 There's a false sense of responsibility in the sense that the mind makes up a world of illusions and then gets wound into those duties, obligations, responsibilities. And then eternal peace seems like too big of a price to let go of those things. So in other words, what you're really calling for is you're saying, okay, I'm convinced that I have some guilt around some responsibilities and duties. And I need to be shown the impossibility of that. I need to be shown that there's no sacrifice involved in this. That me following my highest good for everyone, everything, doesn't involve loss. Because as long as I believe that there's some loss involved in doing God's will, then it won't matter what I'm doing. There's going to be some guilt and some shame that's involved in that. So those are great quotes from the Bible about, you know, who is my father, mother, sister, brother, even does the will of my father in heaven, it's my father, my sister, brother. The ego is involving past associations and I use this metaphor a lot. I call it the 52 card pickup where I see that the ego delt out all of the experiences, the relationships, mother, father, the very ones we're talking about. You know, you go all the way around and all the contacts and people you've had in your life. And there was guilt in all of them because of who the dealer was, that the ego wanted us to displace the guilt of thinking you separated from God and put a little bit, hide a little bit of guilt in each relationship. And then when you start to let them go, the guilt starts coming up like, wait a minute, I don't want to harm somebody. I don't want to follow my joy and then bring harm and misery to them. Still implying that following joy and following God's will could bring harm to anyone, you know. Especially when they're telling you that you are. Yeah. There goes Lisa. And that's the truth. I have two teenagers. I'm 17 and 16. But I'll tell you something, what I did, and I told you this, I think that the other gathering was, you know, I just felt this pulling. I really just thought I had no other choice. And I was really in such a state of joy. And my family saw it too. My family saw this changing me. But I was just really so full of peace and joy. And I had guilt. And there's still a little guilt there, okay? But it seems to all take care of itself. Like the one time when I was leaving and I was leaving for 11 days and telling them I'm coming back and I'm leaving for 11 days. You know, there were four days there that I was in this total bliss. What I told you, I closed my eyes and it was like light and nothing was going to let me have any doubt. And I was staying in the joy and I was staying in it and they were like, I can't believe it. They were thinking I was joining a cult. You know, my son, he could go to school and come with me. Then they really thought I lost it. They took me out to dinner and they had like, they did like a psycho announcement. They looked at me and said, now you really believe that holy shit could school? Yes, I do. He should come with me. I said, it's meaningless. And they said, how can you say that having, not having an education is meaningless? Hey, I didn't graduate from high school, I told them. I said, do I look like I'm doing pretty good, you know, in my life? And I said, I'm following my joy. And that's what I want to teach my family to do too. Follow your joy. Don't do something that you don't want to do. And I tried to, I went back and I tried to do it. And they, my daughter this last time, and she's 17, she said, you must go. You must go. And the other trip, they were all saying, go. And it seems like everything seems to be provided for. At first, it's very, very, it's shaken the whole picture. And it's changed. Yeah, it's changed. It's shaken the whole thing. And it's given up our concepts of, like that's what I learned from those things, our concepts of what a mother is supposed to be. Our concepts of what a daughter and a son and the relationship is supposed to be. And what is really important is being enjoyed. It's sharing joy too. It's sharing. It's sharing, being enjoyed. You know, living enjoyed. And they're all invited to come. I don't want you to come. I want you all to come with me. They're choosing not to come. Yeah. So, that's part of the script. Maybe that's just part of the script. Whatever that is to be. Whatever. But our responsibility is to live in the now. Whatever that now is for us and that script is still going to go on. They're being provided for. And to see my boyfriend just, well, I tried to end that relationship. He's staying there with them. I'm thinking that I'm the worst mother in the whole town. I can't believe you're doing this. I cannot believe that you're... You probably can't believe he's finally doing something productive for us. Well, that's something that they never did. Well, I know that. I can't do a lot. She's a mother. But they're doing that for you. Right. I'm sure you would have thought it was me. I was... And you know what? It makes them appreciate me when I come home. It's done something like miraculous to my whole life. They appreciate the whole family coming together and seeing what mom did. So I come now and I'm more grateful too because I don't even have to say to help me. My daughter's... I come home, she's doing two loads of wash. You know, and that is really beautiful. It's all of us, you know, kind of being together and joining in the same purpose. And it's being, hey, if mom ain't happy, nobody's going to be happy. You know, so I'm going to follow what makes me happy. And if it seems to look like I'm being removed, I'm not removed. You know, we're one and I'm... That I call... They hear my joy. They, you know, they're... Everything's provided. And that's... I'm walking in trust. And that's peace. And what it looks like out on the script to the world. I'm not worried about it anymore. It's much easier when the studies labeled you as mentally ill. So it's like, hey, I'm just crazy. Okay, no problem. You know, just give me a little bit. So still I'm just supposed to be the dog between now, you know. Did you get your question answered? Yes? Yeah, in the book. It says this, and I quote it all the time. The other thing that I'm probably going to say is, if I have any fear, or any form of fear, all I have to do is talk to myself. But anything, including this means. So how... If I don't know what it means, how am I going to respond to it? I refuse to use the learning of my past learning as a light to guide me now. And it says that the guide that God has given you will speak to. I literally... You don't let the past control your future. You what? You don't let the past control your future. No, I don't let... I say, I don't know what anything, including this means. I don't know. Including the present. Anything. I know nothing. But you wouldn't say it, am I right? You'd be a happy camper if you have love, because you just allow and open this for the spiritual meaning. I know nothing because it's all made up. It doesn't exist. Your past doesn't exist. I know nothing. So, if I know nothing, how can I respond to this thing that I'm finding? I don't know how to respond to it because I don't know what it means, including anything else. So, I'm not going to use my past learning, which is all wrong. All wrong. Because it says we have to online everything we know. Am I right? If I don't know anything, I can't use that thing that I don't know to guide me right. That's the whole thing. What can guide me? And only if he will speak to me. That's what the book took. Jesus said it, and it was a direct letter to me in the first person. And so, when I'm fearful about anything, I say this. I don't know what anything means. I mean, if something comes up, and I've got to be fearful a little bit, then, I say it, literally. I say it now, just like it says. Say it to yourself. Do I have to say it to you? And anybody else will listen to me. Well, I hope so. But anyway, he will speak to me, and then he'll tell me, guide me. I did not know. I cannot do it. My own intelligence is useless, and I can't analyze it and get it. Say it, and you refuse to use it. And then the guide that God has given me will speak to me. And I think that's the point that I've been trying to get to in my life. For this guide that God has given me will speak to me, and I don't have to make those decisions. Because it says, I can't. I can't do it. It's impossible. That's the reason God, the minute we had the tiny night out, I did. God created the Holy Spirit, that instant. Fixed it all. Never missed a beat. He created as a woman to tell you what to do. No, that's the way I believe. That He always fixed before there ever was a note, means to have Himself. And it's over. It's done. And you know what this does is it's like, when people look at the Course and they'll just say, or even living in the moment, they say if there were no rules, if there were no prisons, if there were no structures, all hell would break loose, and kind of assuming that this already exists. But it's assuming that, and it's like if there was no judgment, then all would be chaos. And what it is, is no, without judgment, all is love. Because all is now. And it takes a lot of faith to just open and surrender into that now moment with full faith and confidence in the perfection of it. I've had, like recently we were, I was in Oklahoma and this woman, you know, she had two daughters that she had raised a little bit, that were a little bit older, but they were kind of, she thought were fairly well-behaved, not a lot of energy. And a two-year-old who was like this little tyrant, he was spewing stuff all over, climbing on top of the counter, teetling around, and just, she said he's like a tornado of energy. And she says, how do you practice a course in miracles when you've got a two-year-old loose? She said, I'm just always on edge. I'm always looking around, and he's ready to fall off or something, this and that. And I said, what a gift of attentiveness, because you don't need a little Zen master giving you whippin' you, when you're not enough in meditation, and you've got, and I said, to flow in your intuitive moment where you're listening inside, when you need to go over and swoop him off the top of the table, he's ready to plummet, head first, or whatever, if you're in your moment, if you're living in that moment, that will be taken care of. But that's very different from using the past learning and fear to say, I gotta stop him from doing this, and stopping this, and yell at him, and control, and this and that. It's a really... I always ask, okay, what do I need to do? And while I have five kids, and I always did this, buy the best cartoon for them to sit down, or the Sesame Street or those type learning tapes for them to sit down, and they do it. I have the courage to have a little boy I can't control it, buy them the best cartoons and that you can see that they are in there, and that boy sit down and watch. That's the learning cartoons, and it happens. It's always an answer for anything, for everything, and it's an answer that you are willing to do to do it. Tim, I'd love to mention your wonderful movie list, to have a movie list of kids. Yeah? And also it's that thing where you have to just let go of your expectations. I tell the story sometimes where there's two... his parents and the VR want to leave you with my kids there, and I think it'll be a good experience for the beach and we want to fly off to someplace. So they were like fishing for my boundary, kind of like we did when we were two teachers, you know, how much can we get away with? They were like, go on, wow, whoa! And in the end we had a wonderful week of just joy because it's a sense of inclusion and non-judgment and seeing the innocence. But in the end at one point they got so giddy and so into the joy that one of them, the youngest one spit and I watched it come and land and then his sister looked at him and they both went. Because I didn't react, I just continued smiling and then a spit shower came and it was a really good practice because when you're in the moment, it's like all things work together for good, there's no exceptions. It was a gleeful moment in which all this... But it was just a good thing and again when you're in the moment you aren't into the body identification. It was fun when I did a gathering recently because there was like 25 people and most of them were therapists and they, I told that example and they said, hey, that is not modeling couple of behavior. What is this kid? Then go home and they go to their siblings and whatever, you know, but we had spent the whole week together in that joy and this and that and I said, it's not modeled in terms of behavior. You have to start to remember everything is stopped and when you get to that point the whole point is everything for your own lesson to see, to not have any expectations and to be in that state of so some yogis like to go sit in cold chambers or with their little G-spings. I enjoy being with kids. It was all part of the joy of the moment where you can see that all ego boundaries and rules are made out of fear that's where structure and rules come in is saying, no, this is not appropriate, this is not acceptable and love is a way of forgiving the whole world and just being in the joy of that moment. You have to relate to linear time to tell that story, right? My mother is totally in the moment but she doesn't remember what happened five minutes ago. I mean, I may remind her of something that she would remember but I mean, literally five minutes ago she may not remember. I'm still trying to get this how it is to you that you're not relating to linear time obviously you are in some way because you tell the past experiences. Let's be like parables. I can tell the experience and it's like as I started to travel the country the parables would come out and it would be like I was listening to the parables but it was a feeling like it really wasn't about me. They were just used in a helpful way as it's just like Jesus, you know, there was a man who had two sons and prodigal sons and all the different parables those are like little stories and illustrations that, yeah, at point but really when it's like part of the joy of the moment is you really start to realize that you're not the story. That's the real freeing joy no matter what the stories seem to be who you are right now is not the story and that's where you lose the guilt because the guilt was taking things personally that perspective is where the guilt came in. Could you talk about an issue that I'm facing with a friend? Would you talk about suicide? Yeah, suicide is described as a decision to kill oneself and yet all life and death is defined in terms of form so life, in terms of form definitions begins at birth or however it's defined in those kinds of terms Right, right, whatever Somewhere around birth whatever that's described as and ends around death and suicide it seems to be like a taking of a life So suicide in those terms would seem different than being hit by a truck or what the world would call accidents where something happens to you apart from your choice it just happens to be your day is up, your life is up but actually everything is a decision by the mind So what I like to do is take it deeper and deeper to the point that your state of mind is either a reflection of life or death in the sense that you're either joyful and peaceful and free and happy which is your choice that's the state of mind or you choose hell it doesn't matter whether you're irritated or annoyed or tired or fearful, angry, guilty jealous, all those in the heart So really every moment is like a life or death situation or a life or death opportunity to choose life, to choose the joy of being in the moment or to try to live in the past which is where all those emotions come up still trying to hang on to the linear thing So you see how he lists the whole definition out of a form sense like suicide to, you know, there's a part in the course where he says swear not to die you holy son of a guy he's just saying choose life like the billboards say choose life and he's talking about it with the fetus this is talking about your state of mind you have the power to choose life at any moment so it takes the whole thing about suicide out as if you know life or death then are not seen in terms of form like I worked for hospice and they would call me into the rooms when I would walk along there and whatever they were incoherent or whatever they would get very coherent and they would walk in the room and they would ask me all these meaning of life questions and I would say it's okay you don't have to worry about your parents or your children or whatever and it's okay to go into the light and I was just it was like a reflection of giving a mission to go back to the present moment to the eternal moment and then the next day I'd come in and so-and-so checked out so-and-so I had a high checkout rate which is not good you want to save lives and prolong lives if you see it in terms of form but when you get into content or mind it's all just choose the present moment choose forgiveness choose freedom don't choose you know grievances and hanging on to the past and people pleasing and all that I had a question what is the difference in what you're telling us between monthness in other words you're kind of like a traveling monk you don't have the Buddhist rose but you're doing the Buddhist monk thing here and away and being a householder you see that as also an alternative course well the script is written so I feel like everything and everyone is always a perfect reflection of your mind and everything then equally gives you the same opportunity you know to choose life because if you seem to do the monk thing or let's say you go off and you're in a community or you're even more secluded off in the Himalayas somewhere doing the hours of meditation it's still letting go of past and future thoughts no different than if you seem to be a householder and you've got kids running around or whatever you still are it's the same thing you're going to have to release past and future thoughts and actually relationships in this world are not something to be avoided in the sense that they are like mirrors so when people say well I have children or I have people that I live with and there's a group of us whether it's a community or a family or whatever those are reflectors of what your mind believes and I always say you should be grateful for that because there's an unconscious mind where a lot of stuff has been stuffed down and these people just act out those grievances and concepts and limitations that you still believe are real and true and give you a chance to that's like flushing it into your awareness if somebody is acting it out right in your face which is the way it is with relationships and sometimes with children it's like so much in your face that it's just a speed up it's part of the speed up of seeing what you believe the mirroring occurs at a mind level so when people say thanks to me like well I don't get this mirroring stuff you know I'm I'm neat and tidy and organized and my roommate is lazy and sloppy and messy and there's no mirroring going on clean messy that's a fact clean messy and I say it's like you have to believe in the concepts of lazy and dirty and whatever before you can even perceive them you have to believe them the concepts that are in your mind but God didn't create lazy and dirty and sloppy I've been it's like judging the roommate I've been in places where the people they call a roach of me and I go not for council I go sit down and talk and I concentrate in the mess I mean you're talking about food being for three weeks and then stop I don't concentrate in that and I've been there but people start changing just like that they start changing I don't talk about nothing I'm I treat him like I treat anybody you know no difference and I see I don't judge him I don't pay attention to what's around there and I noticed that not even a month or two they bought a new toilet at home they have a better job you know and I think because I believe it's a goodness and it's okay and I think people don't want to be charged for who they are they want to be accepted and then they make their decision you know I'm okay that is in mind acceptance acceptance is the answer of judgment it never works you know I remember what you said there and that remembrance helped me the next few days to take care of what I needed to take care of in my life and so I think that we can be in the past where the past is helpful like to remember what you said and so forth because then it transforms my present but to have things in the past that you don't want in the past it's actually hurting me like old life that you divorced you're setting all the things you did to you that kind of stuff you should bury because that is not helpful so I think we could does that make sense to you? I think you can bury it you can't bury it just let go of it think of it this way that the Holy Spirit in you can pull from the pool of the past words seem to be used right now words are the past you know we're in coming together and joining in the joy of this shared purpose to wake up to remember God to remember ourselves as love the spirit uses almost like you had like a pool where the spirit could use in the spirit now in the Bible it says let the spirit of God put the words in your mouth if you're called before the courts of men and you know how it is that's the spirit's use of the past or you just mentioned parables how do you stay in the present with stories and when you stay in that state of consciousness with that desire to be helpful again with no clue of what that will be or how that will happen then it's almost like the spirit uses the symbols of the past and keeps pointing to the now with all the symbols maybe they are just stories maybe they are I remember now my pastor said what if you entered this life 30 seconds ago complete with a past written on your brain you know but really you're brand new but you don't know it because the past is pretty but I guess it really is like that isn't it? the stories you're telling from your past it doesn't matter what ever happened they're just metaphors for the now I talked to a hypnosis guy one time he says we're all hypnotized and we don't know now he says yeah I think that the past does hypnotize us in other words we take form to the past and we become so entrenched in this past of what has been taught to us and so we're like zombies sometimes and I think mass consciousness people that never think about how they feel very much and just keep going all the time or the way it's kind of like watching TV and things are going around the house you're on the TV it's cops or something you're getting arrested and all this bad stuff is happening to you and you're going through that experience and people like that running around outside that they're like watching TV and they don't know is that the sense? that's why it's so important to be so attentive and alert to your mind because if you're aware awareness that's where you stay in the moment that's where the joy is and then the mesmerism the hypnotism of sleep of forgetting it's a dream of forgetting it's a movie and you would go to a movie theater if you really were aware and you were in a state of bliss you would just watch the movie and see that you're watching a movie but when you go into a theater and you forget that you're watching the movie and you get wrapped up with the characters you identify with the characters your heart starts pounding and the emotions start flooding and everything you're not thinking I'm in a movie theater and I'm watching a movie you're right on the screen that's the consciousness and that's a wonderful metaphor for how the mind can forget that it's watching something and get all wrapped up into the personal drama but it's escapism though and they chose to escape and people do it watching soap operas because they want to escape from their own reality which they don't enjoy they'd rather watch somebody else stuffed in there taking care of their own stuff with even escapism because then you can see it's just like a defense and I noticed that early on and I thought I don't want to waste my time going to movies for that purpose I want to be attentive when those emotions are coming up and I really want to process this and really learn to forgive that there's the whole course teaches that what you perceive is what you believe and the second lesson in the book is I have given everything I see that's for me so I would use that when I would go to the movies to say okay I'm choosing this emotional roller coaster ride this movie is not a happy movie that movie didn't make me laugh I'm laughing because of what I'm perceiving that movie didn't depress me or make me sad I'm happy or sad or depressed because of what's going on in my own perception and then it gives you a lot of something to really go at to get down to the roots in your own mind instead of like you said the ego's escapism it loves competition it loves drama, murder, mystery that's what's going on with the reality shows it's not really reality they have a script you're kidding I hate it for your reality and they can't sit at home their own reality so they have to go observe somebody else's reality they don't like their life enough interesting enough so they find interest in other lives that's what they do this was saying we need to film this we're going to film this for a moment let's get a cameraman they do have like what's that girl's name Anna Nicole Smith well now listen the truth is let's show real joy and her real TV real TV real people real TV you know let's show America where the joy really is in truth well that's why I said let's get a camera is that your next manifestation I'm not doing it anymore I'm not doing it anymore I'm not doing it anymore she doesn't even attach to it I'm not I'm just not going to work my mind like that don't ask her about the future I'm accepting my gift that I no longer have to work at salvation that I can just accept it now and be and accept my inheritance and be in joy and be in love and that's it and I don't have to do anything I need to do nothing I need to do nothing but be there's nothing out there and so that is the greatest gift that I have there's nothing out there there's nothing out there there's nothing out there there's a likeman there's anything back there it's all between you well I accept that and the thing I learned one time is a really interesting thing you know the longest journey you'll ever take it's about 18 inches you said to your heart yeah I've heard it you know something we can say all this stuff now that there's no reality and everything I just got through the course of American history a hundred years ago there was no machines I mean there's no cars no TVs, no boxes people want to entertain, they play games they when you look at the stars and all this kind of stuff and one of the problems we have is machines are controlling our lives TV sets, it's actually you know all this stuff computer sets play with me we're all being pulled through these things but we're not creating anymore people are so lonely and they're in these tic-tac-tac boxes in our society we have everything's a box, we live in a house we drive a little boxy car we go to a boxy office and so forth and this breaks the thing we're in a box there's lots of people in this box and it's really different from a lot of people look by themselves in this society and it's so lonely and they watch television all the time it's just you know that gets me to I was going to ask you what he's relating to that you were talking about movies and sitting outside or waiting inside the movie until you can process that what did you get from the Matrix? I just saw this such a beautiful reflection of you are the one and I saw so much reflected in that movie that I had done the movie watchers guide and everything and that was before it even came out and I just thought this is the perfect composite of everything and so what happened about I'd say between 10 and 15 people would contact me and say I'm going to you taking you to the movie the Matrix and I'm going to sit in the back row of the theater and I want you to give me a running commentary on all of this because they sensed it was so rich with symbols that they wanted to get just piece by piece in a two hour and some of our movie just this and that so I would have Christians would come and I would let it come through in a Christian kind of foundation from another thing I would let it come through who each encounter was spontaneous it would just come together to him and years ago I had students they asked one of the students did you see that movie such and such a movie and he said no but I did hear David's description of the movie and it's better than the original because when you really get tuned into your clarity and your discernment then everything is so rich and that's one of them it's extremely rich and I've done gatherings literally around the country where we've had video gatherings on that movie and what it helps to light our mind and the spirit is not to rush and the vision not to gossip and I have someone it's a choice it's a choice because it's a choice and it's about discipline at home discipline at kids