience so I said, oh, this is really good and then subject to, I'd say, years later the movies, I would just be guided to particular movies and I would just allow myself to emote, you know, during the movie. You know, there was a lot of old conditioning, don't, men don't cry and all that stuff in there but in the dark movie theater we just let it rip, you know, let it pour down and that was also very helpful in really getting in touch with the emotions and then I found that the spirit would use the chords when I was open, when I was raw, when I was most in touch with my emotions, I had a real strong impetus for a shift of mind, you know, to really be guided and helped when the emotions were raw, when they were pushed down and I was just thinking, oh well, you know, just another day, like the old Paul McCartney Wings song, you know, just another day and just feeling like it was all intellectual, like even the chorus, you know, using those lessons when it started to feel like a blandness, I would let the spirit guide me into the touch into those emotions and then after I was in touch with my emotions, that really helped my practice with the chords, then it really scared me to use more things like sports, like tennis and golf and things to really use those as meditation practices, like open-eyed movement meditation practices and so in that way the spirit always kept it fresh, exciting, new, and adventure and I could keep my passion really high, so I didn't get into that boring, kind of monotonous feeling that the ego uses to try to really shut it off, so I found that was very, very effective and nowadays when we do these little expression sessions, these smaller groups, people really find it helpful to be given the permission to talk about what's going on in their life and to really let their emotions come out and there's a spaciousness for it, you know, you really have to have that to do that emotional work and it seems like a lot of times with this intellectual idea of just using affirmations and mantra that a lot of times I can just shut off the feelings and shut off the emotions from coming and I think that that really stunts the spiritual development when you don't really use every aspect of your psyche and we do focus a lot on it, allowing those emotions to come