 Hi, everybody. Welcome. Thanks for joining us again. I'm Peter. For those who are joining you, I'll just be the host. And I know there are a few new people with us today, so welcome, welcome. And so I can just give you a little introduction to the day. We'll have David showing the movie and giving the movie commentary for us this morning. And then we have a little 10 minute break afterwards. And then we'll have a Q&A session with David. And there's an opportunity for you to send in your prayers and your questions. So I'll pass it straight over to you now, David. Thanks, Pete. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone around the world in different locations, different countries. I think we have about seven new people joining us today. My friend, Anna, how am I? Is there? Hi, Anna. Nice to see you. We're here today to have a movie together and feel some grace coming and touching our hearts and opening our hearts up to a deeper experience of God's love. And basically, for those of you who are doing the Course in Miracles workbook lessons, and if you started them on January 1st, a lot of you know the very first lesson of the Course is nothing I see means anything. And then it just rolls on from there. The first 13 lessons are such undoing lessons. They're just undoing everything we believe about everything, about ourselves, about the world. They're beginning to help us into the deepening of the process of letting go. And I think this whole journey, this whole earth experience is one of letting go. And then we let go a little more. And just when we think we've let go of everything we can let go of, then there's more to let go of. And we go, you've got to be kidding. I thought I was stripped down bare in my mind. And now you're what? There's more letting go. But today is the 14th day of the new year of 2023. So today's workbook lesson is God did not create a meaningless world. And actually, this lesson of today, it explains all of the first 13 lessons, including lesson number 13, yesterday's lesson, a meaningless world and gender's fear and hurt and pain and guilt and sickness and sadness. And it really gives us the escape hatch, the first glimmers of the escape hatch to happiness to lasting happiness is lesson number 14. God did not create a meaningless world. I know some of you, you know, even if you don't study the Bible, even if you're not a Bible scholar, some of you are familiar with Genesis in the Bible. And in the Genesis in the Bible, it said, God created the heavens and the earth. And now Jesus is clarifying this in lesson 14. He's saying, no, God did not create a meaningless world. This world is of the egos making the whole cosmos. And when we experience hurt and pain and suffering, it's just because we believe in the ego, and we really need to learn how to let it go to release it. And that is it's going to take a lot of devotion, a lot of prayer. And so, you know, I'm just saying, wow, today's movie Jesus has got us a movie today that is it's extraordinary. It is extraordinary. It's one of those where I think at the end, your heart is just going to smile at the end in happiness, because this movie is a movie about building your faith. And we all know that faith is something that is faith in the unseen. Everybody talks about God, but nobody has perceived God. Everybody talks about the Holy Spirit, but no one's ever perceived the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, even in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is referred to as an analogous to the wind, but we can't perceive the wind. We can feel it on our cheeks. We can feel it on our skin, but we can't see it. We can't perceive it. So, you know, people just speculate about God and they speculate about the Holy Spirit and they say, is it really windy? I got to go outside and check for myself because you can't really see it unless you see moving leaves or you see something moving or you feel something on your skin. You don't even know it's there. So, as usual, the way we do these movie gatherings is we're just going to have a great, great movie together. I know some of you who have not seen this movie, you're going to be so glad you did when you do see it. And we always pray and we go through the week and we put out a movie poll and we just say, what themes do you want to experience in your heart? And that's how we do it. So, we put out like five themes and then at the beginning of the movie gathering today, I'll just give you those five themes. And then the movie that Jesus gives us is specifically given for us to experience the themes. And so, I never know what's coming. I didn't see this one coming at all until Friday, until yesterday. And then Jesus dropped it into me and I was like, oh my God. Thank you. Thank you. So, our five themes for this week and this is a combination of like three or four different polls. The number one theme that you voted on for this week was accept the gentle unfolding of God's plan. And I think the key word is gentle. I mean, for most of us, when we're going through trials and challenges and tribulations, we doubt that there is a plan. You know, we seriously doubt that there is some kind of plan. We think this is madness. The world is madness. My life is madness and there's no way out. It seems like we're stuck in hell. And so, when we have difficult times emotionally, we really feel, well, if there is a plan, I don't know what it is. And if there is a plan, it must be it's a mystery to me. And that is the human perspective. You know, we like the idea of happiness. We like the idea of joy. And we like the idea of freedom. But we don't seem to have access to it until we really go into some kind of deep prayer and surrender. Like, wow, maybe I've been wrong about the whole thing. And maybe I need some help. I need help here. God help me. And so our first theme is accept the gentle unfolding of God's plan. I think this is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life for the gentle unfolding of God's plan. The characters are not really religious at all. It's beautiful. But the spirit uses what the mind believes in to gently turn and turn the mind around toward the light. The mind that's caught up in illusions, the mind that's caught up in all kinds of idle images that really don't come from the light at all. They're just projections of the ego. And the ego has made quite a projection in terms of the time, space cosmos. The scientists are still discovering new galaxies and new stars and new solar systems. And all of the cosmos is a giant projection of the belief in separation. It's like a seemingly the result of the scientists have a big bang. But you might say the big bang is just believing you can make an identity different from the identity that God created you as. So if God created you as spirit, and you believe you're a person or flesh, then that's a pretty big identity distortion. And that's where all the guilt and suffering comes in. So this movie is basically you all voted for except the gentle unfolding of God's plan. And Jesus said, oh, yeah, I'm going to give you a practical movie that's going to show you a group of people who don't, they're not overtly spiritual or religious at all. But you're going to see that they have to develop faith in order to go forward one step at a time. And really, that's all that's for all of us. We can't go forward. We can't really go forward toward the light without faith. Because everything that our five senses have shown us historically does not promote faith in God, faith in love, faith in harmony, faith in connection. I mean, if we use the evidence of our five senses, we can say it's dismal. It's dark. It's pathetic. It seems very, very troubling. And I know you have all been through that. And I've been through that, too. Very, very troubling. This world is very troubling. Watch the news for a couple of days. If you dare. But what it is that Jesus is saying, well, that's okay. All right. All right. Now I'm going to give you a movie, though, that's going to show you the gentle unfolding of God's plan. And you're going to feel warmhearted at the end. Because it's going to show we're going to see some character transformation. We're going to see how the characters are all being used to slowly open up the heart and open up the mind, even though the characters are not aware of they're being used in that way. It's beautiful. The second theme is remember to laugh. Some of you know that Jesus at one point in the course of miracles said into eternity where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. So the only mistake we ever made was we missed the humor of the ego. We should have had a pretty good laugh at the idea of death. But instead of laughing, we went, hmm, we did the old thinker, you know, the Greek thinker, hmm, death, death. Oh, though death is not something we should be intrigued by. This is something we should learn to laugh at. Because if we are intrigued by death, then then we can perceive a lot of things that don't have anything to do with God in heaven. Today's lesson is God did not create a meaningless world. And Jesus says that everything that God created exists as God created it, which is spirit, and nothing else exists like the introduction to the course in miracles. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists herein lies the peace of God. Now, for those of us that are caught up in the world, we don't always laugh every day if we listen to the ego's voice. We actually have a few other emotions that are predominant in our awareness, and it's not laughter, because the ego is quite serious. And it is a death wish. Freud called it Thanatos. It's a death wish. And if we believe in it, even in the tiniest speck, we will feel its emotions. They aren't our real emotions, but we will feel its emotions if we believe in it. Number three, I resign now as my own teacher. Wow. Talk about surrender. I resign now as my own teacher. I can feel happier and happier just saying the words. Isn't it amazing when we say, we pray to God and we say, teach me. Oh, we get a big smile on our face. And when we think we're in charge of anything, mm, disaster, disaster. We know from history we have had very difficult time trying to run the show. Did anyone remember that song years ago, Tears for Fears? Everybody wants to rule the world. Oh my God. I'm ready to take my hands off the wheel, please. God, take the wheel. I think that's a country song. Jesus, take the wheel. So I resign now as my own teacher. I would rather be clueless so I can be shown the truth in my mind instead of arrogantly trying to believe I know something. Number four, offer true kindness in every situation, in every conceivable situation, all we're meant to do, Jesus says, is offer a blessing of kindness. He wants us to be kind and sweet. And I think the only way we can do that is really be inspired by the Holy Spirit because for many of us on planet Earth, we wanted to be loving and kind and sweet, but it didn't quite go that way. It's like that Peter Sotera song with Cher. I tried it on my own, but deep inside we've known I'd be back to, we'd be back to set things straight. We're here to end the karma. We're here to end the loop of Groundhog Day. It's time to stop looping. It's time to wake up and stop looping. And the final one is use communication for true connection. Isn't it amazing in relationships how there's like some kind of underlying fear of silence? There's a fear of intimacy. And this fear of intimacy relates to communication. You know, the ego wants us to banter on and on about nothing. And the Holy Spirit wants us to start to question everything that we believe and start to really be able to say and mean, I love you. And not as a superficial kind of thing, you know, okay, I love you. I love you. You know, just his words. Like when you go to get a sandwich at McDonald's and they go, have a nice day. The one at the register, you know, is constantly giving people their change, giving people their order and says, probably have a nice day hundreds of times every day. But what Jesus says, it's one thing to say it and then another thing to mean it. It's one thing to say, I want the peace of God. And it's another thing to really mean sincerely, I want the peace of God. And he's interested in us being sincere. He's really wanting us to just be sincere. So that's use communication for true connection. Well, before I get into talking about the movie and giving the setup, I just wanted to read just one paragraph from workbook lesson 135 in A Course in Miracles. Because I think this really relates to our movie today. When Jesus told me which movie it was, I prayed and I said, okay, yeah, that's a great movie. But exactly what is it that you want to use this movie for? And he said, well, for the first topic, a gentle awareness of a gentle unfolding of God's plan. I said, oh, okay, I see that. And then he had me go to lesson 135, which happens to be the longest workbook lesson in A Course in Miracles. But happily he guided me to read one paragraph. And this is the paragraph. This is what we want on our hearts when we watch this movie today. Because if we can hold this one paragraph on our hearts, then we can really experience that first theme, the gentle unfolding of God's plan. Yes, I think we can all admit we get impatient. We think, come on, come on, if there's some kind of meaning, let's cut the chase. I want the prize. I want the peace of mind. And I'm not going to be chasing a piece of cheese around for millennium. I actually want to know the peace of mind as my own being. And Jesus says, well, it has to come in a way that will be gentle to your mind. If you ask for the truth, and the truth would shatter everything that you believe right now, it would be more of a traumatic and a horrific experience. And so the Holy Spirit has to bring it to you in little seeming scenarios and chunks. Because if you had a direct experience of the truth with what you currently believe, it would seem traumatic. It would be like a little child who's having a nightmare. And mom comes in at three in the morning, turns on the light and wakes up the child in the middle of the nightmare. And you can imagine how frightening that would be to the child who is engaged in a nightmare or a night terror. So here's what Jesus says in paragraph 18 of workbook lesson 135. What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens, all events past, present and to come are gently planned by one whose only purpose is your good. Perhaps you have misunderstood his plan, for he would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see his loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, he led you gently to eternal life. So when I read that paragraph, I'm like, oh my gosh, that means that everything that I experience in this world down to the smallest detail is part of a greater plan to bring me to the present moment. And every trial that I've ever had, every tribulation, every temptation, every struggle, every single conflict has been just a golden opportunity to choose again. I was reading a quote from a friend of mine, Dakini, from Australia posted and basically Jesus was saying in the quote, if you could say with anything that you're perceiving with the five senses, there is no gain to me in this at all. You would be healed instantly. And imagine any conceivable situation, if you could just say and mean, there is no gain to me in this at all and mean it, you would be healed instantly. I remember Judy Scotch, who was the publisher of the course one time, I was talking with her and she was in her house and she was saying, yeah, Bill Thetford, who worked with Helen Shuckman to bring us the course, was with her one time and Judy was preparing, she always liked to prepare a lot of food and she was like a Jewish housemaker, like to make everyone feel welcome, prepare the food, serve people. And one time she was in the kitchen and she reached over to grab a pan and the pan was so hot that immediately when she grabbed the pan, she just felt this huge burn, burning sensation, this huge pain and she let go of the pan right away and yet she looked down and she saw the red of the burn on her hand and she also felt this intense pain and she just kind of closed her eyes and into the kitchen walked Bill Thetford, who was one of the two that received the course. I think Bill was one of the most sincere practitioners of A Course in Miracles, even though he was only one of the first two students of A Course in Miracles on the planet, beginning back in 1965 when he and Helen were taking it down. He devoted his life so sincerely to mind training and to practicing that Bill just walked in and immediately he just laid his hands on Judy's hand and went into a very deep prayer and immediately Judy said, it didn't take only a matter of seconds and the swelling started to go down and the pain just started to disappear. This was Bill just going into deep prayer, very, very deep prayer with Helen actually with Judy and then Judy felt that it was just a miracle. She just said, oh my gosh, it was such a profound kind of an actual experience of a miracle for her that she could go from pain and go into a feeling of peace in such a quick way and this shows the power of prayer. So for our movie today, this one's called Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. It's from 2011 and our main characters are, we start off, we see Dr. Alfred Jones and he has a partner named a wife, Mary Jones. It's in the UK, they're living their life and Alfred and Mary, you can start to see the kind of relationship they have very quickly that both of them are very highly invested in their careers. They're together but they both have their own careers, their own professions and they've been very, we'll say, successful in the world. So they're just going to be a successful couple living in the UK. He's a scientist and he's particularly interested in his work is in fishing. He invents, you know, those lures that you throw in to try to catch fish that have all the shiny things on and feathers and look like that. That's what he's done and his whole, even though he's very scientific, he's very much into nuts and bolts of science and the learning of the world. He kind of prides himself on being an expert in the field of fishing as far as science goes for Great Britain and the UK. His wife has her own career. She's very heavily invested in that. And as far as a relationship, it has all of the seeming conveniences and comforts of the world, but there's not a lot of really deep, close connected communication in their relationship. Basically, their relationship looks pretty, by the world standards, boring. Like they're just going through the motions of the relationship, but they're both more interested in their their careers than they are in anything else. And now, you know, the Holy Spirit has to reach through that self concept. And that's not an easy one to see pass because careers are seen as so important in this world. And careers are something that people put a lot of work and effort into to develop a career. And in the ultimate sense, since God did not create a meaningless world, all of the mortal fuss around careers and career advancement is just that mortal fuss. It's just egoic. It's the same with relationships. We may look for things in relationships to get us things. And yet, to the ego, relationships are based on exchange. I'll give to you if you give back to me. I'll scratch your back if you scratch my back. It's more like a contract. In the ultimate sense, it's a contract of reciprocity, the way the ego sets up relationships. There's not true love, it's just giving to get. And it's very disappointing. And this is very much what Alfred and Mary's relationship is about. Now, we also have another character called Harriet Chetwood Talbot. And she works for a company, big company. And she is working. She's very she's very outgoing and bright and and competent and and quite perky in her personality. And she's going to play a big part in this movie because this company that she works for is going to get hired by a very, very wealthy Middle Eastern Sheik named Sheik Mohammed. And Sheik Mohammed is going to hire her company and Harriet Chetwood Talbot to represent him to try to do something. The Sheik wants to do something for his country and his countrymen in Yemen. He wants to, he likes to fish. He likes salmon fishing. And he would love to see some salmon fishing in Yemen, which you may know is down in the Middle East where it gets quite hot. So that's part of the ongoing situation. Also, Harriet Chetwood Talbot, she likes to use all three of her names. This is like a proper British woman who likes all three of her names, not a first name basis. Harriet Chetwood Talbot. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Harriet Chetwood Talbot, you know, very proper. One, two, three names. You can't miss on that one. No nicknames. No, Harriet Chetwood Talbot. And she has a boyfriend. And her boyfriend is a military man. Her boyfriend is Captain Robert Myers. And she's just has a new boyfriend as the movie begins. So she's, she's kind of intoxicated because she's been without a boyfriend for a while. Now she has a boyfriend and she's like very excited to have Captain Robert in her life. And meanwhile, we will slowly start to see the Sheik come into play. I really like this, this actor, you know, Holy Spirit uses this guy who plays the Sheik Mohammed in this movie. But some of you, did any of you see the movie Lucy with Scarlett Johansson? This was the man, remember the French detective that she Lucy kind of played with? They couldn't believe all of all of his psychic abilities. This is, this is the man, the actor that's going to, to play the Sheik Mohammed. And, you know, the actor's last name is Wait, W-A-K-E-D. Wait, like, wake up. Holy Spirit is like, I'm trying to use my best characters here to help you wake up. So this is, I think his name is A-M-R, Wait. So basically this is the premise of the movie. And this is just how we get, we get led into it. You start to see that these are people who are good examples of all of, all of the characters in the dream. They have their desires, their wishes. They have their, their struggles and their challenges. They have their pride and pride in their relationships, pride in their careers, pride in their countries. And the one thing in this movie is none of them really are that much into spirituality or religion. But, but Sheik Mohammed, he wants to do something that can help his countrymen. And he's kind of altruistic. He's, he's really a sweet guy. And we find that Harriet Cheb Talbert, she's really a pretty sweet woman. And, and, and also with Dr. Alfred, you know, our, our fishing experts, scientists, they basically, none of them talk that much, especially the ones in, in, in the UK are not talking much at all about faith. Faith seems one of those topics that is, is pushed aside for those into religion and spirituality, you know, but Albert Einstein was one of the greatest scientists of all time. And Einstein really talked quite a lot about faith. He felt faith was very important. And I think a lot of quantum physicists know that it takes a lot of faith to keep diving deeper into the, the quantum mechanic world underneath because it's, it's not Newtonian. It's not what meets the eye. It, it takes a lot of faith to go down when you start splitting atoms and trying to figure out what is going on with all this energy when you split atoms. It takes a lot of faith. So in this movie, we're going to see the gentle unfolding of the scenes as the spirit is helping everyone start to take a leap forward in faith. What I love about this movie is, I think of the way it's gone for me. And at some point, probably back around 1986, when I left 10 years full time of university behind, I started to be guided on an, on an adventure that I would have never anticipated in a million years. If somebody told me that my next decades, let's say from 86 to 2023, if they told me those decades would go the way they've gone, I would have, I would have either laughed or if they would have showed me a motion picture of the way things unfolded in those decades, I would have said, who is this guy? And that is freaky. That is freaking me out. I got, I got to get away from this because that is plain freaky to go. If I would have seen a movie, I would have been freaked out. I would have, would have run the farthest, the fastest I could to get away from the movie. But that's how the, that's how the Holy Spirit works. The Holy Spirit just gives you one little drop at a time to expand the faith, one little moment at a time. And none of us would dive into this if we could see what was coming because our ego would not be ready for this at all. The ego would go freaky, freaky, weird. Get out of here. Don't go there. And that's what I love about this movie is because none of the characters really see what's coming. They will actively dismiss things. For our scientists, Dr. Alfred, when he's first told there's a project we want you to come and bring salmon fish to a river in Yemen, he just thinks it's absurd. He thinks it's ridiculous. He thinks it's incredible. It's absolutely impossible. It's unattainable. And I know a lot of us have had those same reactions to things when people present. Some of the things that have been presented to me that I thought were the most absolute, ridiculous things I'd ever heard of came to pass. I rejected them out of hand. No way. Not in a million years. And the Holy Spirit's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know you think this is impossible, but oh, yeah. You'll change your mind. You'll definitely change your mind because God's will is for perfect happiness. And as a human being, you don't know that perfect happiness because you're so identified with the puppet. The puppet's just something that the spirit wants to use. But when we get too identified with the puppet, we feel bizarre. We feel bizarre. We feel like this world is crazy. And our mind that believes in the ego is indeed insane. But that's not our real mind. That's not our right mind. So I hope you all sit back and enjoy it. It's a nice, easy movie. And I think it's kind of got like British humor in it because how many of you know the actress Kristen Scott Thomas? I always enjoy her movies. This has got to be one of her most comedic movies because she's going to play a woman, Patricia, who basically is a PR person for the British government, for the Prime Minister. So her motive is whatever story will spin and provide a good look for the British Prime Minister, that's her job. So she's got to take the worst news, the worst publicity, and somehow spin it. She's like a spin doctor. She's a political spin doctor who tries to spin any story to look to benefit the British government and the British Prime Minister. So she's going to be used by the Holy Spirit too. And she is quite comical. She takes her job so seriously that even her children and her husband can hardly relate to her. She is so devoted to being a PR spin doctor that mostly her children can't even relate to her. And I think that's part of the the cosmic humor is that everyone is used in a way to loosen the mind, to unwind the mind from its grip of believing in the self-concept. Okay, that's my spiel for this morning. Let's sit back and enjoy the movie. Let's hold that prayer in our heart. Okay, God, take me and show me how you can use time and space to free my mind. And through this movie, I think we're going to enjoy the ride. Okay, see you soon. I'll pop in for some commentary.