 I think we're kind of working towards perception, because this is a course in changing perception. And so maybe before we kind of get into some of the ideas about how do we change perception? You know, get to the nuts and bolts, get some of the ideas of what is perception? Because it's a psychological term, and if you haven't had a big background in psychology or psychotherapy, it can be like, well, I've got an idea of it. That's a little foggy. That's a little foggy. I want to be precise. I want to be precise. What is perception? And the course... I think... Well, let's throw it out. When people think about perception, what comes to mind? See, in the course it's perceived as being the individual viewpoint, which is coming from supportive ego, and filtered through the emotional body, and generally disinformed by the attitude body, and thoroughly, blurrily viewed through the agenda body. So you're saying very distorted. Well, it's completely... It can be trained to hire maybe a higher state of consciousness to true perception or the real world. Anybody else on perception? Anybody want to take a stab at what it means to you? I can word it like this. No, I was just saying how I see things. I was thinking basically... Perception involves reading meaning into it, in the sense that the second lesson of the course, which is real basic, because they all kind of build upon each other, is I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me. And like you were saying before, kind of this individual thing, in the sense that two or three or four people can see an accident happen, and then they'll ask for eyewitness accounts, write down exactly what happened, and then they write them down, and then there we go. We've got, well, this is what the first person saw. And the course is saying is that, you know, every time you're feeling upset in any way, it could be fear, anger, depression, boredom, or whatever, you're making a decision in the moment, and you're choosing that emotion based on your interpretation or your perception of what's happening, which makes perfect sense why people can have all those reactions, because they're a different filter, you know, and it's simply a decision. Now, when you start to carry this out, though, and you start to apply this in your life, you know, you can go through whether it's frustration at work, or frustration with the IRS, or frustration with in-laws, or, you know, with the weather, or with floods, or with anything like that, you can see how backwards our perception is. Is everybody kind of following that part about perception that we don't see anything the way it truly is? And the reaction is always not to the fact of it, but to my interpretation. It doesn't matter. Because the motto, you know what I mean? That's the group motto now. It can seem to a lot of people that it doesn't matter stuff, it can seem like, well, wait a minute, things do matter. Don't you care? Don't you care? Because you have any compassion. And, you know, it's a fine learning to, it gets back to changing your perception, and then when your perception is healed, when you're in your right mind, so to speak, whatever your actions are, whether it's, you know, reaching out, and what the world's eyes would look like and giving and helping hand or whatever, it's done with purity because the intention is, you're not doing it out of guilt. I mean, you could go down to an inner city and feel so much guilt about what you're seeing with homelessness or whatever, and just kind of empty your pocket, you know, out of, with the attention of guilt, like, these people are so much worse off than I am, you know, that I feel so bad that I'm going to just give away everything I've got in my pocket to help me feel better. And the Course is kind of saying, well, you know, it's not the act of giving money, even, or the act of doing something that will relieve you of your guilt, but it's only by getting clear in your perception that you'll be free of guilt. So where does perception come from? The early lessons of the Course are teaching us that, you know, like lessons 5, 6, and 7, I'm never upset for the reason I think. It's such a good lesson because the first reaction a lot of times when things happen is, I know why I'm upset. I'm upset because, you know, we were just... Same reason anybody would be upset. Yeah, because they did this. Wouldn't you act that way too if somebody did this to you? That would be upsetting. You ever think of, like, on a desert where you see a mirage and you're hot and thirsty and you go and you think it's an oasis and you get there and it's... Or sand. It's not there. You know, that to me is the early lessons of the Course are so profound because I'm never upset for the reason I think. I'm upset because I see something that's not there. I see only the past, to use what you're saying. If I'm constantly watching the past and I'm getting all upset, it's because in the sense that the past is where the guilt seems to occur. The past is where that's the ego's like domain. Presence is where the Holy Spirit lives. And the mind that just wants to keep calling on the past and believing in its reality and rehashing it. Or, you know, like with relationships, I've talked to addiction counselors, you know, and they'll talk to people and they'll say there's these patterns that emerge. People will say, I keep... I marry five times and the same thing keeps happening over and over. I try to marry somebody else and it's like I married and do this, but the same thing is I married five alcoholic. Or it can be with jobs, too. I mean, you know, you get a job that you think, I hate this job. I'm gonna get out of this job and then I hate this job. You know, it's like it can be the past that keeps repeating itself. So if we get into the dynamics we were just talking about, about perception and thought, what the course says is that whenever you're thinking about the past or the future, your mind is literally blank, you know, because your mind is filled with these past thoughts and it projects these thoughts out and that's what the world is. The world is literally the past thoughts in our mind that are projected out into the world. And so it's no wonder we get upset with what we're seeing with these eyes is because we're literally viewing a script or we're viewing a screen in which it's just the past. All of our grievances seem to take form. We have all these angry thoughts, these spiteful, hateful thoughts in the mind and what happens is they're in the picture show and in a sense it comes down real simply to the thoughts in our mind that we were saying there's just two thought systems and there's the fear-based ego thought and then there's the voice-bears thought and it comes down to, first of all, the sermon between the two. I need to be able to tell the difference between the two and then I need to start to let go or withdraw my investment in the ego thought. If I think the ego is offering something to me that's good and useful and helpful, I'm going to want it to stay around. I'm going to hang on to it. So to me that's what the Course gets at. It starts getting at how am I tapped into this thing Jesus and how am I invested in it but I don't know it. What's the value in it to me? What am I seeing here that I want to hang on to because it seems to be worthwhile? I'm not going to let go of something. I feel like it's worthwhile and gives me something. As my mind changes then of course I'm going to see proof for what's new in my mind. I'm going to see proof for that out here on the screen. Then I have experiences come to me that witness to that new way of thinking in my mind. If I open up to the light and if I open up to the safety of trusting then I'm going to have lots of experiences show up to prove to my mind that that's the case and that reverse is true too. If I have lots of thoughts in my mind that it's not safe to trust then of course what's going to show up is proof that I'm right about that and that it's not safe to trust. The question is what do I want? It comes down to what do I really want? At the beginning when you first start working with this stuff it's like I must really want guilt and fear because I seem to still be perceiving events that seem to witness to that and so of course it's just kind of saying you really need to keep asking that question going deeper. I always tell a story like when I'm growing up before force everything the two things that I wanted in life were freedom and intimacy. I thought that feeling of connectedness and intimacy I just want that so much and freedom I like to explore I like to feel like there's nothing hanging over me and what I did was it wasn't so much that my goals were wrong and of course freedom and intimacy or peace or nice goals but it's like it was where I was seeking for this that I started to discover was all twisted and how you define them I think that freedom and intimacy are juxtaposed those two particular... When the way I perceived it was kind of like when I would try to go for the intimacy that my freedom seemed to be limited that they didn't seem to be... Solitude and freedom I don't think juxtaposed but intimacy and intimacy It seemed very much kind of like I mean in relationships that was my experience it's almost like you had to give the old ball and chain thing about marriage mutually exclusive what I'm discovering through the course they aren't usually exclusive but they're found in the identical same place, they're identical my definition of freedom was I want to be able to go where I want to go do what I want to do do it how I want to do it and do it when I want to do it kind of a real sense of not being any limitations or constraints Now would that mean that you would want to then find somebody who would want to do it exactly the way you want to do it That sounds like a fantasy If you bring in the intimacy part of it the intimacy part of it says well, okay, I want the freedom but I want that feeling of connectedness I want the feeling of being so close to someone that's likely to know each other's thoughts that I want that kind of closeness where there's no even sense of separation and of course I would say a lot of my intimacy ideas had a lot of romantic ideas tied in there too I had a lot of things associated with that too with the body, you know, I want lots of things that I define intimacy companionship, you know having somebody there with you that had a lot to do with my ideas of intimacy it's not so easy I would say to be intimate she's living in California and I'm living in New York my ideas of intimacy were bodies must be together under the same rub for perfect as close as possible, as long as possible you know it would be the thing and that was my definition too of intimacy now the deeper I've gone into this and gone through relationships and all the different things and worked with the course and had a lot of these transformations is that I find that both of my definitions really were very heavily related to the body in other words my definition is of freedom when I said go anywhere, do anything I'm talking a lot of it was mobility of the body I want to be able to let this body move around I want to be free to move and so freedom was very tied in with freedom of the body it wasn't so much freedom of the mind I know, see and intimacy you know once again I really related intimacy with these bodies again and it wasn't so much the mind intimacy that I defined it in in terms of sharing thoughts or sharing the Holy Spirit but it was in terms of just get the bodies together and you're lucky if you can agree on certain things and have mutual shared interest what I found is that in relationship a true intimacy comes from following the Holy Spirit and also that's what true freedom is but it flies again a lot of my ideas of what I thought you know I had to do to become a fulfilled person I found that I had to question an awful lot being used as we travel around the country and we go into things this is a real sense of intimacy you feel with people a real connectedness the thing that I always was searching for but it's certainly not the form that I had a vision for