 I follow him, but he didn't believe he was a guru and he didn't believe in disciples, so that's what we put an end to those kinds of things. Countries love what he said and it's so profound that they try to claim it. Do you live here, right? No? But you live here, no. India, London, and Ohio, California. When he would speak, he would speak of all these things, institutions, government, relationships, and all these things from such a detached point of view as if they were just a bunch of ideas. As if they weren't real in a solid sense, that they were just a bunch of ideas that could be sunk beneath and gone beyond if there was enough attention. And as I've gone on in my life, I mean, that's literally the way it seems. It seems like this cause and effect thing has now started to turn around in the sense that, you know, more and more, it's like as I start to just travel the course, travel the country and just speak about the course and just do what I've always wanted to do that I never knew what it was. Just follow the sentence to the very depth and to speak on it. It's just a delight meeting the people and going into things and feeling the connectedness and everything that everything else just starts to fall away. And, you know, we got into, whether you get into male-female issues, whether you get into issues that the world sees as important, abortion, or gun control, or nuclear stuff, or political stuff. You know, you, more and more, you start to see things as ideas, and that these things are ideas in my own mind. It's a radical idea, because it just so much seems like, wait a minute, I'm just one teeny little person walking on this globe, and there seems to be these vast forces outside of me, you know, economic forces, you know, how's the job market going, and there are forces like diseases, and nutrition, and shortages of water, and war, you know. But now I'm saying, as far as his message goes, there's a lot of, oh, what if he goes after the oil and cuts off the oil and has to do this to the economy? You know, it's all like this interdependent building a cart, a thing of cart, you know, like it's all real teetery. And in one big blow, it knocked the whole thing over, you know, people talked about nuclear disaster growing up, the generation system, and lived with what the superpowers would, you know, get into a confrontation. And it's all seeming to be external forces. So here we come to the core, and not only is he saying, your mind is positive, you know, that you're responsible for your state of mind, but he's saying that the world that you see, the whole thing, is made up in your mind. He's saying, like in lesson 76, he gets real specific, he starts rattling off these beliefs, you know, you believe in laws of friendship. You know, here's that friendship thing. Oh my gosh, I've got beliefs in laws of friendship. Maybe I don't even know my friends as they are. You know, he says that you're involved with friendship, we're all tied in with reciprocity, you know. That's the only relationship we've known in this state of mind. You know, I'll do this, but, you know, you do this, and we'll kind of compromise, you know, seems like a good thing in this world. And yet compromise is based on give a little, lose a little. And he's saying, there's a way in which everyone gains. There's a way of seeing the world in which everyone gains. Besides the laws of economics, the laws of nutrition. You know, probably we went around the room and everybody could not only give what their diets are, but maybe a life history and an evolution of their diet. Some of us have gone through some interesting routes in diets. And not only is he kind of just says, like he said 2,000 years ago, it's not what you put in your mouth that defiled the heart. He gets real specific in the court. And he basically says, the laws of nutrition are made up in your own mind, you know. But there isn't somehow an objective world out there with objective nutrition laws. You know, you've got to eat from five food groups, or have balanced meals, or eat macrobiotic, or this and that. But these are laws that are made up in our minds. And you know, the yogis with some of the eastern actions have kind of, you know, gone some of them, gone without eating. But Ram Dass's, you know, the story about his viewers putting all these drugs down, his mouth is just being unaffected by all these hallucinogenics and everything. That clearly there's lots of those kinds of things that point to mind over matter. And that's what Jesus is doing in the court. You have a very powerful mind, and you've given it to a lot of foolish beliefs. Now I'm going to try to show you what they are, and you can come and see how foolish they are. And when you're able to see how foolish they are, like I did, then you'll have dominion over the earth. You won't see this little thing that's constantly, you know, boggling and fighting for survival, but you will literally have dominion over the earth. There's a lot of parts in the court that are mind boggling. For instance, if this is true, if the world is a projection from my own mind, you know, then the problem is entirely in my own mind. That there aren't the national deaths and world hunger and, you know, the AIDS crisis and so on and so on and so forth. You know, it seems like there's enormous problems on so many different levels. There's interpersonal conflict. There's, you know, disease where they study the micro levels of the molecule and the cellular level. They seem to find all these mutations. There seem to be problems down there. There seems to be, you know, at the national level, at the global level. And basically, in lesson 79 Jesus, 79 maybe, Jesus said there's no way that the problems could ever be solved the way you perceive the problems. Because they occur on so many different levels that it just would be impossible. But the good news is, is that there's only one problem and there's only one solution. So it doesn't make sense that if there is such a thing as truth, it would be simple and not complicated. So here comes the teaching along with all this stuff that seems to make your head spin sometimes. If you watch the news or, you know, you get caught in this, it seems overwhelming. And here it comes down to one problem, one solution. The one problem being the belief and separation. You know, that tiny, mad idea, that little thought that's been given power that's been, you know, believed in, believed to be true. And that's the one problem. And the one solution is the Holy Spirit that's literally sitting right next to where the problem is and the mind is shining at a wedding. Just like when you go into it. When you go into a dark room and you turn the light on, the darkness is gone. And the Course teaches us that as soon as the belief and separation seems to happen, Holy Spirit has given us an answer. And the whole thing was solved in an instant. One instant. Not trodden this year, and so on and so forth. One instant. But the mind, instead of accepting the Holy Spirit says the answer, the mind already took off running. And was running to the world. Running towards the form. Terrified, you know. So, it's like the Holy Spirit is constantly in our minds just reminding us. He loves you. It's a silly idea. You could never separate from your father. It's impossible. It's literally impossible. It's a gentle reminder in there that even though the mind is kind of run and formed, and stacked on layers of complexity to build up all these makes-a-leaves laws of time and space and bodies and diseases and architectures and buildings, and just a constant layer of complexity, there's still this simple little light in our minds telling us that it just couldn't happen. It's an impossible thing. And also calling us to return. Calling us back to where we truly live, which is in heaven. So, this cause and effect has to be reversed around. And when the mind is in its deceit state, it needs, it's completely forgotten the Holy Spirit and it's completely forgotten heaven. So it needs to, the Holy Spirit knows that it believes in specific now. Specific now. The Holy Spirit knows that the mind believes in bodies and things and objects and all these different kind of things. And so these are like symbols that the Spirit will use to help guide the mind back to that place of abstract knowledge, or of what's of course called first of all the real world. And he uses the symbols to come back. So, you know, that's why it's important for us when we first started talking, we were talking about, we were talking about drawing it back, is that I always throw that out as the underlying metaphysics. And it just seems to be helpful to go over and over because it always comes back to that. I mean, but it doesn't seem that way. If you're having a temper tantrum, if you feel like you've got to pay the rent and the rent's coming due, you know, that's like, well, that's a nice story, but I need some whole part cash here in a month or whatever, that it certainly doesn't seem to be what's happened. Things just don't seem to be what they are. But we need to start with problems that we're perceiving in our lives and then work it back. The first thing you can do if you're perceiving a problem at work or you're perceiving a problem with a relationship or whatever is remind yourself this is a perceptual problem, you know. In other words, instead of trying to define the problem as the situation, you know, as I don't have enough money to pay the rent or as my boyfriend said he would leave me, you know, if I don't do this and I can't do that, so what am I going to do? You know, I'm going out of my mind waiting for some sun, you know, and I'm frustrated. Those are all defining the problem as a specific situation. And the first thing you can do is just remind yourself this is a perceptual problem. The way I'm seeing it is the problem. There's nothing inherently wrong about what's going on in the world, the way things are unfolding. The national debt may be going billions, billions. Ah, but I have a perceptual problem. AIDS may seem to be spreading and spreading and spreading. Ah, but I have a perceptual problem. I need the rent money in two days and I don't know where to get it. Ah, but I have a perceptual problem. You know, if you could just remember, ah, it's a perceptual problem. And, you know, I give some examples of this to try to break it home a little bit. I gave the example at the group about, you know, going to a movie and ten people singing a movie and then afterwards you go out to eat or have a cup of coffee and you hear all these, but what do you think? Oh, what do you think? You know, I like it. Well, it didn't do much for me and, you know, there we go down the line. I also give examples when my sister got married and she invited me to her wedding party and it was one of the first times in my life where I really went perception. Like, I got a graph on what perception means. It sounds like one of these psychological words, you know, just like projection. Well, what are you talking about? Projection, you know? Give me some concrete examples. But I was sitting next to the TV and all these people from all these different generations who were invited from the wedding party were there and they were all watching the TV and I couldn't see the TV. And basically, I think it was Eddie Murphy-Raw. It was a video. And I'm looking now just watching all these faces turn red and lips getting tight and, you know, face high shifting around. Some of it like, you know, embarrassment, humiliation. Some of it just outright anger and rage. My brother-in-law falling onto the floor is rolling over, laughing. And it's kind of like a painter watching the scene of Kansas full of emotions or different reactions and thinking they're all watching the same images and they're all listening to the same sound. And look at the variety. I mean, it clearly came to me that obviously they were reading, they were each seeing something different. They had such diverse reactions and they were giving the meaning to those sounds and those images. It wasn't just the images were making them laugh, making them, you know, cry. That's the backward thinking again that we've all grown up with. You know, you heard my feelings and, you know, if you had done what you done, I wouldn't be so hurt. They had their perceptions based on their own past experiences, right? I mean, they were comparing it with whatever happened to them or something like that. So, then what I'm just saying about perceptions and what you could do is not, I mean, just kind of separate yourself from the past and just try to be here now and not develop a past. Well, that's exactly, that's the next thing we'll go into because if you can first just say it's a perceptual problem. I mean, that's like lesson two, I've given everything I see all the meaning. Then we can take some of the early lessons as a core and it's like they'll light up because what these early lessons are about is literally helping to make connections that my mind is full of past thoughts and these past thoughts are projecting out the world.