 that, you know, we don't give any credence to body, and then in the next breath we say, well, the bodies are here, and we're examining relationships and all that, and all the bodies. And I guess the way I had to come to see it was that, yes, in the back of my mind I have to remember that bodies are not real, but it sure seems that that's what I see. In my experience it seems like bodies are very real. And in my experiences that I feel like I'm in relationships with people and I experience a lot of what this is talking about. And so what that means is I still haven't gotten to the fact that bodies aren't real. I still am acting as if there are bodies. And the only reason for that is that, again, you know, the Course talks about we have to start from where we believe we are. I still obviously believe in bodies. I take care of this one as if it was my own. And I recognize other bodies as people that I know or people I don't know and things like that. Even though I had a sense that, you know, a growing sense that this isn't the way it really is it sure still seems to be that way. And so that's why there's all this attention and focus given to something that we ultimately say isn't really real. Because we have to start with what we believe. We still haven't gotten down to that, you know, when we talk about tracing back all the beliefs we still haven't gotten to the belief of bodies. You know, there's an underlying assumption in all of this and that's that a belief in bodies. And so it's like until we can get to that belief which is way, way, way at the bottom of all this pile of beliefs that we have then we still have to start from, you know, like if we talk about the transparencies that are all piled up, bodies are probably the bottom transparencies. Time has space. Time has space. And then bodies. World bodies. Well they're right there close to the glass. So it's like I have to start up here with these top transparencies and start taking those off before I get way down to this one that deals with bodies. So that's why sometimes it seems inconsistent to say well there aren't really bodies but we're going to talk as if there are. Well I have a question that I've been wondering about. When you finally get down to the bodies transparency are you going to quit taking care of the ones that seems to be yours? When I get down to that one. Don't even try to figure the students. You're making a lot of talking here but you have a lot of things to question because that's why this is that kindergarten. You guys want to follow me around and really go into this very very deeply and devote your life to it. I'll guarantee you that there will be shifts and there will be changes and you won't take care of how Jesus said to his disciples take no care for what you wear or what you eat. Just trust. Just go out and speak the word and all will be provided. And that's been my experience. Again the difference is that instead of a personal eye, a private eye thinking that I have to take care of all those things I really have to do a lot of work to maintain the body and all of the things that seem to go into it you know feeding it, clothing it, sheltering it buying health insurance for it getting it proper medical attention eating right, exercising right and everything that's not my experience of this world anymore. I don't have that experience. Now, what I see is it's just like this giant synchronicity that everything is taken care of. It's kind of like the night when we went to pick up Mary and I was telling the story here of picking up Hitchhiker Randy and I know Beck was saying it was getting time to go. She got up, she got out of the door and I said well we'll just finish the story and after the story was told it came to its completion. We got in the car, Becka didn't race or hit it and go 70 miles an hour, she just went we evaded the traffic lights, we got down there we got out of the car, the bus had just pulled in it was deloading and by the time we got to the entrance where Mary was coming through we both kind of just met. We were not there two seconds or three seconds too soon or too late. It was perfect synchronicity. You hear that term synchronicity come up a lot because when you get so detached from the mind it's like life just seems to be... Detached from the body. For the wrong mind is what I meant. When you get detached from the wrong mind and you're in the right mind then it's like you're watching a play in which everything is synchronized in which you don't have to struggle anymore to really work hard to make pieces that just right, you start to step back and you start to just say I don't have to work on the screen anymore everything will be provided and it's really effortless. You don't have to give any attention to it that's what I hear you saying. Oh, you don't give attention to food I mean obviously, my gosh, food it's just we've had enough food here to choke a horse and it wasn't no different in Adrian's we were just down there and when I traveled to the Times where we haven't had a lot for a long time it's just you don't take thought for it it seems crazy to... even with things like bank accounts and checking accounts symbolically it moved more and more to I said, okay Holy Spirit it's your account now and I even got to the point where I wasn't balancing the checkbook I hit one of these things that automatically was hooked up to the savings and I went months and months and months and months never bothered to balance the checkbook no problems usually that could be a sign of big problems you don't balance your checkbook but it was like this sense even with the money everything was just synchronized exercise I used to exercise I used to play tennis I was concerned about my cardiovascular thing basketball I used to run I ran into a 10 kilometer race and I used to go to food supermarkets and really read the packages like they told me to about content, sodium content, calories, cholesterol take no thought for what you wear or eat I used to go to the dentist there was a time I used to go to doctors there was a time I used to work and really think about when the end of the day was gonna come so I could like Fred Flintstone go you have an avenue there was a time when Friday at 5 o'clock used to be important there was a time when Monday at 8 8 in the morning used to be a significant time on and on and on what I'm saying is there all of this then there's a detachment that comes where it still seems on the screen like things are clicking in and being taken care of but you take no thought for it your whole attention is just riveted on staying with the Holy Spirit and sharing his word and sharing the good news of the gospel so to speak and really I'm just teaching myself so it's like I'm trying to go out even in the evangelize I don't even have a pressure to feel like I gotta reach more people or like I've got this long mission in front of me that's incomplete I mean to me it's a state of completion I feel very very total and complete like there's nothing out of place so again what we're doing here is again we're gonna Jesus will even describe in the next section you know some of the translation that takes place but really each time we come together that's why it's so precious because what we do is we're really still looking at the symbols that the mind still believes in so I use, I mean I'll talk about this higher metaphysics but I'll use, I'll talk about bodies and different things that seem to be the everyday experience because that's where you have to start but again one of the things too is that get back to Linda's question about the body is that I understand that we're trying to get back to the mind but you know all through the Course it's basically that the body is a learning device you know and that's why you have it so it's not completely unimportant and it's for the Holy Spirit's use and again learning device again comes back to what are we learning? we're learning to expand perception or to come to heal perception and for me the ego would have it be a learning device for developing skills and drawing attention to oneself and on and on and on so again you have to be real clear then on the purpose if it's just a learning device and there's only two lessons in the mind the right mind and the wrong mind the whole point of the body is to come to learn right-mindedness at which point the Course says you will realize that you have no need of a body at all in other words when you learn what you need to learn when you're learning device, Holy Relationship True Perception, the real world then you have no need for a learning device anymore at that point it does become totally meaningless and then so what happens? wake up time wake up abstract knowledge total joy and love beyond anything that's conceivable there's nothing to do with this he says if you multiply it by 100 the faintest glimmering of love by 100 and multiply it by a thousand times more than that you still only have a faint glimmering of what that state is interesting that we've gotten off on bodies because in this paragraph here and they trace the completion bodies are never mentioned Holy Spirit knew that we needed to stay at some other level I think first I think this gets into a lot of deep stuff about specialist here about trying to trade itself and everything just keep moving on towards that transformation that's coming more and more maybe we could just a summarizing paragraph for this stuff a couple lines at the top of page 319 it kind of summarizes what we've been talking about about the attraction of guilt how as long as some things in the world seem valuable then the mind is really actually attracted to guilt not seeing but that's what it's attracted to it doesn't believe that guilt is hell it thinks that guilt looks pretty attractive is that where you're starting? the paragraph is at the bottom of page 342 paragraph 9 the appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of guilt which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in loneliness so that kind of describes these gifts that's what the ego is going out saying here you go, got a lot of gifts over here for you and once the mind, once you start to get clear and clear those aren't gifts at all it's like, I don't want your gifts they aren't really helpful to me they're just reinforcing this guilt and it's the paragraph that begins it's 1, 2, 3 paragraphs later it begins whenever any form paragraph 12 whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual remember love is content and not form of any kind that really lays it out straight because ritual is all these attempts when you think about parent-child relationships or romantic relationships or whatever, there's so much ritual it seems to go along with it so many actions like for example, just take romantic love set the mood candlelight table for two bottle of wine some roses, you know that's a ritual I've never thought about that that's form and that's what is raised up is important it doesn't matter what the two partners say they can just be quiet or they can maybe argue and bicker about the food or something but I mean it's like the whole set is set the ambience give the mind a good start give it some good form and it really is just raising a ritual a form is important and again, where is the content? the special love relationship is a ritual of form aimed at raising the form to take the place of God at the expense of content there is no meaning in the form and there will never be the special relationship must be recognized for what it is a senseless ritual in which strength is exacted extracted from the death of God and invested in his killers as the time has formed and love has lost its meaning would you want this to be possible even apart from its evident impossibility? don't you tell me this is impossible but would you want it to be possible even apart from the fact that it isn't possible? if it were possible you would have made yourself helpless God is not angry he merely could not let this happen you cannot change his mind no ritual that you had set up in which the stance of death who lights you can bring death to the eternal nor can your chosen substitutes for the wholeness of God have any influence at all upon maybe one more sentence there see in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before him and by worshiping them to obscure their kindness and his greatness so it starts to get more and more apparent that anything is really important in terms of form when we've discussed relationships it's kind of like what are your interests and what is your partner's interests we like to show the good things in life we like fine dining we have rituals of fine dining rituals of... we have sexual rituals we have rituals of travel