 so precious. So grateful that we can join together here on Christmas and have an experience of the Christ here and now as our true identity. And that has to be the greatest Christmas present that we could ever give or receive is just the remembrance of who we are. Like the ancient Greeks said, you know, who am I? Know thyself. That is the greatest experience, bar none. There is nothing else but that experience to give your whole heart to. So what a beautiful Christmas present we have. And you voted on your themes for the week to go deep into this experience of knowing yourself as the living Christ. And so that's like our runway. That's our approach to remembering the Christ presence, the I am presence that is before time was, that the presence of God's love is so strong that that we can smile as the light starts to stream through the darkness and fill our minds and light our minds up. And I always pay attention with the movies to the smallest little details. So when you notice the movie, as this movie begins, there's almost like a hush that's going to come over all of us. And then the big word will come on the screen, first of all, which is universal. That's the name of the company making the movie today, universal. So we get to see the beautiful universal symbol. And then we also get to see another company that's making the movie. It's called beacon like beacon of light. It's the beacon of light inside our hearts that's reaching us. So even the companies that are making this movie for us today are universal and beacon beacon of light. Well, when we approach forgiveness, oftentimes we think that we need to forgive ourselves as a person or forgive other people. But what Jesus is really asking us to do here on Christmas Day is he wants us to really go deep into the experience that we have a perceptual problem. Like if you if I said this is a 12 step group that you've encountered on Christmas Day, and you don't have to admit that you're alcoholic or that you have a drug addiction or a sex addiction today, you just have to admit that you have a human perception addiction that Hi, my name is so and so and I, I, I believed I was a human. And only problem with that was it kept blocking the light that I really am. Because God created me as pure spirit, and I, I've had a misperception of my identity as being tiny, when actually I'm vast, when actually I'm so vast that I can't even be contained in time and space. I'm so vast. I'm an eternal creation of God. And that's what we're going to pray to the Holy Spirit and Jesus today to show us through the movie through the journey of the movie that we are divine spirit. God's will for us is perfect happiness. But the reason we have not fully embraced God's will is because we, we believe less than love. We believe in something that can be limited. We believe that something could be frail or weak or or somehow less than perfect. And in this world, we have tried ego defense mechanisms like perfectionism, like even to try to become a perfect person is still an attempt at the impossible, because the spirit is perfect. The spirit is perfect. The human being is a construct. It's a, it's flesh. It's, it's a, it's a veil covering over our true identity as the Christ. So for those of you who have worked with a course in miracles, you know that a course in miracles has 31 chapters. And then it's followed up by 365 workbook lessons. And then a manual for teachers. How practical can it be to have a teaching that takes you step by step through the theory into the practical application into becoming a miracle worker or a teacher of God. And then finally, letting it all go, letting go of the miracle worker story and accepting yourself as the living eternal Christ. That's the progression that we go through as we wake up from this dream of, of separation. Now, the area that we're going to touch on today on Christmas day, Jesus doesn't really bring this up very strongly until the final chapter, Chapter 31. And then he's only four sections from finishing his text, and he, he brings up a subject. And you know, he, it must be important because he waited 31 chapters, and he waited till the fourth section from the end of the text before he brings this up. So he must think that we have to be ready for it. But I think we're ready. It's Christmas. If we're not ready on Christmas, then we're not going to ever be ready. You know, this is, this is our hard day of awakening. You know, this is it. This is it. So then the section I'm talking about is, is section number five and Chapter 31 called self concept versus self. So if you've been following along what I've been teaching for the last 35 years, then you probably have heard me talk about this before. The world of time and space is a world of concepts. And all of the great mystics and saints have said the same thing. That's right. Buddha said it. Jesus said it. Ramana Maharshi said it. Paramahansa Yogananda. All of the saints and mystics throughout all of the centuries have said the same thing. Empty your mind of concepts. Empty your mind of everything you think you think and think you know. Hold on to nothing. Buddha said, go through the void. And Jesus says, go, go through empty your mind and open to the miracle, open to the Holy instant and realize that you are the light. That's basically, we know the story. We've heard it from many saints and mystics. Now Jesus has got a section here, section five in Chapter 31, which is self concept versus self. And he goes to explain this even more in detail. Self concept is what the ego made up to take the place of the Christ and self is the Christ, which is the light. So that's an important distinction between the illusion of the self, which is made up of idols. Jesus says it's painted. The self concept is, he says it's painted with the brushes of the world, the painted with the brushes of the world. So you can imagine a little painter who's painting all these bodies, different sizes and shapes and colors, different countries, different languages, painting, painting, painting, painting. Jesus says that the ego paints the self concept with the brushes of the world. And he says, these are idols. All images of the world are idols made to take the place of God's love. In the Bible, we heard have no graven images before the Lord by God. That's what Jesus is talking about in this section. He's saying, don't identify with any of the images because they were made by the ego to take the place of the truth, of the Christ, of God. So in this section, Jesus starts off by saying that the learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. And he basically says, for this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions. Here in time and space, it walks alone where what it sees is one with it. The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is for. So if anybody's ever asked you, how could such a world come about? It couldn't come about in reality. But to the ego, this is the ego's world of time and space of bodies that was made as a veil to cover over the light, to cover over the truth of who we are, which is an eternal being. We're actually an eternal being because our source is eternal and we're eternal too. And this is a dream of separation. This is mesmerism. This is like hypnotism. This is fiction. This is fantasy. And this is the self concept. And what Jesus tells us, he says there's two parts to it because the concept of the self was made to serve two purposes. Right away, we should know it's a trick because Jesus always tells us we're only to serve one purpose and that's forgiveness. But the concept of the self, the personality self, the world of economics, of disease, all the systems of the world, the micro systems, the macro systems, the cosmic systems, the solar system, the galaxies, the black holes, the everything of time and space is part of a veil to keep us from knowing who we really are. And now at the very end of his text, he's giving us the clue about this whole thing. He's saying that this self concept was made to serve two purposes. The one purpose is the surface purpose. I'll say on the surface of consciousness is your personality self. And this is what Jesus calls the face of innocence. He's got some very interesting things to say about this face of innocence. He's basically saying the first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted on so that when you think you're acting in terms of the world as a person, you're acting on the face of innocence. It's the mask. You know, like in Latin persona means mask. That's the mask. The personality self is the face of innocence. And he says it is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions and it looks at times with pity on the suffering and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good within an evil world. Now that's just the top tier. He also says the same self concept can grow angry. It can feel like it's a victim. It never makes the first attack, but it always seems to be provoked to irritation and annoyance. Something every day is going wrong for this face of innocence. Oh, maybe it's something with your bank account or maybe it's something I see Patricia with the IRS. Maybe it's something with the IRS. It could be anything. It could be it's snowed and your car is under a foot of snow and you have to drive. You got to go clear the snow and ice off. That's irritating to this face of innocence. Or when people insult you, the people give you that look or they give a snide remark and you have a little bit of twinge of upset and anger. That's the self concept. That's the top tier. And then Jesus goes on to say that beneath the face of innocence, there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement and a fear so devastating that the face that smiles above it must forever look away lest it perceive the treachery it hides. And this dark, dark self is what Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist, he called it the shadow. So just to summarize what I'm saying is your personality self is a mask that's covering over the shadow. And what Jesus is telling us is they're both not real. The surface one and the one underneath are both not who you are. You're the Christ. And so he's telling us now he's gone through 31 chapters. He's on section five and he's kind of saying for Christ's sake, now I'm going to really give it to you straight. At the very end of his text, he's going to really give it to us really straight. He's not messing around now. He only has a few sections to go before he starts his workbook. So he's going to like say, I'm giving it to you. Girl, listen. Listen, I'm going to give it to you straight here. Girlfriend, boyfriend, listen close. This is what I'm talking about. So then you voted this week on the themes that you wanted to reach the Christ with and so I'm so happy that you came up with these themes because I read what you voted on and then I prayed and prayed and Friday morning it just, oh Jesus, it came in so strong. This is the movie. This is the perfect movie for this. So here's what you voted on. These are the themes. Number one, all problems are perceptual problems. That, wow, that you picked the greatest theme I can ever think of to dismantle the self-concept. All problems are perceptual problems. What does that mean? What does that even mean? It means that you don't really have interpersonal relationship problems. You don't really have financial problems. You don't really have health issues with the body or symptom issues. You don't really have stress issues. You don't really have issues with your family and friends during the holidays. You don't have any food issues. You don't have any weight issues. He's basically saying you've only got one issue and isn't that relieving to you to know that you only have one issue and that issue is it's a perceptual problem. Okay, still you might be shaking your head going, okay, tell me more. It sounds interesting, but you're telling me I've just had one problem and Jesus is like, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's what I'm saying. Well, a perceptual problem has a few different aspects to it. First of all, if you're seeing something that's not there, that's a hallucination. So that's the first aspect of a perceptual problem is seeing something that's not there. What you're dealing with on a daily basis is a mirage. It's like if you were in a desert and you were thirsty and you had a mirage of an oasis. Well, that's what we're dealing with on a daily basis. We're dealing with a mirage of existence. It's not an actual existence. It's spirit. It's a mirage of images. Some of you might call it a barrage of images. It feels like some days a barrage of images. It's a barrage of a mirage. I'm getting poetic here. So what Jesus is saying is in order to wake up, you have to admit that you have a perceptual problem. Wow, did he pick a movie for us because I don't know about you, but have any of you watched Christmas movies? Most of your life, have you seen Christmas movies? I've ended up growing up and watching this Jimmy Stewart movie called It's a Wonderful Life. Pretty much every December I was watching Jimmy Stewart and It's a Wonderful Life. And in that movie, he's from a banking family and basically his life starts to fall apart. And then the angel is sent in named Clarence. And in order for Clarence, the angel to get his wings, he has to help Jimmy Stewart, the main character to forgive and to heal from the past. Well, that's what this movie today is. We're going to see another movie where the main character named Jack, he thinks that he has a perfect life on earth. He actually believes that his life in form is perfect. And the angel, when the angel is told about this, the angel laughs and says, oh, this is going to be so good. This is going to be so good. Angels love it when arrogance is washed away. Angels love to see humbleness. Angels love to see laughter and lightness and love. But their job is to help ease away into the love that is our truth, that is our reality. So keep that in mind that when we watch this movie, your main objective is to see for yourselves that this is a perceptual problem. It's a mirage. It's a fiction, a story of fragmentation, different parts, different people, different idols, different images. It's like a broken mirror. This world is like a cracked mirror. And just like in the Matrix, we're going to try to stick or we're going to try to touch the cracked mirror today and have it all merged together into one thing, one forgiven thing. That's what we want to do. Okay, the second thing that you voted on was remembering to forgive no matter what. Even when you're tempted to be right, you still remember to forgive. Even when you're tempted to point the finger or blame somebody or blame something in the world, you say, oh, no, no. I'm not going to be tricked. I'm here to forgive. I only have one purpose and I'm not going to forget my purpose. I'm going to remember that I'm here to forgive. That's basically my one function is to learn to forgive. And Jesus taught us that 2,000 years ago, but now with the Course in Miracles, he's just saying, I just want to remind you again 2,000 years later that really your only purpose is to forgive. You don't have to worry about anything else. That's just your one job. You don't have many jobs, just one. Third one is since it's all for healing, you can't mess it up. So no matter what you think you've done in this world, you cannot mess this up because everything is working together for the good. And all you have to do is realize that and have a moment of realization. And all of your mistakes are gone. In one full moment of realization, your mistakes vanish, all of them. Anything that you ever thought you did wrong or right, it all vanishes in one moment of realization. It's worth it. It's worth it. What can I say? Why would we want anything else if we could experience one moment of release that we really are completely released? We're not looking this Christmas to turn our world into the Matrix. Because how many of you watched the first Matrix back in 1999? Neo wakes up and he takes off like Superman flying through the sky. He leaves the phone booth behind, right? Anybody remember that? That's it. That should have been the end of the story. How can you have a sequel if you realize you are the one and you take off like Superman and fly away from the planet? That's it. No, there's no second Matrix, no third Matrix, and there's no fourth Matrix. All the Matrix 2, 3, and 4 show is that you didn't wake up. You had a false awakening. In fact, in later Matrix, I'm shaking my head and wondering how the hell is Neo still dealing with all this special relationship stuff and still getting trapped? I thought he woke up and he is the one. Everybody said he is the one and Neo, the letters Neo got rearranged to one and we all rejoiced. We left the theater, we went, hallelujah, Neo woke up and he's a way show. It's like Jesus. So there is no second, third, fourth Matrix. Don't be tricked into thinking that there can be a sequel to this plan. Now, all these other sequels were just different scenarios still with the belief that Neo did not wake up. In fact, I think the last one, the one that was just released, there's one character that says to Neo, I thought you could fly. You imagine Superman and then sequel, sequel, sequel and now he can't fly anymore. What's that all about? Superman who can't fly and Neo who can't fly. I don't buy it. Don't get me started on versions of the course either. I think the first one was enough and am I the only one that's going, why do we need five versions of the same thing? Why would Jesus do five versions? He certainly wouldn't really have needed five. I think he got it right away, but maybe the practice and application of it is the thing that is what's important here, not the numbers of versions. The next one is being humble enough to ask Spirit for help. In this movie we're going to see Jack is so deluded that he thinks he's a powerful, successful businessman and he thinks that he's got the perfect life. That's the worst case scenario for us. When we believe the illusion is real and we think it can be good, if we believe fragmentation is real and we accept it as good, then we haven't forgiven it. We've just adapted to a lie. We were just presented with a lie and instead of going no, no thank you, I'll take the truth please. I'll take love. I don't want a lie, but the human condition is like embracing the lie and then saying I'm going to play with the tinker toys of the lie. Jesus is like don't do it. Let me guide you how to unwind from the tinker toys, but don't get too caught up in the tinker toys because you're going to feel stressful, angry, you're going to feel hurt, you're going to feel weak if you get involved with these tinker toys, these idols. And then the last one you voted on with 30 votes was fear and difficulty relating to people. Has anybody ever had any difficulty relating to people? Oh my gosh, that's what this earth seems to be about. We have difficulty relating to ourselves as a person, much less everybody else. It's hard every day to deal with this body and with this concept of a personality. Is it good enough? Is it good enough? Is it ever going to be good enough? And then once we start to turn our eyes away from this personality self, we start to look at other personalities to try to relate to them as companions. Can I find a compatible personality to go with this personality so I can be a less lonely personality and I can be a couple personality or I can be a paired off personality. Wow. That's like trying to say two wrongs can be made into a right. And this is what people believe when they look for the right one. What if Christ is the right one? That's why it's Christmas. We're celebrating the birth of Christ. Christ is the one. And yet when we look outside ourselves in the form and we keep trying to reconfigure the self concept, then it just doesn't work. So in this movie, I'll give you a little bit of a setup before we launch into the movie. Jack is a man who has devoted his life to becoming successful and making a lot of money. We see at the beginning of the movie that Jack has a flashback from 13 years ago where he and his girlfriend, his sweetheart named Kate, is this deja vu or what? Didn't I just show a movie a couple of weeks ago with Kate and Jack? They're back again. Jesus really is using these characters. Kate and Jack are back again. And again, they're exes. They're ex-partners because the flashback shows when they were together at the airport and then he's getting ready to fly off to London to do an internship and she's having a bad feeling like they should not be separating. And yet he's like, no, no, I love you. Nothing's going to change that. One year away in London won't change that. It changes everything. They never do come back together in terms of that scenario. Basically, he goes off to be a successful businessman. And yet the angel in this movie named Cash, that's what you have, an angel named Cash to undo the business self-concept. Do you see how Jesus has so much fun? It's an angel named Cash. And this is a man named, the actor is Don Chateau, and he's so funny, but he's going to help dismantle the self-concept through another self-concept. And this is how the Holy Spirit works. The Holy Spirit is not going to rip all of their self-concepts away because it would be too frightening to rip them away. That would be like trying to take the tablecloth off of the table while there's China and silverware and glasses there. The Holy Spirit is not going to rip the tablecloth out while there's China there on it. But the Holy Spirit has to use the self-concepts that the ego made up and that the mind believes in to slowly unwind the mind from these false self-concepts so that it can be taken back towards forgiveness, towards a new way of looking at the world. I love how he says that in here. He says, concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning, they do not exist. And he also says concepts maintain the world. So he's telling us that this self-concept, which is meaningless, is what all of the learning of the world, all of the programming, all the conditioning, everything we've ever learned in this world has been for one purpose and that's to maintain a false sense of self. To maintain a personality self-concept in a fragmented world, which has nothing to do with heaven and nothing to do with eternity. And yet he says, thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a retranslation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf. So in other words, the Holy Spirit is not going to yank you away from the world. The Holy Spirit is not going to hurl you into the light. Jesus says in the Course, you will not be don't don't be afraid of being hurled into reality because the Holy Spirit doesn't work that way. The Holy Spirit is gentle. So the Holy Spirit has to retranslate the images that were made by the ego and slowly loosen the mind from its belief in these illusions. So in the first scenario, which is, we'll say, Jack as a very, very successful businessman who's in charge and control, he's very wealthy. He doesn't really have a partner because he's so focused on money. I don't think he has time for a partner because he's so fixated on wealth and control. Then the next scenario, after the angel comes into the picture, the next scenario is going to be a family man self-concept in which he has to face all the things that he ignored, everything he denied, everything he discarded is going to come up into awareness in the family man self-concept. Both the business self-concept and the family self-concept are illusions. But remember, the Holy Spirit, it says, Holy Spirit's lesson plans are arranged in easy steps that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned. It's a retranslation. If you believe in reincarnation, you might say that every time you seem to reincarnate and come back for another lifetime, we'll call it in the world, that's just another opportunity to have your self-concept retranslated into the happy dream or the real world. And you can seem to come back many times because it's a very high learning goal. To say you want to forgive the world is the highest goal you could ever aim for. Some of you may think I wanted to be a ballerina, I wanted to be a famous writer, I wanted to be wealthy, I wanted to be beautiful, I wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe or I wanted to look like Jimmy Stewart or some icon. I wanted to be a bodybuilder. I wanted to have skills and abilities. I wanted to be a president of a country or something. No, no, no, small potatoes, small potatoes. All of those are small potatoes because forgiveness is our purpose. We only have one purpose and it's to forgive the world and wake up to our true reality as the Christ. So this movie is going to help us because, first of all, the main character, Jack, he is very resistant to change. He actually is so anchored into his business self-concept that he just always thinks about closing the next big deal. I mean, he just lives for that one purpose, land the next big deal. And as this movie starts, we'll see pretty quickly, he's working on another big deal that involves 10 zeros behind the number. It's actually involving billions of dollars. So he is not successful in terms of what most people call success. We're talking about in the business world, it would be like mega successful. He's dealing with deals that involve billions of dollars. And you know what his commission is. If the deal itself is worth billions, you can see where his whole identity is tied into material success, control, possession, all the things of the world. This is what the world calls successful. So he actually believes he's successful. But in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, believe you're gliding down the highway, but in fact, you're slip sliding away. He is slip sliding away into the oblivion of the ego. Because remember, the ego made the world that you would never choose to wake up. So what better way than to make a world where you seem can be successful at separation? If you could be a successful personality and therefore meet the world of scarcity on the world's terms and then beat the world, that's what the ego tries to do to fool the mind forgetting the light, forgetting that God, forgetting that there's anything like true happiness. It's just one more conquest, another one night stand for Jack and okay, that's par for the course. Another deal closed. Okay, that's good. Now it's off to the next deal. He has an associate that works for him. And in the first scenario, he's like the family man. His name is Alan. And then in the second scenario, when Jack becomes the family man, Alan becomes the head of the company. So all it is is the Holy Spirit is rearranging perception to teach the mind that these images are not where it's at. The love in your heart is where it's at. It's where it's always been at. And you can find that in your relationships. I mean, that's the path of a course of miracles is finding love through using the mirroring of relationships to find the love within yourself, the love that you always are and always have been. So this is such an amazing movie. Sometimes I call movies classics. This is definitely a classic. Jesus is showing a classic healing movie on Christmas. And there's movies, certain movies that are so poignant for me and so powerful that no matter how many times I watch them, I still have a tear rolling down my cheeks with this one because it goes so to the core of healing. I cry when I watch this movie because I am beholding a gift from heaven. I am beholding a gift where Jesus is saying, choose again. Please choose with me. Choose to join with me. This Christmas. Join with me. Jesus is telling us and remember what the true meaning of Christmas is. It's about remembering your identity. It's not about what happened 2000 years ago. It's not about history. It's about a state of mind and I am presence that's with us and always with us and it's just beckoning us to remember the truth. It's just beckoning us to remember the truth. So sit back and enjoy. You're going to laugh. You're going to cry laughing. And then at some point I think you'll cry like I cry when you start to feel how profound this movie is. This movie is not your everyday movie. This is a gift from Jesus on Christmas. I was wondering what movie he would pick on Christmas. I said, wow, we have so many great movies. What's he going to pick? And then when it came I started to cry right away because I thought, oh, I get to share it with all my friends too, the same experience that I experienced when I watched this movie. So let's let our tears of joy come today as we remember the true meaning of Christmas.