 I forgot the water spilled out of my cup. The stars are alive. There's the retreat happening this weekend at SS Park. And then, um, yeah, if you didn't ask me if I wanted to do it, uh, retreat here, uh, even in Boulder, so. This is the magic of the spirit burning everybody together. I'm just so really grateful for this opportunity to see David again and the witnesses like, thank you. These two raise your hands. And we'll slowly come right up. Our date's going to. The twins are turning right on your way up. And there's a staircase in the loop around there. Just pretty much right by this space. Like they were done or something. But that serves. And I don't think you need to open the door. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Michael. It's just a pleasure, a joy to be here. And I have been, I think the Boulder before, but I have not done a public gathering. So it's always fun for me to come to a place and Boulder's just warm in my heart. I'm really grateful to come and share. I feel too that my life is one of deep devotion to the spirit and following spirit. And so that's really the aim of, we could say, spiritual practice, is to be in the flow of presence and to be in that, you might say, listen, follow, just to be tuned in to spirit. And in my life I used a Course in Miracles. I think it's been about, it's about 30 years now that the Course has come into my life. A line from a Course in Miracles that says, when you have learned to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. And it will be as if you are carried down a quiet path in summer. So here we are, we're gathering here at this beautiful center and Columbine Center and we're here to experience the ease of decision-making. Because in this world there are times when decision-making can seem to be quite complex, where we come to points where it seems to be difficult to make a decision. And yet, I would say that the spirit is always with us helping us unwind from a faulty perception of the world, a distorted perception of fragmentation and coming into just the intuitive flow of our heart and just being able to ride that like a feather on the breeze, just floating and floating and floating. And that really is the destiny for your life, is to be in presence and to just float on the breeze and to come to a place where there are no difficult decisions, where the spirit is so guiding you, the spirit is so out in front of you that you don't have any hesitation or doubt, but just a sense of relaxation and ease. So for me, that's what I say the parable of David is about because even though it's been about three decades since the Course dropped into my path, I would say that my immersion with the Course was so quick and so strong that I'd say after about two and a half or three years, the signs and symbols started to be all around me, and then I made contact with my internal teacher, which was Jesus, and basically it wasn't just kind of a feeling at that point. It was a stream of thoughts that gave me very explicit instructions where to go, what to do, who to see, what to drop, what to let go of. It was extremely specific, and so that's part of this ease that I'm going to talk about tonight is making contact, and when you have that contact and it becomes consistent, that's where the ease comes into your life. While there's still an ego part in your mind and still trying to run the show, or maybe just partly run the show, like, God, I'll give you this, this, this, but I'm in charge of this, that, that, then that's where the struggle comes in. It's only difficult when we try to run some aspects of our life that the struggle comes in. If we were able to, as they say, let go and let God completely, then the struggle is gone. What does that mean? It means it's happiness, it's joy, it's freedom, but it's a state of mind. There's a part in The Course in Miracles where Jesus says, what do you want, freedom of the body or freedom of the mind, for both you cannot have? So one's a trick and one's the reality of things. And so some of you may have even seen The Matrix when Morpheus puts Neo through some tests and at one point Morpheus just says, I'm trying to free your mind, that's basically what he tells Neo before he jumps across from one skyscraper to the next on the roof. The same message that Jesus is sharing in The Course is you can have a free mind. We've had hints of that. We know people throughout history, everyone knows the story of Gandhi. Gandhi was locked up in prison for quite a lot. A large part of his life was spent in prison, in jail, and yet he came to such peace and such freedom, happily doing his journaling and writing newsletters, exchanging vegetarian recipes inside the prison. He came to a freedom within and then extended that in his teaching, in his demonstration, in his witness for everyone. Mandela is another good example. Quite a lot of time his body was in prison, but in the end he knew as he was walking out of the prison that if he didn't drop the hatred when he walked out of that prison and he would still be in prison, he had that strong thought when he was being released, I don't drop the hatred, I'm still in prison. So we have a sense of that, that it's consciousness where the imprisonment occurs. And really through this inner guidance, through this intuition, higher self, higher power, whatever you want to call it, that's going to be the road to freedom. Now a lot of the traditions in the East, in India they talk about the world as like a play, a lila. And there are traditions in the East that talk about the world as Maya. And Maya would be illusion, it would be the relative world that is taken for granted by the five senses as being real. And in the Course in Miracles, Jesus does use the word illusion. Basically the entire Course in Miracles could be summarized with the part at the very beginning of the conclusion of the introduction. Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. What is the real but the everlasting, but the infinite, but the eternal, but the changeless? That's what the real is. It's what we sometimes refer to as light, not light like sunlight or fluorescent light or the lights we're familiar with in this world, but just the light of wisdom, the light of understanding, the light of peace. That abstract light cannot be threatened because it is, as Byron Katie might say, it is what is. What is is just pure love, light, oneness, abstract oneness. And even our scientists have been formulating and pondering about this universe. They're pretty sure there was some kind of a big bang. And what fascinates them most is what is prior to the big bang. What's before the big bang? Even though I think the way-shower from 2,000 years ago, Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am. He's pretty much saying that the I am-ness, the reality that we call love and light is prior to the big bang and therefore it's prior to time. So the present moment that all the saints and sages talk about is actually prior to time. And there have been scientists now that have, like Brian Greene comes to mind, a physicist who's literally mapped out the entire cosmos and he says, it looks like a loaf of bread. It looks like a static loaf of bread. It's already happened, so it's just kind of like where you seem to be in that loaf of bread is basically your perspective on the whole cosmos. Whatever coordinates that you call your self, your flesh self, your human self with the five senses, that's like a little point in the loaf of bread that's looking out at the loaf of bread and the stars and the planets and everything from inside that loaf of bread and basically he said the bread is already there, it's already happened. And there are a lot of traditions that talk about destiny and so on and so forth and the script and so basically that really contradicts our human perception that the whole cosmos is like a loaf of bread and that we're looking inside of a loaf of bread. It seems to be more exciting than that. Another concept that you can bring in from science is entropy basically ever since the Big Bang everything that seems to be moving within the cosmos is basically moving towards destruction. It's falling apart and there's all kinds of examples but if you watch the cycles of nature or if you simply take a cube of ice out from your freezer and you set it out on your patio and you just watch it it loses its shape and it goes into liquid. It goes from something that seems to be structured and ordered and it has pretty solid dimensions to something that's just liquid and just rolls out and rolls away or evaporates. Basically that's the concept of entropy so oftentimes we try to romanticize this world and we try to romanticize parts of the world but basically the scientists are saying no it's all entropy it's all moving towards chaos. You can deny it but this is the fact of it and they will say that once you go back to the Big Bang that it actually the cosmos becomes very ordered when you come back closer and closer to the Big Bang and prior to the Big Bang. So we're back to that even the scientists are saying that whatever came before the Big Bang there was order. We might call that nirvana. We might call that the kingdom of heaven. We could call it I amness. It's perfect unified oneness and now even the quantum physicists have studied the subatomic particles and they go deeper and deeper where they just come down to basically connected energy. They call it entanglement. Everything is connected. There they are. They've come up with another word. The poets have words for it. The scientists have words for it. Those in religion have words for it and those that have spirituality have words for it. It's all the same thing. It's perfect connectedness. Recently I was looking a little bit at the life of Einstein and Einstein early on in his early career discovered this thing which he called quantum light and yet he never could understand what quantum light was. He spent his whole lifetime hoping that he would come to a greater appreciation of understanding of that and then I think he died around 1955 and still not understanding what quantum light was. There was another concept in quantum physics entanglement where everything seemed to be completely connected regardless of time and space and basically to Einstein there was something a little fearful I think around that connectedness because what was it? Jeffrey's spooky action at a distance. That's what Einstein called it. You could do something to one particle and then many, many thousands of miles away there could be the same thing happening to another particle. Spooky action at a distance. Well it's only spooky, I would say, if you believe in particles. That's where it gets spooky because there's a thing called the whole and then there's parts and as long as we believe in the parts we're afraid of the whole. The whole is spooky. How they say the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Well the whole is real and the parts are not. That's why it's so spooky. And that's why we have fears being identified with a human being being identified with the flesh. The Course is taking us in another direction it's saying one of the lessons is I am not a body I am free, I am still as God created me taking us into that divine presence that divine order that was created by God where all of our thoughts are thoughts that we think with God and all of the ego is just nothing more than the attempt to think apart from God or think against God. So that's why we're opening to learn forgiveness. We're not here to forgive the truth. The truth is just what is. It's forgiving what the ego made. It's forgiving this puff of nothingness. It's forgiving this resistance, this reaction to God this death wish. We have to learn to forgive it in our minds and as long as we are invested in the world of form as long as we are invested in the parts and the particles and all of that fragmented perception then forgiveness escapes us. You might say that you have to see the world in a unified way before it disappears from your awareness and you realize that you are only love and light. That unified perception is what forgiveness is. So when we talk about forgiving people even which is what human beings often do for giving people and the Bible says you have to forgive 70 times 7 and some of us have tried that. That's 490 times and it doesn't work. We say what's going on? If I've done something wrong, I followed the instructions. I followed the formula there and it's still there. It means that we have to be so immersed in purpose so guided by spirit that our entire perception of the world fuses together. So we're coming back to the fusion of perception. Now perception is just a witness. It's not a fact and I had students back in the 1990s that used to, they would read the course and then they would have a sentence and they would stop everything. Jesus is saying in the course, no one can be angry at a fact. Now tell me what a fact is before we go any further and I would say God is a fact, Christ is a fact and no one can be angry at a fact but there's nothing perceptual that is a fact. It's very ephemeral. It's very temporary. It's always shifting and changing, moving, moving, moving. There's nothing stable about perception until we have a unified purpose that stabilizes all the events that brings our mind to a sense of detachment from form outcomes, detachment from expectations, even detachment from goals and ambitions that used to be important. It doesn't matter when you seem to come to this unified perception, it could be on your deathbed. You may simply be having an experience of dying or as they say in unity making your transition but you have an instant where you realize everything is unified and you simply rise up in that perception welcoming the truth, welcoming that oneness. It doesn't matter what the form is, there's no particular time except for now that that can be realized. I like to talk about this in many, many, many different ways. Sometimes I will just sing. Sometimes I will use movies as parables in a way of expressing the pathway to this oneness. I call movies the modern day parables. I've been using movies for so many years now that this book came through me on a website. It's basically the Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment. It's very unconventional. Some people think of meditation, prayer, rituals, movies. How did I miss that one? Get the popcorn out. I'm ready for an exciting journey using these movies. And it can come through explanations through science. Now our quantum physics are getting to be quite spectacular. Welcome. Come on in. People are still coming. I feel like it's helpful to have a lot of tools, so to speak, a lot of vocabulary in our toolbox, so to speak, to be able to relate this and express this in a way that is truly helpful. That's the one thing I've learned about traveling around and around the world and all the people that I meet is my life is so given over that I have a clue what is coming out of my mouth or what I will say or do. And that cluelessness has been really helpful for me to have harmonious relationships because when you're out and about, you just never know what people are going to say. I was on a plane one time in Australia and the man next to me did not speak a word to me through the whole flight, but as the flight was descending down towards the runway, he turned and he looked at me. He said, you know, time is a crazy thing. That was the first words that he spoke, not even high. He just said, time is a crazy thing. I said, tell me about it. And he went on to explain how he had a cell phone plan that was in two different territories. And so when he was on his back porch, he got charged an astronomical phone bill because he was in a different territory when he was in his back porch than when he was in his living room making a call. And he just voluntarily said that to me. Time is a funny thing. It's a crazy thing. And he was expressing what I've come to understand that time is very funny, because I fly around so much, I go through so many time zones, and you can see how actually time, it seems like we're always dealing with time, like we're human beings in time, but actually Einstein discovered that time is relative. It's not an absolute. That was always fascinating to me that common sense would tell us that one second in Uganda is the same as one second in Russia, is the same as one second in America, is the same as one second in France. It seems like no matter what the clocks look like, a tick is still a tick. You must remember this. A tick is still a tick. A sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply as time goes by. It seems like one second is one second, no matter what language, what culture, or what country. But Einstein discovered that no, time was connected to space in kind of a proportional relationship. And so just like if we moved a camera around this room, we would get all these different perspectives, time is relative as everything else. And it's because of motion. It involves gravity. Basically the way they found that out on this planet was they took these atomic clocks that were extremely, extremely accurate and they had one on the ground and they took one in a jet plane that flew around. And when the plane landed, they put the two clocks together and they weren't telling the same time. The one that was up flying around in motion had a different time than the one that was on the ground. So motion and space are interacting in ways and black holes, the gravity is much, much stronger in black holes which has an enormous effect on time. If you went and lived in a black hole for a while and you came back to Earth, it would be shocking the time difference. Where's my dog? Everything would be completely different. So we're learning that time and space are relative and Jesus even addresses this in A Course in Miracles. He says time and space are two different forms of the same error. Oh, it's great to hear the master talking about that. And yet we seem to be in time and space just like a fish lives in water. It seems such a constant. It's like something that we talk about in such an accepted way. It's such an assumed thing. As well as the body, the body seems to be this thing that's very stable in our perception. We refer to our self in bodily terms. And in A Course in Miracles, Jesus makes a stark distinction between the body and the mind and the body and the spirit. He basically says that what we call the body is he calls the hero of the dream. In all the serial adventures, the body is the hero of the dream. No, it's not just John Wayne. It's not just our movie characters and our heroes, but it's like in everyone's dream, the body has taken the central figure of the hero. And everything seems to be so important in relationship to the body and to time and space. So when we do spiritual practices, whether it's meditation or all different types of forgiveness, what you're actually doing is you're loosening your mind from those time-space coordinates. You're loosening your perception from that body identity. You're loosening your awareness from the particulars of time and space. And you're opening up to an expansive experience which many have called mystical experiences. Some have them through drug experiences. There are all different ways that people experience these expansive experiences. But what they do is they give you a glimpse that you are not what you think you are. You are so, so much more than what you have believed yourself to be. And those actions that we have in mind of the ones that were good things and bad things, those who treated us right and those who treated us wrong, those memories we have, all those memories of the body, part of the serial adventure of the body, are all part of fragmented perception that the ego has made up to keep our mind feeling guilty. That the only way we can be free and know our divine innocence, our divine truth and love and light is to completely be rinsed and washed free of all those memory fragments. Both the good and the bad. Everything that we've perceived as ourself with regard to time and space is part of the veil that covers our awareness of our oneness. So for me, when I first started to get the sense of all this, I thought, wow, that's a lot. That's a lot. Those are some big shoes. Forgive the universe. Whoa. Is there any other choice? Is there any other option there? And I thought graduate school was tough. But actually what it is as we go for that is we open our mind to that, we become more and more intuitively guided and I'd say the spiritual journey becomes fun. It doesn't seem fun to the ego when all those dark debris are coming up from the unconscious mind. It doesn't seem fun to the ego when you're doing your shadow work, when you're exposing the darkness and bringing it to the light. When you're raising your awareness up, it can seem extremely intense. It can seem very, very dark. And for many who have opened up to this path, it's so daunting that they go, I'm just going to be a human. It was better before I took the lid off. I had a pretty good life when the lid was still on. But when I pulled the lid off, it's kind of like Pop Goes the Weasel. I mean, the shadow comes up. And Jesus does tell us that the more you look at fear, the less you will see of it. Meaning the more that you raise the fear to the light and you look open-eyed at your fears, they're fully brought up and you can look at them the less you will see of it reflected in the world. You will start to see more and more and more reflections of that love and light that you truly are. That's wonderful. That's important to know that there will be these reflections of light coming into your awareness because we need those. We need to know that we're making progress. We need to know that we're making a movement back to that light. We need to be convinced that those reflections of love and light are amazing. That's kind of, you could say, how it went in the parable of David from David. The childhood David, pretty shy, shy through junior high, high school, shy, shy, shy all the way into graduate school. Very, very, very shy. And then what has happened through this transformation is now I find myself going all over the world, talk, talk, talk to me. Very unlike the shy persona that was more like the wallflower that just wanted to hide and blend in and not interact. Just wanted to avoid the world. It's been going out and meeting my friends, meeting beloveds everywhere around the world and feeling my heart just opening wider and wider and wider. It's the Alma of the Hugging Saint. Imagine how much fun she has going and just hugging people. That's what I'm experiencing as I go to these 40-some countries. Lots and lots of hugs, lots of joy, lots of laughter. And it comes from just being willing to listen and follow, to flow with it. Now, there are stepping stones along the way. Once you have a hint that your mind is powerful, that your consciousness is very powerful, then you can have experiences of what you could call manifesting where you start to see your thoughts manifest before your eyes. And that's just a very helpful step because that's showing you the power of your mind. Anything that shows you the power of your mind and the power of thought is a helpful step on the journey. And so I've had a lot of those kind of experiences myself and very many mystical experiences, very strong, very convincing, but also they always came with this feeling like, I'm showing you this, I'm using this to show you something and that something was the power of the mind. And then it seemed to reach a point in consciousness and awareness where it was like, but even if you could manifest anything that you think you want, wouldn't you rather have an experience of eternal happiness? Wouldn't you trade all that manifesting for a consistent state of peace? Wouldn't you go that extra step to know your source, to know your creator, to know yourself, your true identity that's literally beyond even the manifesting, beyond the stage of manifesting? And for me, it was a big yes. It was like a huge yes, like yes. I want to be consistently happy, joyful. I want peace of mind. I want to have a state that transcends all judgments, all comparisons, all illness. Every doubt, I want to live in a state of certainty that is more important to me than even manifesting what I believe I want because I had to come to the realization that I didn't really know what I wanted. You know, and that that I that was trying to manifest was still spinning its wheels. And having a lot of fun actually, spinning its wheels, but there was something beyond that. There was something more. And to me, that's what spiritual awakening is all about. Where you get to that point where you say, yes, I'm willing to know who I am. I'm willing to wake up from this dream and I'm willing to accept the happy dream of non-judgment. Now, what is a happy dream of non-judgment? Well, it's simply a state of mind where you do not have an opinion about anything. Absolutely anything. It doesn't matter when people say it's political. It can be about nature. It can be about music. It can be about movies. It's coming to a place where you don't have an opinion. You don't take a side. Now, why is it important not to take a side? Because the ego made up the dualistic system of sides. The ego invented all this variety and multiplicity and sides. And when we take a side, we reinforce the ego in our awareness and not love. Jesus tells us in the Course in Miracles that love makes no comparison. He says, comparison must be an ego device for love makes none. That love is a state of perfect acceptance. It's a state of what is. It's a state that goes beyond the dualistic good and bad, right and wrong, ethics, morality. All of those still would fit in the category of judgments. And in order to forgive, we have to begin to see that we can transcend even morality, even those stepping stones that helped us along the way. There are certain things that resonate with us. No doubt as we move through this time and space experience. And I would say those things that deeply resonate in our heart, those are our guidances. Those are our intuitive guidances, our higher self, drawing us back up into our divinity. That's why it's important to be intuitive. I would say you could actually learn to live your life by being 100% intuitive. 100%. People would say, well, you know, you have to be a little grounded. You have to have a little bit of yin with a little yang and you know, you've got to throw a few things in. I have not found that to be the case. I've found is I just keep being intuitive and intuitive. It's like I soar higher and higher and higher in awareness through following that intuition. That small still voice that's within all of us that never contradicts itself, that always is gentle, that's always kind, that's always gracious, that's always loving. And then this raspy, critical voice in our minds that never has anything good to say about us. Just res, res, res, just always on us, always finding what we've done wrong. Never nurturing us, always criticizing that this intuitive guidance is helping us rise above the critic, rise above the judgment. That's what makes it fun as you go higher and higher into awareness. You simply transcend. You don't focus your mind on the critic anymore and you focus your mind on that intuitive voice. You want it to shine through you, to extend through you. You want to teach only love for that is what you are. That's what the Course teaches. Everything to be a representation of that love. And as you do sink deeper into this presence you start to realize that you become very, very content. In Buddhism and a lot of traditions contentment is a tremendous attribute. When you become content you do not have expectations. You are not striving. You are not pushing. You are not trying to figure out. It's like you just lean back in your mind back to that state of perfect contentment. Let all things be exactly as they are. All things work together for good except in the ego's judgment. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time. Oh, thank you. That means I'll never be late again. That's right. Oh, thank you. It's so much guilt about being late. I'm glad to know I won't be late. And the Spirit says, then you'll never be early either. You just have that contentment where you just see all things working together for good. It's a cosmic dance. You're enjoying the cosmic dance. That's a very highly trained state of mind. But isn't it worth it? And you just feel even sentimentally how wonderful that state of mind is to see the world as a dance. Because as soon as we look through the filter of judgment we are back in the grips of fear. We're back in the grips of guilt. Now we want to keep this real practical because I know some of you probably have had on your mind some of the events from Orlando and what's been described as the largest mess shooting in American history. And I had students who would watch the news. As many people watch the news, they see it on the internet now. It's hard to miss it because it's the news outlets. It's all over. It's everywhere around you. And beyond just the news, people would tell me at times, you know, well, I'd say, have you seen this movie, that movie? Well, I can't watch that movie because it's a violent movie. You might say that violence in society, violence on the news, violence on movies. We have different religions that are calling us to a life of peace and harmony. And yet, what do you do with the question of violence? And what I say to them is the ego belief system, any belief system that opposes oneness, opposes love, opposes God, the ego belief system is what is violent. And actually, if you want to go even simpler than that, you could say that judgment is violent. And that's why Jesus gave us a sermon on the Mount. And I think probably the two most helpful words in all of history, out of the trillions and trillions of words were judge not. Or if you want a few more, judge not, lest you be judged. If you hold onto judgment and consciousness, you cannot escape from experiencing that judgment in consciousness and in the world that you perceive. So what A Course in Miracles is really doing is it's basically saying the only way you will experience true peace is to come to peace in your heart, peace in your mind, and come to a peaceful perception of the world. You might remember in the Bible in Corinthians you're looking through a darkened glass and this egoic perception of fragmentation is violent, it's a darkened glass, and though we may see some things that we call pockets of goodness, our pockets of goodness and distorted perception are always broken into by violent, violent perceptions. You may be gliding along, gliding along in a seeming peace and harmony, but when you feel your mind is shaken to the core, you find yourself hurting, mourning, sad, angry, disturbed, irritated, then that's just meaning the ego is still in play, is still in play in your consciousness. So the purpose of A Course in Miracles is to try to convince your mind that out of all the problems of this world, which seem to appear on many different scales, in many different degrees, and in many different situations and directions, out of all those problems that you believe you have, the first thing that A Course in Miracles will do is help you come to the understanding and the recognition that you have a perceptual problem. Not a relationship problem, not a financial problem, not a problem with gunmen, not a problem with terrorists, not a problem with the ecosystem and pollution, not a problem on any level, on any scale. Cancer? No. Heart disease? No. You have a perceptual problem. And a lot of you know that 12-step programs are so helpful at helping people escape their addictions. The 12-step program takes a very similar approach. You have to first get the one who's got the problem to recognize that they have a problem. And if they aren't willing to recognize they have a problem, they're in denial, and they'll simply go on defending against the problem. They can't even come to accept that they have a problem. And so the 12-steps take you into that same thing. We are powerless over our life, powerless over the world. You have to come to a sense of the powerlessness over your hero of the dream, over the figures in the dream. You have to be willing to, as the Serenity Prayer says, you have to see what you can change, what you cannot change, and learn to lean on the wisdom that knows the difference between what you can change and what you can change. And they say that the Course in Miracles is just an expanded version of the Serenity Prayer. If you can get the Serenity Prayer, you don't need a Course in Miracles. You've got everything right there with that one Serenity Prayer. It's just a systematic way to help you, especially if the scribe of a Course in Miracles, Helen Shuckman, said, I'd last a pathway to God for intellectuals. That's why it's got 31 chapters. There are 365 lessons. We've got an intellectual problem going on, a mind that is denying that it's hurting and trying to convince itself intellectually through concepts that everything is hunky-dory. So it's a sophisticated system for undoing that. So to me, that's why I travel around. That's why I love to come to do these gatherings, because I'm having an experience that there are no problems. And I'm very happy. That's why I've got a big smile on my face. I laugh a lot. I sing. I do bursts of singing at times. I go skipping along in nature and everywhere because there's this experience that there are no problems, that all the problems have already been solved. The Spirit has solved them. And then when we come together, we are joining our minds together to come to that experience together. So if someone believes they have a problem, believes they see a mistake, believes they see an error, then let's look at it together, honestly, and see if that's really true. I would say honestly that none of us have a problem right now. All problems are either remembered from the past or anticipated. They're either regrets or things could have been different. No, my life would be so great if this had only been different. It's all these regrets or worries and concerns about the future, which is really just the past projected onto the future, keeping us from the now. And so when we go much deeper into that, we come deeper into the presence, we come deeper into guidance, we come deeper into our intuition and to an experience that there are no problems. It takes a lot of trust and faith to go for that because there's a part in your mind that's convinced there are problems. And our educational systems and all the gyrations that we go through are all based on this belief that there are problems in the world that we have to solve that deny the perceptual problem, like looking through a cracked lens and not seeing clearly. I was in Australia this year and I was driving along, of course, they have the steering wheels over on the right side. So I was in the passenger side on the left side of the car and I was driving along. Sam was in the car with me. In one of my discussions, you put me in the passenger side with Dory sharing something and livening. I was talking about something and then we drove by this guy who was one of the weed whackers, those gasoline powered weed whackers, was whacking on the side of the road and a stone came at the car at a very high rate of speed and smashed my window right in the middle of my parable. And I paused for a moment and looked at it and it was shattering into so many pieces. You could hear shhhhhh all the way to the edge of the whole window. And so I looked at it and then I continued on with my parable because to me that's what the separation is. It's just this thing that seems to be going on there but I didn't give it really more than a second of attention. I just went, then I went back to the parable. While it was still going shhhhhh I could hear it still shattering. Out of the car it was still it was still fragmenting. It was just breaking into tinier and tinier and tinier and tinier pieces. And I had to bring that into the parable. I said, look at this whole cosmos it's just like that piece of glass. That reminded me so much of the cosmos, of the chaos, of the entropy. Everything I've just talked about it just kept splintering, splintering, tinier, tinier, tinier. Even after 10 minutes I could still hear it was still going. It's still breaking into tinier and tinier pieces. Fascinating. But when you don't give your attention to it when you come back to the heart of love when you come back to what am I here for what is my purpose to extend the love of my creator then you don't really have time or attention for all of that. That's just another distraction. I wasn't even curious how it happened. We did look over the guy who was doing the weed-wacking headphones on and he was just having the best time and totally unaware of any rocks or windows or anything. He was not part of it in any way. He wasn't going to buy into this causation stuff. Because as soon as you started to get into causation and form then you're getting into guilt. Who's to blame? Who's to pay? It gets into all that. Jesus said something amazing 2000 years ago. He said the Father and I are one. Which I think is amazing because if you think of God as the creator or the prime cause and Christ as the effect or the perfect extension of that prime cause the Father and I are one. It means in heaven that God and Christ are not two separate beings. We are one spirit of love. And this world is the belief that cause and effect are separate. Somehow that the Son or the Christ could leave the Father or leave the Creator and have its own autonomous life. Life in form. Life in the temporary. And what I discovered as I look close at that is that everything we study in this world I was in university for 10 years undergrad and grad every discipline you study in this world is different as they are. They all have one commonality and that's the belief in causes and effects in this world. The belief that cause and effect are separate. The cause comes first and the effect comes second. And every perception in this world is a denial that cause and effect are together. That Christ is an idea in the mind of God and has not left its source. So this whole world is an attempt an authority problem a question of who is my author. Was I authored by time and space? Do I have parents and conception as my beginning or do I have a divine parent a divine source? That's what we're deciding every second of every day. Who's your daddy? All we have to do is solve that one riddle who's your daddy? And then you're happy. Imagine that every question every struggle of the world politics environmental all the things that the mind just goes around and it's really a question of source. Who is my source? Is love my source? When we give in to that and we accept that then everything changes. Absolutely everything. So Salida has the microphone that's what I love about these wonderful gatherings as we go into this deeply and then I open it up to anything topics, concerns issues what's practical. We have some practicality. Could you please explain something to me that I have difficult to live since I started the course 30 years ago? When you say that there are no problems that it's perceptual and so on what about the social injustices that happen in the world that the civil rights movement garnered with the injustices in India we have some Mandela with the injustices in Africa. Those people were suffering and so if we just take the path that there are no problems how is social justice supposed to be affected? Yes, it's a good question for me as I grew up and went through my experiences on planet earth I think those kind of questions definitely get our attention I would say there was a time in my life where I had a great concern about social justice because it was very much of an activist because I felt like there were these very important causes that needed my full attention and it ranged from everything from poverty to nuclear proliferation to the treatment of people in different cultures and so on and so forth and those were some of the ones when we talk about heroes you know off my heroes Gandhi, Martin Luther King Mandela the three that you mentioned were like in my mind they were heroes and in fact I've gone to India and I've gone to South Africa and I'm very well aware of listening to Martin Luther King's speeches the very famous one I have a dream and Martin Luther King was a minister he was very much inspired by Jesus Gandhi was very inspired by Jesus in different cultures Tolstoy was very much inspired by Gandhi as many people were in so forth Mandela what I did was when I admired someone they stood out to me as someone that I wanted to be like I admired them so much that I wanted to find out more and more and more about them read books, watch movies and so forth I was so inspired and I was very altruistic too I felt like these people are helping bring good to the world so what I did was I read Gandhi's autobiography because everybody watched the movie and everything and Gandhi his autobiography said he was experimenting with the truth that Gandhi many many many times in his life was very tormented and so I would read his autobiography because Gandhi came from India and there are saints like Ramana Maharshi and Yogananda and on and on and on so Gandhi was in the middle of a country where there were many saints back centuries and centuries and non dual teachings and one point Gandhi was asked are you a saint trying to become a politician and Gandhi said oh no no no I'm a politician trying to become a saint was Gandhi's answer so if you go and read Martin Luther King and so forth you will realize that Martin Luther King is much good as he was bringing and extending in his life he was aspiring to be as Christ like as he could and Mandela was aspiring to a higher state of awareness and so was Gandhi so my heroes I realized were all struggling and aspiring so I became more interested in what they're aspiring to so the course of miracles what that did was it was coming from the master himself and he was basically saying he said basically David you know you're psychotic you've had a total break from reality meaning heaven in Nirvana you've had an absolutely total break you're totally psychotic you're schizophrenic your mind is split you're serving two masters when I said in the Bible it's impossible to serve two masters you cannot hear and you're schizophrenic you're listening to multiple voices in your mind you're hearing many multiple voices every day when you walk out on the street you're hearing all these different voices you're schizophrenic and you're hallucinating you are absolutely hallucinating a world that doesn't have any existence whatsoever it's a total figment of imagination and you're absolutely hallucinating now what would you do if you had to deal with somebody who was psychotic, schizophrenic and was hallucinating they need some major help and what I discovered was the more I started to read the course I thought this is describing my mind I may have heroes I may even think I know what social justice is and I certainly did because how else would I be an activist without having a strong thread of social justice moving inside my heart there's a part in the course there's actually a subsection of one of the chapters where it's titled the justice of heaven and when you read that section in the course the justice of heaven he will basically tell you that there is no justice in the fragmented world that you perceive and there never will be he's not saying you can hope to reach a goal of social justice at one point he's saying you are going after a ghost you are chasing a ghost and that had a big impact on me I one time watched this video called the story of A Course in Miracles and it had Milton Friedman was in it a speechwriter for the president of the United States who was a former general a Pentagon general who was working as an ambassador for the United Nations to China I got to watch people one lady worked with dolphins what I loved about that story of A Course in Miracles I got to see a range of people throughout the human condition all trying to practice A Course in Miracles and what really got me was I heard a politician like William Whitson who ended up marrying the publisher of the course Judy Skutch say the most impactful line for him from A Course in Miracles because he had spent his whole political life trying to make the world a better place his whole political life fighting for social justice he said the most powerful line for him was when Jesus said seek not to change the world seek rather to change your mind about the world that is what I mean by we have to come to an admission that we have a perceptual problem if we're looking through a kaleidoscope of cracked perception and we're trying to get activated about certain things and certain people then we have to realize we are still part of a cracked perception of hallucination and the reason why we're not happy is because we're still so bought into this ego belief system now another thing that helped me was this idea that everything that involves social justice revolved underneath on the belief in victimization and I started to work with the course and I kept going through it and I'd go through the chapter and I'd go through the lessons and I'd go through it over and over and over and what Jesus was saying in there he says beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated I thought that's amazing he's calling this is like a temptation so what I perceived as social injustice as people taking advantage of other people as people being mistreated all over the place he was saying that's a temptation and it's a temptation to look, continue to keep looking through that darkened glass instead of turning within to the Holy Spirit for a unified perception of the world so the hardest thing to swallow about a course in miracles seems to be this perceptual problem thing because the ego has already done a strong convincing job that you're human you're time and space you're stuck in it like a fly stuck on a flypaper you're stuck in it and there's all of this injustice around you everywhere you look and it doesn't matter whether it's your mother giving you a frown or it's somebody being beaten in prison it doesn't matter whether it's a tone of voice when you're expecting a happy loving tone of voice and you hear a harsh condemning tone even just a tone of voice it hurts the only justice is the justice of forgiveness which is what I was talking about earlier all things work together for good it's the highest state of mind there is to reach a state of perfect acceptance and when you see something and your emotions well up like that's just not right which happens as we watch the news, as we watch movies as we're interacting our families in our work environments that's just not right what the course is saying is like you're never upset for the reason you think you're never upset with what you perceive is happening you are upset by your interpretation of what you perceive is happening and then through his workbook he's going to show us that everything that we perceive is an interpretation and as long as we have egoic interpretations we're going to be upset so for me when I really decided to practice the course I would latch on to a series of lessons that just resonated in my heart and people have asked me what did you do when you faced all kinds of temptations when you got upset when you were disturbed when you were angry, fearful, guilty, shameful all those things I would practice lessons five, six, seven, eight almost like a cadence because like here you go five, six, seven, eight I'm never upset for the reason I think I'm upset because I see something that's not there I see only the past my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts talk about a reorientation whenever I would get upset about anything I saw on the news in my family with my partner, with my cat with my three-legged cat whenever I would get upset at my three-legged cat, tripod I would still have to work it back to five, six, seven, eight I'm never upset for the reason I think and you see how practical that is it's almost like Jesus is saying here, you're having a tough time I understand that but I'm going to give you some real practical lessons to help lift your mind out of the judgment and the darkness that you feel and he even has a section pretty late in the text where he calls it the rules for decision, I'm like oh great Jesus Christ has given me rules for decision, that's what I need I need some Jesus Christ rules for decision because my decisions are hell I don't know if there's an eternal hell but my life in this world is a hell and I need to learn much better decision making capabilities so he's got seven rules for decision but you start off there with the first two, just like the first two commandments he said are the most important, the first two rules for decision is decide the kind of day that you want be as specific as you want what kind of day do you want emotionally specifically whatever and number two say to yourself if I make no decisions by myself this is the day that will be given me so if you stay in alignment with the kind of day you want, a happy day, joyful day, a peaceful day, a flowing day and you make no decisions by yourself, meaning with the ego then you'll receive exactly that kind of day, promise he says I promise you and then if you slip off and you forget he has three, four, five, six he's going to call you back but he does say it's much harder to come back when you're gone, we all know this I see heads nodding, when we start to have a bad day, it's not easy to snap out of it it's like in spirals we go down, down, down, down down but he's given us specific instructions on how to purify our heart, blessed are the pure of heart for they should see God he's given us specific instructions and he even says about his workbook lessons you may not believe these lessons some of them you may fight against, you may actively resist these lessons it will not matter, just do them wow, that's a lot of trust you may actively resist the lessons, it doesn't matter just do them and by doing them your experiences will show you that they are true so for me that's what I took the course right there at face value and I thought if he's giving me instructions and he's giving me a way out of this uneasy feeling of this feeling of hurt that I feel that I'm going to try him out what else did I got to lose give it a try in fact it got to me it was like give my whole heart to it I ended up going so into it that I've got people that are working with me now that are sprinkled around the world one of my friends she's so devoted to the course and the practical application of the course that she's had two amazing experiences the body is levitating and thus for her it's just a symbol of her freeing her mind it's not like you can't pin your hopes on that I mean those are two experiences but that's where it goes there's been removal of symptoms from bodies there's been a raising the dead experience there's amazing miraculous experiences that are happening from devoting the mind to this teaching in a very deep and uncompromising way all those things that are promised all the promises in the bible come true when you give yourself your heart and your soul over to them everything good that has been promised from from God throughout the centuries throughout history comes true comes into awareness as you follow it without exceptions and so when you're asking that question I can totally relate to it because I can go back in the parable of David and look at that slice where that was the very question that bothered me the most it bothered me it drove me to be politically active to change the world a better place and yet through my lessons of working with the Course you can start to realize that a healed perception is no small gift and a still and quiet and tranquil mind is no small gift like Yogananda is a great example even when he told his apostles he was exiting some of them guessed his body remained in a state of Yogananda K for weeks what a beautiful witness of that state of mind that peaceful tranquil state of mind that Yogananda represented now that got my attention I was ready to go for that state of mind in fact I just watched the last half of that movie Awake the story of Yogananda amazing and it it's worth it Yogananda just didn't sit in a cave he came over here in the 20s and boy did he pour his life his heart and soul into that extending that message that's uplifting for me that's inspiring he talked a lot about Jesus he talked a lot about his Guru and the inspiration of the life that he'd been given in this world and I really feel all of us you know we all are being called to step into that calling in whatever form it comes it comes in many different forms but to me that's what I went through I went through the very very same struggles and questions yes yeah we'll send the microphone just because they record this and your question could help somebody over in Bangladesh for all we know or something we're not you know thinking yeah sure that's great I love it I feel but yet being homebound bedridden I'm able to walk for almost two years it's everybody I call was just not thinking I had a problem I didn't come to my assistance I'd make a thought yeah so I know what you're saying but can you go beyond that now because we have I feel that we are on call we are on our own calling to do what God wants us to do some people are called to do what you're doing like you're only called to do what you're doing I'm called to do what I do everybody's not there calling to do what you're doing what you're saying what you're thinking to see and I believe it now that it's having to be called to help the people like this in the trafficking all the children and the teenagers that are involved in sex trafficking it's just there's some horrific things going on I understand what you're saying too but these things are after this and they upset you every day that wasn't a calling my calling was I thought that was a pray for those people that was what I could do but thank God I thank God for the people that came to my side from the food and health and me so I think everybody just needs to be aware of their calling and what God was going to do So to know, is this something that for me, another big, great person, wow, big emergency, but also that is not my thing. But I can help you with all your things. I think it's about knowing stuff, knowing what I'm coming to, and you can know, what's going to help you stay in the community, but anyway, I didn't want that to happen. I just don't have a name set to know that. Like I said, it's all coming out right now, so I don't know if you understand it or not, but could you just try to look the answer part of it? Thank you. Yeah, it's beautiful because what we're coming back to is this idea that the world is a symbolic representation. You might say that the world is like a motion picture of your beliefs, and to say I am not a body, I am free is one thing, but for most people will say, there's a very strong body identification. So the spirit is so loving is that it works with us and reaches us in our consciousness with what we believe. So for example, with A Course in Miracles, a good example would be healing. For example, when someone goes to have surgery or they go in a hospital or they're bedridden or they're unable to move, you might say that symbolically the helpers that show up are the mind calling forth help in a way that it can receive the help. For some people, like let's say you were bedridden and you prayed, and for some people, if Mother Mary showed up at the foot of your bed, you might be more scared than a horror movie. Like, oh my God, you know. And so friends coming and bringing food and caressing you and so on and so forth, that's something more that the mind could receive. It's symbolic of the love of spirit, the love of God reaching you in a way. Now, there are stories of Jesus from 2000 years ago where Jesus saying things like, it is by your faith that you are healed. Because sometimes he would go back to Nazareth or whatever and the Bible would say there were no healings. Jesus went back to Nazareth and there were no healings. Well, what's going on? There's healings in Bethesda, there's healings at all these other places and not in Nazareth. Well, Nazareth is where Jesus seemed to be born and raised. You imagine people saying the Messiah is coming and he's coming, he's here to save the planet and then you come back to Nazareth and you go, I know your mom, you carpenter, I don't give me this Messiah stuff. I know, I watched you as a little boy, I knew you as a little tyke. You're not the Messiah, I know you're Jesus and I know who you are and there were no miracles. So you can see that there's another part in the Bible that says a prophet is never a prophet in his hometown. There's so much association with the past that it's like that's too thick and there just isn't the faith that comes that Jesus said. So I see that as very natural. Everybody follows their heart, everybody calls forth help and it comes in a way that they can understand. And just like in the parable of David, I don't deny anything that happened. When I was an activist, when I was outstanding for things, taking sides on issues, when I was a vegetarian, I was a staunch vegetarian. I would sit down with people and I would talk their ear off of reasons why not only I should be a vegetarian but they should be a vegetarian too. Oh, I had all the reasons lined up and that's just where I was. And I think it also applies. I remember with my biological father, he at one point he said to me, Dave, I just wasn't a very good father. And at that point I just said, that's nonsense. You did the best that you could do based on what you believed. I did the best that I could do based on what I believed. Let's take each other off the hook about could have been a better son, could have been a better father. That's not helping us at all. Well, as soon as I said that to him, our relationship just took off. We were so happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. And even when he was in intensive care and had gone into a coma, my mother and my sister called me into the intensive care unit, as soon as I went in there to see him, even though he was in a coma, he came right out of that coma for me. He's zimmed right out of the coma and we had a beautiful conversation of love and gratitude and thank you for everything. I love you so dearly. And then he went back into the coma and I was off traveling, I think in Florida, sharing and shining and we just knew that that would be our last time to see each other, but there was so much love. So I do say that what we do comes from what we think and we're all in a process of having our thoughts purified through prayer. And then the actions just are like our out-picturings of what our belief system is. For Jesus, he could say something like, arise, take up your bed and walk. And if there was faith, if there was the faith, then we would see an amazing sight of someone who couldn't walk walking. The blind can see, you know, casting out demons, all kinds of things because Jesus was so certain of who he was. That's where his level of prayer was, was really connected with the source. But for all of us, we can only pray and we can only ask for what we believe in. We can't go beyond, that's what the Oracle told Nio in the matrix, you know, no one can go beyond what a problem that they can perceive. I'm sharing just from my experience that there's no problems, but I'm not trying to tell everybody what their experience is. Their experience is what it is. I'm just talking about a thought system and a way of clearing the mind and purifying the heart to reach higher and higher states of mind. And it's not definitely not telling people what they should do or not do because we all have to come from our heart. We have to follow our callings. And it doesn't look the same for everyone. There's no kind of cookie cutter approach, you know. I always tell people, don't do what I did. Let's think in a thought system of love. Let's learn to think together in love and then do, I think St. Augustine said that. Love and do what you will is what St. Augustine said. I love that. Yes. Hi there. Thank you so much for everything you said. Really resonated with me. I've been studying the chorus for a very long time. And I sometimes wonder, am I putting too much effort into it? Now, is there something about it and maybe I'm fooling myself too? Maybe I'm, I think I'm putting effort into it when I'm not. So the question is, is there, I know you can't, maybe I need to go directly to God and ask this question. But, you know, how much is too much effort? And how, you know, when is there a song that we are fooling ourselves about? Are we really still trying to write two choruses and think that one more, you know, focus more on the one, the spirit that we've got? And is there something that can enhance this whole practice, the example that I'm thinking of happened right today? You know, I think I'm having a really good day and something rose me up at the beginning and I get upset when I'm thinking, I should be further along in this process than you. You know, anyways, so do other practices enhance the course? Do other, I mean, I read things like, there's a piano lesson and I'm reading the other ones now. And, you know, you can, you can separate for the child, but there's also, I feel like, this blind spot of that. I'm still afraid that I won't be able to go deeper. And then again, after this, this question makes sense. Yeah, I can address that, I can address that. There is a part in A Course in Miracles where Jesus comes right out and says, when you find resistance high and dedication weak, you are not ready, do not fight yourself. I think that's a fascinating line. The other thing that's interesting about that line is because I traveled all these countries and cities and out to the rural areas, I hear tens of thousands of stories of people who are working with the Course and there's like a common theme in these stories that they'll say, well, I got it into my house but I wasn't ready for it yet and I use it as a plant stand or I stuck it up on my bookshelf. I mean, I hear these stories over and over and over and to me, they're all readiness stories because the Course is so direct. It's like having your whiskey straight up with not on the rocks, no ice that can melt in there and dilute the whiskey. It's like a straight shot of whiskey. And how many of us are ready for the straight shot? There's a pretty high percentage of human beings that are not gonna wanna take a swig of this Course. So it's very important because I hear people gently talk about over the weeks, months or years how these synchronicities come and they'll usually come to a point where they either go off on another path or they'll come to a point where they just have this feeling in their heart like they're ready. And it does fit in with the effort in question because the ego can become very obsessive and it can almost like spinning your car wheels in the mud. You just keep pushing the pedal down more and more and more and you're spinning and spinning and you've got this sinking feeling like something's not right as the tires keep spinning in the mud. So what I try to do is tell people, well, for me it's quite direct and simple. It's like the authentic spiritual journey is like 1% principle and 99% practice. The 1% principle is important because if you don't have that principle correct, you're just practicing the wrong principle and that's not good. You're going nowhere with that. So what I've tried to do in my teachings and I just put, I think there's like 1700 YouTube's and lots of tons of teachings on internet and just go back many years. But what I've done through the teachings is try to use lots of examples, talk about the metaphysics, but I kind of constantly am using examples and metaphors almost like, did you get it? Okay, here's, try this one. There's another example. Did you get it? Okay, try this one. Cause that's what Jesus did with me. He was like saying, did you get it? Not yet. Well, try this. Now, no. Here, try again. You know, it was like a gentle teacher that kept giving so many examples and so many metaphors and demonstrations that I couldn't possibly miss it. Eventually he knew no matter how thick and confused I was that I would get it. So what I say is, when I work with people online or through counseling or one-on-one or people live in community with me and others, we really zoom into the core, core teaching because it's really the course is like a symphony. It just keeps coming and symphonically pointing at the same principle and going round and round and round and doing nuances and language and angles and Shakespearean blank verse and double negatives and anything you can to get through to you. And as soon as you get the essence of the core principle of a Course in Miracles which is really the essence of forgiveness, then it really comes down to not making exceptions and that's what the workbook's about. But I think you should do the workbook with a sense of ease, not with a sense of perfectionism, not with a sense of being obsessive because this is where the efforting goes berserk. You know, like it says seven practice periods and you miss one and you just beat yourself up all night. You can't hardly sleep because you only got six in and you missed one. No, Jesus is very, there's always another lesson. You know, it's almost like you just give what you can give and you try your best to do what you can do with it but you don't keep it on like there's a scorekeeper like keeping score because that's more from like they call it like type of personality and that's striving and pushing that we thought was really good. It doesn't work very well in spiritual awakening when we are critical, when we hammer ourselves. I found more and more when I just relaxed when I just relaxed and really stepped into okay, what is it that I can really give and offer? Took some deep breaths and went with it. Then things opened up so fast and I got softer and more gentle and more easy and even Helen Shuckman, she one time said in an interview that she said, she tried to lose this course. She would write it down in shorthand and everything but she would leave it in the taxi cab, you know, leave it sticking here, leave it there and people were always coming up like the friends that helped you and you were bedridden. There were people always bringing the course back. She said, I just couldn't lose this course. She couldn't let it go. It kept coming to her, coming to her and I feel like that's the attitude we need to take is that we can't mess it up. You absolutely can't mess this course up. Then you can take some deep breaths and relax and go, okay, I'm gonna have some fun with this. I'm gonna make this into an adventure. I'm not going to constantly judge myself. Could I have done more? What did I miss? Are there other people that are really advancing in this and I'm just the dunce of the universe? These are the kind of thoughts that the ego tries to hold us down with and really I think we should be very, very lighthearted with this. Yes, we've got, wow, this whole row. We're just going down one, two, three, four. And I see you back there too, you're next. We're shifting back. Okay, we quoted the, it's just probably saying the father and I are one. And then this was after we were talking about the cause and effect. Then he said, cause and effect are together, not separate. And my thinking at the time was that there's no difference. And if the father is one, if Jesus is one, then there is nothing. But then you said in the leader's referendary something I've commonly said, not necessarily. And we should approach him on this, but something like the poor Jesus Christ that was God. Before Abraham was, I am, or that? Well, either way. Yes, either way. But in God's realm there's no time and space. So how can I? Yes. Yes, you could say with regard to time and space and history before Abraham was, I am. Before Jesus Christ was, I am. Before the apostles or all of history, I am. Before the world seemed to be, the I am presence was there before the worlds were formed. But you're correct that when we get back to this cause and effect thing, what we're told in the Course is that Christ is a pure idea in the mind of God. And why is one a cause and one effect if they're all the same spirit? What's this cause effect thing even has to do? And basically what you might say is God is eternal, but it's a prime creator. It's, in other words, the only thing we're told in the Course is that God created Christ as an extension. Everything I give, I give to you fully. I give you eternity. I give you all the power, glory. God gave Christ, not Jesus. That was a man, that's just a symbol that was pointing back to that spirit. But God gave Christ everything in creation and then Christ keeps extending too. Christ has creations, but it's all spiritual. But the one thing we're told is that God created Christ and Christ did not create God. Now why is that even important? If everything's one in spirit, then why is that important? Why would Jesus even mention that? He says the ego is the one, that's the fall from grace is saying, why be number two when you can be number one? When you can usurp the prime creator and why do you need somebody to be a prime creator? You know, why not you create yourself instead of God creating you as an extension of love? And that's what the ego jumped on. Everything we experience in time and space is the authority problem of the ego's beliefs that oh, I can create myself. And even when we look at teachings in the New Age, for example, if you pick up a New Age magazine and the title on the first page of the New Age magazine says, create your own reality. You see how different that is from God as the creator of reality to create your own reality? Cause the ego runs with that one and it's like I can make myself any way I want to be. And it's tried throughout all of history. It keeps trying to invent a better self. I'll be male. No, let's go for FEMA. I like those masculine attributes. No, no, I'm going for the feminine attributes now. I like a little mix here. You know, it's always trying to come up with an identity and that's what all of time and space is, is a confused mind trying to experiment with its identity instead of just accepting its pure reality of eternity and spirit that is a creation of God. So that's why even the teachings of you can create your own reality. That fits very well with manifesting, but ultimately if you're gonna wake up and go even beyond the manifesting to the power and glory of being in alignment with God, then that's the next step that God is the creator of reality. So it's like cloning rather than trying to make a better one. Yeah, it's like egoic cloning. And whereas in heaven it's just pure creation of light and love just extending on forever and ever and ever. Here we have procreation, you see. And procreation is also part of the cloning process. It maintains that. A parallel I would say is, for example, when we talk about cause and effect, let's bring it down back to terms we can relate to. Does anybody ever heard of a psychologist named Abraham Meslow? And Meslow's hierarchy of needs. What's that, brilliant? I remember studying that. First time I saw that I said, that's brilliant. Lower order needs and you keep going higher and higher and then what's the top of his pinnacle was self-actualization. I said, that's what the Greeks were saying. Know thyself, self-actualize. Know yourself as you actually are. That's what the Greeks, all these mystics and saints are saying the same thing. Well, what did he discover about those that were self-actualizing, except that one of their characteristics were that means and end were together? Like the artist whose painting is so in the joy of the painting being painted through that they weren't thinking of the future. When will I finish? How much money will this painting ring? You see how the ego is trying to get us back on the timeline. When you're in the joy of the moment, when you're playing, we'll say you're in athletics and you're in the zone. Zechariah loves to play basketball and it's a spiritual practice. He's out there, Michael Jordan fade away. Yes, nothing but net. When you're in the flow of the basketball beyond the keeping score, beyond the winning and losing, beyond the specifics, the zone, don't we call it the zone when there's an athlete ice skating in the Olympics or something, figures, wow, perfect 10 in the zone. That's a spiritual moment because there's no means and ends that are separate. You're not doing something to accomplish something in the future. The means and ends are together and that's what really Mezzo is pointing at. That's why it's self-actualizing. And you are in that state of mind. You're not thinking about the timeline. Children, when children are playing, remember when we were kids and we were playing? We didn't care what time it was. In fact, we would hear, hey, Johnny, it's time to eat. That was like, what? We're in the middle of full, full on play and then Johnny, it's time to eat. And I was like, what's that? You know, people have asked me that. They said, you were in school for kindergarten, grade school, junior high school and 10 years of university. Out of all your education, what was your favorite topic or your favorite course of study or thing like that? And I just, I say right away, recess. And they look at me like, that's not that's not an answer. You know, that's not an answer. And then they say, no, something that was structured. Structured and I would say, well, they would take us out on these outings, you know, where we would go out on some kind of outing. That wasn't in the classroom either. I enjoyed the outings better than sitting in. But that's where this is going. It's the essence that means and end are together. And that's what the present moment is truly about. It's coming into that state where we're away from linear time. And even in science, there's a parallel, you know, Isaac Newton basically is the father of science. I would say the father of linear science because he basically believed that the world could be measured. That's where we got the scientific method. Most of us grew up with the scientific method and all of science today is still mostly Newtonian. And now we have quantum for the last seven, seven or eight decades, quantum physics is around. Niels Bohr, Einstein and so forth. Quantum physics completely transcends Newtonian. It's basically saying there is no world apart from the perceiver. The observer and the observed are not separate. It's sounding like the poets, Rumi, the mystics, the saints, you know, quantum physics sounds a lot like that. That's how spectacular it is right now that I say people are waking up that are coming back to source right through science, the very thing, but they're having to let go of all the Newtonian assumptions because that's horizontal. And this vertical science I'm calling it is to the point, you know, it's amazing. We have someone in the back that's been hit her hand up. So as I was listening to you, something's been coming to mind that I just want to bounce off of your more experience and you're still much farther ahead in the path. Okay. So let me recognize my problems so they can be solved and we recognize my problems have been solved. And I've been dealing with the situation in my family when I was two, two younger, seven or older things and I'm trying to solve their problems because I'm the eldest, but what we do. But what's come to me tonight is let me recognize my problems have been solved. Okay. So part of my problem is thinking that I can solve their problem. Okay. And the radical acceptance piece is you know if they're exactly where they're supposed to be and even though they think I'm going to be smoke up they're asked when I say, you know, all things work together, we're good. So, okay. If you don't recognize that your problems have been solved I can't change that for you. You know, I can only recognize that my problems have been solved. I can't solve yours and I can't make you recognize that yours have been solved. And not one I owed up of a whole instant before you're ready. Okay, so that's one, but oh, aha, moment. And the other is this whole idea of let me be vigilant only for God. So when I'm going through my day and saying, you know, show me where you would have me go. Do you know what you would have me do? Say to me what you would have me say to who? Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. What happens is if I'm vigilant for that if I really kind of pay attention and stay in a whole instant the days do go pretty well. But when I fall off the horse and then I can remember when I choose again and begin again it gets a little bit easier. So I just want to thank you for that, that fit that you kind of let me recognize my problems have been solved, not yours. And I can't help you recognize when yours will be or won't be. So it was just a big light bulb flash enough when I've been thinking this practical thing of an Elvis sister where I'm like, I am spiritual, darn it. I'm praying for you like crazy. Why are you getting it? Well, because we're not going to get it. So thank you. That's great. It's very, you know, I know around Boulder there's a lot of people that are into Buddhism and there's quite a lot of course of miracles activity around here, but you know, Buddha said empty your mind, go into the void, empty your mind of everything you think, you think, think, you know. Jesus says the same thing, less than 189. Simply do this, be still, lay aside all thoughts of what you are, what God is, hold onto nothing. You know, Buddha and Jesus are just singing the songs and oh, an empty still mind is, oh, you'll see how spectacular this is. And basically what I realized is that, that Jesus says salvation is escape from concept. So even though when you work with the course and you go for it and you seem to work with these concepts, it's going to tell you in that same lesson, 189, forget this world, forget this course and come with holy empty hands unto your God. My hardcore is, well, I'm first reading out, oh gosh. Here we go. Oh wow, am I in the tractor beam, beam me up. You know, here we go, it's ascension time, because I could feel it so strong like that was the answer. It's these concepts, self-concepts that are made by the ego that we identify with. And in the end, we outgrow them all, like a children outgrow little toys, you know, they don't blow a trumpet or make a big stand, like I'm not going to ride my tricycle anymore. They just leave it in the yard, you know. It's like, and we can do that with all these concepts we've had, men and women and mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and workers and worker bees and on and on and on. Even course students and metaphysicians and you know, this religion, that religion, it's so fun to be empty of all these concepts because you're so spontaneous, you're so joyful, you're so in the moment, you are so clueless. You get to be damn clueless when you empty your mind because there's nothing in there except love and light. It's just happiness. Being itself is really all it is. So Jesus was basically saying, I'm calling you out of the world and I saw that he was merely meaning, just empty your mind of these concepts and judgments. Now, what happens when you do that is you will be delightfully surprised at how wonderful everything is. Where you anticipated grief and a loss, where you anticipated you would be sacrificing something, you find a happy lightheartedness instead. I remember in the parable of David, you know, there was times where I was playing baseball, basketball, football, lots of sports and going to world series games and all star games and all these things, sports, sports, sports. I came from a very sports family and then I was very, very active in everything and then it was just one day it just dawned on me that exercise was just a concept and I was like, oh gosh. Concept, another concept. So as soon as I saw that, I thought, okay, I don't ever have to give my attention to that concept again. This was many years ago and of course the ego's like, you better be careful, you're gonna atrophy, your muscles are gonna atrophy, you're gonna shrivel up and you're gonna, you know, it's like none of that ever happened. It's just blow and smoke. It's just, I've just had a ball. I've been all over the world and I just enjoyed my life fully and everything but I never had a thought. And then it also comes down to the same thing with diet. Is it organic? Is it inorganic? Is it got, you know, this? Is it got that in it? You know, I used to, just like I did when I was a social activist, I would read all the ingredients, you know. I thought I'm gonna read all the ingredients and take me 10 times longer to shop to read all the ingredients for them. I was gonna make sure I was just putting good things into my body. It's just the concept. You know, what happened to me when I started going out was that I had a control issue on my identity of thinking who I was, knowing what was right, what was wrong and everything. And when I went out on the road for five years without any kind of visible means of support or whatever, I just was like a sannyasi going around the country. The one thing that Jesus said to me about eating was it was eat whatever served. Oh, wow. You know, you think you go through vegetarianism, microbiotics and eat whatever served and you're out on the road and you're in different houses every other day or whatever. I mean, down in South America, I used to go to barnacles and antennas and some of the stuff, you know. And they're like serving it up with love, you know. And I'm like. But all that was was give up judgment. That's what he was saying. This is the fast track of giving up your judgments. Join with your brothers and sisters. Feel the love. They're just offering you love, you know. Don't push them away. Don't throw up walls. Don't constantly be trying to push people away and say, I won't eat that and I'm different from you. Keep, stop saying I'm different from you through your actions and your attitudes and your words and join and connect. And that was a pretty fast track too. I mean, you know, that really got me into just trusting and divine providence. But it also helps clear the mind of judgments and then basically the appetites go away and you start to see everything's just like props. Like it's all one big theater. But you're not focusing all this mind energy into even trying to be a healthy body because you realize that health is inner peace. Health comes through the purification of your thoughts. That's a lesson, part of a workbook lesson. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts. So then you have an impetus to really forgive instead of trying to control the form, eat the right things, exercise the right way. It just goes on and on. You can become obsessive, compulsive, trying to live a spiritual life in form when really it's the inner work. Do the inner work. Keep handing it over to the spirit. Show me, guide me, direct me. That's what speeds it up. So that's what I would say has made the major difference for me. It's been really trusting and following when I'm told to, like career. The course came into my life in the parable of David when David was 27. And so that's the time for most people when you're on alert for climbing the career ladder. And so I would have all these talks with Jesus. He would say, trust in me. Are you willing to question the belief in career? I'm like, yeah, okay. But I'm 27, I'm not getting any younger. And I don't want to be flippin' burgers at McDonald's. Career is kind of an important idea. He said, are you willing to question the career? Because it's so linear. And he was taking me to these abstract experiences that were mystical and beyond the linear. So I was and he did give me a series of jobs that helped, they were very humbling and they really knocked the pride out of me in a quick way. But I also learned to go out on the road and live on divine providence because I was always saying, people were offering me things when I would travel and I'd say, oh, I can't. Oh, I can't. I can't accept that. I can't. Finally, Jesus was like, would you stop that? That's me helping you. And you're just shutting down. I can't, I can't, I can't. Pride, pride, pride. Here's some money. I can't take that. No, he said, you're not gonna be able to learn my lessons if you don't open up to the symbols being provided for you in unconventional ways, beyond the ways. Sarah's giving me the signal. So I think we're down to our final question. And it's Zechariah from Topanga Canyon. He's come all the way from California. Well, keep it concise. We'll remember more around you. I think we'll go down the rabbit hole. But the course came into my life, with Chris earlier this year. Like, first week of January, and specifically you. Nothing has ever taken over my consciousness like this. It's really become the foundation of my entire existence. And it's been a grand unwinding process. My career and my fiance are both completely dissolved. And they were very much in like, they're my president all the way up until like February March. So it's a big amount of learning. And I'm feeling more and more, this sense of just being taken. Like I'm here to be used. And through the children's organization that we have, that's why I'm here in Colorado. And the parent through spirit that we can connect in with you. The peaceful ninjas. The question I have is, I find myself then by that I mean, the voice in me that's still coming to projecting a certain level of happiness into the future. Specifically, even with what's being guided through. And finding myself not being fully present to enjoying the perfection of each moment. And yeah, I just feel like to really be a clear vessel for what wants to happen for me. That I have to be as present and just harmony with each moment as compared to that angst of like having to get somewhere which I find being like a pretty consistent thought. So yeah, if we could just kind of speak on that phone. Yeah, that is addressing just a very deep core of the ego in the sense that the ego made up linear time to as a substitute for eternal reality. So it's got all of us investment in time. And basically the ego invented hell and the ego is basically saying that the past is its friend. So it's always focusing on the past and always projecting to the future. And that's this busyness that is trying to maintain a body identity. It's terrified of stillness. It's terrified of the stillness that comes in meditation. So we learn from Jesus that the time is actually neutral to the Holy Spirit. It doesn't have any positive or negative value, but the ego has to give it some kind of value to keep it in awareness. So it's there always coming around with, you know, well, things are gonna get better in the future and they'll get better and they'll get much better. You know, it's always trying to push it off into the future. And for most of us, that's something that we've realistically come to expect and accept as part of spirituality, hope for a better future. I mean, who among us hasn't thought, I hope it gets better. I hope it will be a better future. You go through enough chapters of the Course and then you get back to the immediacy of salvation where Jesus says, be not content with future happiness, for it is not your just reward. Now he's really cranking it up. He's really zooming us into the kingdom of heaven. Remember 2,000 years ago, the kingdom of heaven is at hand? A hand is very close. He wasn't talking about prophecies and future times. He was zooming in, you know, you the winds come from the south and they blow and it's hot air and you know that it will be hot and then the winds change and you'll know it'll be this way. But who among you have considered the kingdom of heaven? The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven is now. He's zooming us into a state of mind that is absolutely being present, which is what I hear. You feel the call, like you just called into that. It takes enormous trust to go follow Jesus into that moment because the ego always is gonna say that there's gonna be practical outcomes and logistics that you're going to have to handle. And as long as it keeps projecting those out into the future from the past, it's like a net, it's making a net to capture the mind. And the reason that we're called into our divine function or our purpose is because our purpose helps us feel like we're done through instead of that we're the individual doer. And we want that doer to dissolve because the ego made the doer. And when you're a doer, is it ever enough? Could I do more? How much of us we think of with our roles? Could I be a better mother, better father, better son, better daughter? Could I do more? Could I be more productive? Could I be more effective? Could I have more effort? Could I give more effort? It's always projected onto this doer. And when I found the greatest thing about the guidance is when I tuned into it, it just effortlessly flowed through. Like this is like a puppet that the divine is using to loosen my mind from identifying with the puppet. So I kept going for the purpose, like show me how to forgive, use my skills, use my abilities. And the more we have a unified purpose, the more we come to let thy and I be single. We come to a unified experience of the world. Everything seems more simultaneous and we lose track of that linear movement. That's, the ego's always counting the days, counting the hours, looking ahead, looking back. It's just, that's what it does. So you can tell by how you feel you have a great inspiration with the children with working with the children. And you get such reflections back of that love and that playfulness and that spontaneity. The children are like reminding you on a consistent basis. And it's taken you out of a lucrative career of buying and selling precious metals to with the children now, you know. And Jesus said, except you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, meaning being as God dependent, as spirit focused, as just like infants need their parents to survive. We need that to open to our spiritual being. So it's the purpose, it's not so much ever a matter of time, but it's just in your heart going with that question, spirit, what would you have me use time for? What purpose would I invest my time as if time's like a currency that you could spend anyway, but spirit, you tell me what to do with the time. And for you and I, it seems to involve changing airplane flights, because every time we come together and we talk, then you're off to India? No, change of flight, or you were here in Boulder for these other events. And we did a little Facebook chat and I said, you're in Boulder, I'm coming to Boulder. Tomorrow night he goes, here comes the plane ticket. I've got to change my plane ticket again, which allowed for us to have this wonderful time together. One more plane ticket change, all in divine order. So thank you all so much. I think Sarah has a few things she wants to share, but I just am so grateful that we could have this wonderful experience here together. It's deep, but it's down the rabbit hole. Let's just all dive down the rabbit hole together. We can't be held back. There's nothing that can stop us from knowing who we are. And spirit and love is inevitable. And the ego doesn't like that word inevitable, because it's a certainty of our identity. So thank you so much for coming tonight and I'm so glad. And if you get a chance, a few of us, I see Lynn here, we're gonna be up in Estes Park having a blast these next several days, all the way through Sunday. If you get a chance, you wanna come up. I'm sure Cheryl can make room for that. Yes, and we'll just share about that now. Yeah. Good, catch. I just wanna say thank you very much, David, I was really, really, really fantastic and I could feel everyone on everything you were saying. And I think a lot of what happens after a gathering like this when the mind is really open and the heart is bursting with this experience that's been on offer and that we've all joined in is what now. And I'd like to draw your attention on my own. I'd like to draw your attention to just our table at the back because I have a couple of things for you. This little quantum forgiveness card has some of the most profound websites on the back. Many of them are free. And I really encourage you to pick one up and check it out when you're at home. And then our movie Watchers Guide to Enlightenment is another wonderful resource and our Mystery School, which is up coming. So I just really encourage you to take a look at that table and pick up these cards because each one is really a gift for going deeper in the mind. And really coming into this actual experience, you're not being invited into anything here that is not possible for you. And it's not. So this is a very real invitation. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. And then if you are at your house and you would like to come to Esther's Park, Cheryl Kaplan is at R&D day passes for locals. So if anyone's interested, if I think you'd be able to phone them and you can connect with them. So thank you very much. And I know there's many of you who study of course, America, and you're in different avenues. Well, I encourage you to all connect here tonight and get to know one another for perhaps going deeper, perhaps to start doing movie nights as well. It's important for them. So thank you very much. We also have one person here who thought they had a lift to Esther's Park tonight, Lynn. She does not now. So is anyone feeling open for holding hands or just connect with Lynn to see what she'll do tonight to get us to talk tomorrow? So anyone's just feeling inspired, spirit will work through as we bring them here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.