 I have traveled around the world sharing these ideas from the Course in Miracles and my experiences. And this is my first visit to Finland. I think it's maybe about the thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth country that I visited. And I only go where there are invitations. And I always had the experience that it's always for my mind, it's always my own lesson. Because it's about living an experience, not about reaching people or trying to spread ideas in time and space. The ideas that come through me I extend so that I can keep them in my mind. Because I have learned that giving and receiving are the same. And all that I give, I give to myself. So we are very happy for invitations. Gives us more opportunities to strengthen it in awareness. There's nothing more fun for me than showing up with a group of beloved brothers and sisters with an open heart and letting the spirit pour through all of us. This is my idea of a party. I never was into alcohol but I like these spiritual parts. And I find that fulfilling this purpose means that I don't really need a lot of distractions. In fact, nothing is distracting anymore. Everything feels very present. And also in sharing these ideas for many years I find that I just draw forth reflections and witnesses to the love that I experience. And one of them is Francis, who has come along this time among many travels around the world. Hello. Yes, I met David about five or six years ago when I was in Australia. And in the last five years, I left food time in the community in Utah, America. So in that period of time I was living with people who are devoted to practice across in Marcos 24-7. And when we live together, we live under the guideline of no private thoughts and no people pleasing. But that's really just the inroad for us to practice living together to listen to the Holy Spirit. So as I watched the transformation of the mind over the last five years I realized the practicing of across in Marcos have changed everything I know about the world and myself. My relationship with my family has changed. My relationship with everybody around the world has changed. When I just devote myself to listen to the Spirit's guidance and unwind my mind from the ego thinking everything started to just serve this purpose. So my body started to become used for this one purpose. There is no sickness or pain when I use the body for the Holy Spirit. And all the relationships become very purposeful when I use the relationship to serve the Holy Spirit. When I say serving the Holy Spirit is really serving the awakening of my mind and to wake up to the identity of who I truly am. So I'm just really honored to be here today and to share the experience and the practical applications that I have gone through in the last few years and hope that it can be truly helpful. When people ask me about enlightenment or self-realization I tell them that one of the strongest experiences I can share is that everything is involuntary. It's as if it is all just happening or being done and there is really no sense of individuality with this experience. So the idea of individual choice is not present. And so I will try to describe this experience to you in terms of how things are going in my life. Last spring I felt that there would be a tour through Europe. I did not know for sure how many countries but I felt that would just be given like everything else. It has turned out to be about 10 countries. And then a little later this feeling came in about going to South Africa and then another tour unfolded after this one throughout all of South Africa. But even though there is a light structure and it seems like a navigation through time and space everything feels very spontaneous. Like we've all come together here today and there's just an openness. I don't think ahead of times about topics I will speak about. I meet new people all the time. We don't come together with much of a past reference point. So it's like we're all being used by the spirit right now. It's very fresh. It's very invigorating. Like energizing it. And like that there's just a spontaneous humor that comes with the moment. It's really the closest thing to creation because we're so fully in the moment. And we come together with a sense of helpfulness that when we are wide open the spirit can use us all in a very helpful way. I really don't think about what is to come. I just show up. I found that that's the most I can do is show up. And John and I were talking about that before this gathering. John was sharing the same thing. He couldn't think about doing the translations. He just shows up. And that's what keeps life fun. It's not all so preplanned and so set. And this is the meaning of involuntary. It's not like I'm trying to direct anything in form. I'm just allowing everything to be exactly as it is. And you can feel how relaxing that is. Not wishing or hoping things would be different. Because that's just an ego preoccupation. So it's about resting in what is. And without judgment everything is equally acceptable. Forgiving is a central role. Forgiving is a central role. But what role does saying begging for forgiveness? So forgiveness is a central role. Yes, when I was growing up I've watched a movie called Love Story. It was starring Ryan O'Neill and Ally McGraw. And the movie became famous for one mind in the movie. Love is never having to say you're sorry. And that really struck me when I first heard that. And I had to think, is that really true? And the way I usually feel that whether something is true is I I usually ask, what would Jesus do? So I went through all the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and I noticed Jesus never once said he was sorry. Here is a living experience of divine love, never apologizing. Because he knew there was no problem. He knew there was no past. He was living a state of forgiveness, which said there is no error or the error has been corrected. Then I decided to look at the Course in Miracles. And again Jesus never apologizes. In 31 chapters, speaking in first person he never says I'm sorry. Just the state of Christine Innocence. As if innocence and love is who we are. So then I started to pay close attention to his talk about forgiveness. And I found two places in the book where he said forgive me your illusions. I said that's fascinating, forgive me your illusions. I said that's fascinating, forgive me your illusions. At first I thought, why do I have to forgive Jesus Christ? I can think of a lot of other people's situations to forgive, but not Jesus. And yet he's asking me, forgive me your illusions. So I asked Jesus, I said what are you talking about? What do you mean by this? He said just let go of the past. Eventually you will let go of all of the past. All of history. And even the man, Jesus and the apostles. You have to let go of all the stories. And accept yourself as the living Christ. He's teaching us the past is gone. So when we would say I am sorry or I apologize, we're acknowledging there has been a wrongdoing. And we're asking for forgiveness for that wrongdoing. And this is very much how the world sees forgiveness. You forgive someone for what they did that they should not have done. Or you forgive someone for what they should have done but did not do. So in the world forgiveness first acknowledges that something has been done terribly wrong and it asks for pardon or forgiveness for that wrongdoing. But what I discovered in A Course in Miracles, that sin does not mean a black mark on your soul it is simply an error to be corrected. And Jesus teaches us that the error has already been corrected. That it's already happened. The Holy Spirit has corrected the belief and separation. So really the entire Course is about accepting the correction that is already there. At no point in the Course does He tell us to apologize. But He does tell us that we cannot correct a brother for anything. Because he is the Christ. And we are asked to accept him exactly because he is the Christ. Because he is the Christ. And we are asked to accept him exactly as he is. So forgiveness does not first point out errors and then make the correction. Forgiveness actually looks beyond the error entirely. And how is this accomplished? Well we have to raise up all of the unconscious darkness and offer it to the Holy Spirit so that we can see the world as the Holy Spirit sees the world. And we see that the Holy Spirit looks beyond error entirely. We are told that this is a world of effects. That can cause an effect. It's the world of effects. It's the world of effects. Just like we might say that when the body seems to be sick and has symptoms, these are just effects. And when the body has symptoms, these are just consequences. Sickness is not really in the body. It's in the mind. And so the Holy Spirit looks not to effects. It's the world of effects. It's not in tune. Now what is the cause of this world? Because we are told God did not create it. So this world is the projection of the ego. So this shows you how striking true forgiveness is from the way that we act and interact as human beings. And to me it's really funny. I took a trip one time to London, England where people are very concerned about private space. So I decided to take the tube or the sub-bond and take the sub-bond and take the sub-bond. So I decided to take the tube or the sub-bond and I walked on and were standing there holding onto a strap and I noticed that if people's elbows touch or any part of the body touches any part of anybody they go sorry, sorry. The whole ride. Sorry. And then if two people make eye contact the bodies aren't even touching. They'll go sorry. They'll go sorry. They'll go sorry. They'll go sorry. They'll go sorry. They apologize for everything. For looking someone in the eye they apologize. Sorry. This has not happened in Italy. But it's just an example of when the mind is uncomfortable. It's in a condition of fear and judgment. So even a touch of the body or a look in the eyes demands an apology and a perception. Now I find this funny. I think it's very funny. Because I've been in many different countries and I don't apologize. But I think it's also from a sense of purity. And part of this journey is allowing ourselves and giving ourselves permission to let all of our emotions come up to the surface. Even the emotions of feeling like wrongdoing or shame we have to let them all come up. So we have to have a spaciousness for healing allowing ourselves to speak what we need to say and gently allow others to say whatever they need to say as well. Because there's no pressure in healing. Healing is extremely gentle. I remember when I was in my late 20s I was walking on the street with a friend and it was her birthday that day and she just made a comment with me. She said, oh I'm so happy today. When I heard that comment I just realized I had never been happy my whole life, not a day. When she left I started to really look back to my life. I had a really good childhood, really good education I had great relationships I actually had a marriage at that point and savings in a bank account I had high achieving goals in this world and moments of excitement but I had never experienced happiness so when I realized that it just dawned on me that I had never been happy in this world it was a very deep experience and with that comes this question of how to be happy looking back now Jesus actually lead me to a pathway of forgiveness I was so happy Jesus actually lead me to a pathway of forgiveness and that's the last solution I thought I needed I didn't think I was unhappy because I was not forgiving all that I could think of was that I could find out more goals to achieve in this world or maybe something to correct inside myself but Jesus was saying in the Course in Miracles forgiveness offers everything you want He started one lesson with what do you want that forgiveness cannot offer Then he started to name the things that we would want love, connection happiness, abundance and he said forgiveness is the solution to it all and he said forgiveness is the solution to it all and he said forgiveness is the solution to it all because the reason for the problems is only one that's why solution can be very simple it's only one solution to one question or one problem it's we don't know who we are it's separation from God and all the attack thoughts that to protect that separation Jesus also said in the Course in Miracles if you know how this world appears in front of your eyes you would see it no more so basically we have no clue how we may have the world that shows up in front of our eyes that's how deep the forgiveness goes you know everything that we need to forgive most of the things we need to forgive are unconscious and all the specific upsets are just reflections that's why we're not giving a lecture of a formula that you can apply to specific upsets because the problem is not there and the process actually is about allowing the unconscious to come up because all the problems are at that level so even though the Course keeps talking about forgiveness in our practical application we spend a lot of time allowing buried judgment and attack thoughts to come up and we give ourselves permission and each other permission to say just allow it to come to awareness and we give ourselves permission and each other permission to say just allow it to come to awareness because why keep secret, what is secret? except certain judgment and attack thoughts that we're holding on to and we feel identified with and ashamed of if we want to allow all this buried unconscious skill to come up we have to allow ourselves to not hide anything and actually in that openness when these thoughts are seen they are forgiven so the major process is allowing us to be free they are forgiven so the major process is allowing it to come up so many people feel a deep sense of unworthiness we have a friend from Finland who was telling us the other night that one year the Finnish people were voted the happiest people on Earth but one man from Finland said this must be an error and so he was a mathematician he recalculated the voting because he was sure that Finland couldn't be the happiest country in the world he found an error so they were the second happiest country in the world and just the other night I was showing Francis they did a it was a ranking of the perceptions of corruptness the most corruptable corrupt countries and the least corrupt countries in the world so I showed her the list of a hundred and seventy five countries and the four Scandinavian countries were in the top five of uncorruptible and yet we all are gathered here today and there still can be a feeling of unworthiness or wrongness or something that's still buried in the mind and this is what the need of forgiveness is it's forgiving yourself from what you thought you did and I would say whatever you thought you did good and bad both have to be released because these are memories of bodies and our spirit is beyond the body so even our good judgments and bad judgments block this perfect state of innocence but one time I was reading A Course in Miracles and Jesus said an amazing thing He said make your invulnerability manifest I'm not yeah that's invulnerability not your vulnerability this isn't like a touchy-feely stuff we're talking Jesus Christ He said make your invulnerability manifest yes and I thought wow that's where this course is heading because when you are invulnerable you are beyond the possibility of harm is that the right word? it's a way of expression there's so many ways to express it yes it's a way and the beauty of this because you have to be in your strength and our strength is the spirit the spirit is beyond attack it cannot be attacked so that has been my purpose in life to become so strong in the spirit that I cannot be offended by anything and so often times when I'm living with people or I'm with people and they think they've done something wrong or they think they make a mistake or they think they're weak or they want to apologize all the time I just smile at them and if they keep apologizing I say no you've done nothing wrong or if they say I'm sorry if I offended you I say no you have not you don't need to be worried about that and you can feel that's where the love comes when we are loving we are proving that we cannot be unfairly treated and whenever there's questioning someone's motive or doubting someone it's just that we're not sure of the love that we are so you can see how high our calling is we are called to be the demonstration of the living Christ and this is something you cannot pretend it would be very difficult to pretend you're the Christ when you think you're something else it would be very difficult to pretend you're the Christ when you think you're something else it would be very difficult to pretend you're the Christ if you think you're something else so you have to give it to your ego otherwise you have a very difficult acting job who are you today I'm trying to be the Christ it's hard it's going to bite