 Hi everybody. Hi. Good to see you all. Welcome to our Heart of Christ online retreat weekend. And we have the theme, pray, listen and follow. So we're going to have a beautifully deep weekend. And I'm Peter for those who are joining you. I'll be hosting. And I can just let you know about the sessions that we have coming up. So we will have David this evening doing a Q&A. Tomorrow we're going to have a movie workshop. And then on Sunday we have a very full time where there's more answering of questions and prayers. And to start with today we have David Hofmeister. He's in Utah at the monastery living miracles monastery. And we have Francis Zoo with us here in the studio in Mexico. So I'm going to pass it over to them now. Thank you. Thank you Peter. Hi Francis. Hi everyone. Hi David. Hi everyone. Welcome. Yeah, what a beautiful gift it is for us to join together on such a profound topic, you know, which always in my heart I feel like this is this is really the answer to everything and the simplicity of, of how our spiritual journey inward can be. And yeah, for instance, and I had a nice chat this morning before we came on and we always love interacting with you and trying our best to share our experiences of what what we've seemed to go through and examples along with the beautiful teachings and then answer your questions in the most practical way possible. So we were reminiscing a little bit about our journey with pray listen and follow this morning. That was that was beautiful. It's always a touching topic. Yeah, I feel so grateful that first of all to be able to even just be here sharing this this deep topic with you all. You know I feel like the last many years of the healing journey for me is is opening up to this idea that healing is is not my my own responsibility but it's the spirit doing it for me and I'm here to to let him guide me and let him be carrying me through this this maze of the mind that is completely lost. So I feel like this is absolutely the core in terms of practical application with our awakening, and it's also extremely practical and extremely relaxing. You know, to to actually be able to experience we can step back and let him lead the way and witness all the miracles that shows up because of that and coming from that. That is what started transform the mind and all heal and purify all the beliefs all the past is actually through witnessing the miracles that the whole Holy Spirit guides me into so I'm just so excited about this topic and that we actually get to really explore and really talk about it and talk about our own journey but also be able to answer all of your questions dive really deep with this whole weekend. Yeah. Yeah, the deeper context to a ray and listen and follow seems to be the the much broader deeper context that we get from Jesus in the course is Jesus is telling us you know you're dreaming a dream. And it seems like you become very attached and with the dream characters and it seems like if for example if you were to movie theater and your attention goes on to the screen. That it seems like you're perceiving everything very personally through the dream character. So you seem to perceive through the dream character you seem to see what the body's eyes and here with the body's ears you seem to taste with the body's tongue and and smell with the body's nose and and you you interact and touch with the fingers, the things that are in the dream. And what Jesus is slowly slowly teaching us is that that that this is a dream of unreality this is not heaven. Some of us had noticed that from our experiences through the dream character it's like whoa this doesn't seem like heaven but but when we learn to pray, the prayer of our heart is really to come and touch with our desire for God and to really start to activate the miracle in our mind like we're all being activated to be miracle workers but the miracles come to our mind from the Holy Spirit and Jesus through our consciousness and then they extend and radiate out into the world that we perceive you know to the screen. But when we try to interpret pray listen and follow in terms of the dream character, we're still going to find doubt, critical thoughts, belief and failure, because it's not like the dream character wakes up it's the mind that's dreaming of the world and the dream characters that needs to forgive and wake up. And, and so when we look at pray listen follow we tend to interpret things through the personality self. And then we question what is prayer. Is there a good way to pray, other than just using prayers from the Bible or of course in miracles or prayers from St Francis and Mother Teresa is the topic of prayer runs so deep because it is the desire of our heart. And then the listening part comes into listening to the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit's directions instructions for our mind, even though we see it coming to a person a dream character. It's really for our mind that's dreaming the dream is dreaming the dream characters and the person's places things and so forth. And, and how can I start to just allow the Holy Spirit to use the dream symbols, the things of time and space to kind of point me in the right direction to go much deeper within my mind to the light within to the kingdom of heaven. And so, you know, when we've gone through this experience ourselves. I know Francis and I were just talking that, even when you talk about pray, listen and follow the questions do come up and come come in about what is prayer. And, and then the listen and follow will surely follow from the prayer of the heart. If you really have a sincere prayer of the heart, then the answer will come in a form that you can relate to. And it will come in, even words or feelings that you can relate to nudges prompts. And then, of course, following that, once you have prayed and you listen and receive the, the instructions, the direction the guidance then to actually step forward and and say yes and follow is another big component. And Francis, it's interesting in your life how would you even look at prayer in terms of since you were raised in Beijing China and your whole world view growing up really didn't have God in it it didn't have prayer in it. I'm sure you know at the dinner table you weren't all saying your prayers before every meal because it was a, it was a worldview that was basically didn't have any sense of spirituality or religion in it so when did it start to get like the feeling of prayer come into you when you, when you were in Australia. When did it first become active for you. Well, I think, you know, for for myself, I was always taught you you have to rely on yourself and this life, whether it's a good life or bad life, whether happiness is all about your own effort. It's like an ingrained in mind is all about your choices, your decision and your effort. So it's a tremendous amount of pressure to make the right choice to kind of choose the right path. But I think with Australia when I moved to Australia, what happened was, you know, things in my life started to become very, you know, seems like at the level of form and I felt like I have achieved almost all the goals that I have set. And it's not, it's so like I can see it coming very soon. So I realized, well, I was taught if you achieve all of those things you would be happy but I felt so far away from happiness. I mean, I felt so depressed, and I didn't know what was wrong. So I, I think that the activation of it was actually started to ask a question. Why, what is that I'm still lacking in my life. And I couldn't come up with the answer in my mind at all, no matter where I search. I left it, you know, I left, I left it without able to coming up with the answer. And I felt that was something started to open up because I wasn't able to come up with the answer and the solution, and to continue this, this, this, you know, right race or whatever just keep going. So something stopped in my mind. And then, shortly after that, I was asking a very, very specific question in my mind when one day when I went for a walk, I just asked a question should I stay in Australia, or move to China, move back to China or any other country, because I didn't feel the happiness that I would get. And then I very, very unexpectedly, I heard a very clear voice telling me stay, and you will, you need to wait for your next step, something is going to happen, and you have to wait. So it was very out of pattern for me I didn't really pray I was just partnering a question to myself, even though I couldn't come up with the answer. And that was really sort of like set me off into. There is an answer and this answer did not seem to come from me at the time it seemed to come from outside of me, but it was so certain and felt give me a lot of comfort. And from that point on, I, I felt that I need to check in inwardly with every single question that I need to ask, because I clearly I get a response. So from that point on, I felt, I started to tune, like, turn away from just trying to make decisions based on all my past learnings and I would just ask myself, what do I feel about this. That was, I would say the beginning. And I didn't really directly connect that voice with the spirit or anything, because the course didn't even come to me at that point yet. But then I was guided to the course and I would say it really changed me into consciously being aware that there, there is a Holy Spirit that is answering me. I could ask all the time. And the answer may not be what I was looking for or what I think I would expect, but I could trust so it was. I think that really started to become very prominent in my awareness after I, I came to this community because suddenly I didn't have to pray for myself and on myself anymore. I was with the whole community. There's like a million decisions every day and everything was, let's pray and let all the decisions be coming from what the spirit guides all of us. So that is a huge shift of basically the way of living and the way I think about decisions and the purpose of even decisions. So I would say that, yeah, that is definitely the beginning point. And, you know, the rest of the time is is a is a steady learning is a steady learning to know that I could really trust. And I could really resume this, this connection with the spirit I didn't even know I had. And that is such a convincing job. Yeah, it's amazing. I think, I think prayer and faith and trust are so deeply connected that when we grow seem to grow up as a person in this world, we, we teach and learn and are taught that, you know, you're, you have a personal life. And like you were just saying, saying when you grew up that, you know, whether it good or bad comes of it, whatever comes to you, it's, it's all on you. And that meaning it's all on your person personality, you're responsible personally for everything. And I think when I grew up in Christianity, you know, I would go to the Bible's school sometimes in the summer I would have, I would have some classes in church and while the church services are going on myself and a lot of the young people we were going through different studies and things but, but with prayer it was more like, well, Jesus did a lot of praying. And there were people that were he was teaching people to pray the apostles. But as far as what we were being taught we would we would read prayer so we basically I think I associated prayers a lot with just words. I really received the teaching that that God knows the prayer of your heart before use utter a single word that would have been helpful to kind of send me in a different direction. And then with working with the course I started to see Jesus and his song of prayer pamphlet teaching that your prayer is the desire of your heart. And once you start to really see prayer in that kind of context it goes way beyond the words. The words can sometimes be good starting point, you know, speaking up what it is you believe you want. And, but I, I wouldn't say that I came across, you know, the idea that God knows the prayer of your heart before you even utter a word, and that prayer was desire. Because I grew up like you Francis and like most all of us you know wanting and desiring things from the world, whether it was presents at Christmas or, or chocolate and during Easter or, you go through adolescence wanting, wanting to be friends and wanting to maybe have a relationship and wanting to participate in things of the world. That's just, that was the standard I thought that's all there was. But I really wasn't aware that I wasn't aware of the lives of the mystics and the saints of this kind of single pointed devotion to know God, above all else to know God, more than survival of the body more than achievements and more than education, more than anything that I could want in terms of specifics or objects to know the creator to know the spirit, you know that that was actually possible to desire that. And then when I got into the course, you know, I was doing a workbook lesson and, and Jesus said, it's possible to listen to the voice for God, the Holy Spirit all through the day, without interrupting your regular activities in any way. And I thought, wow, that's, that's deep. It's possible to hear one voice, instead of listening to the egos opinions and criticisms and judgments and conclusions. Wow, it must be great to listen to that one voice all through the day because it would just involve comfort and blessings encouragement. I'm here with you. It would involve instructions, go here, go there, do this, do that, talk to so and so. I thought, wow, what a, what a wonderful positive constructive way to live life by hearing only one voice and not having a detractor voice, a counterfeit voice, a negative, a radical voice, a voice of unworthiness, you know, in the mind. So I think that's one of the things that, that gets all of us at one point where we start to realize, wow, I need to be intuitive. I need to be guided. I need to really learn what prayer is. And if prayer is desire, I need to really put my heart into wanting to know God. If God is, is the, the environment will say spirit is the natural environment of my identity as Christ. If, if who I really am is spirit, and if the Holy Spirit and Jesus are just bringing me back to that remembrance of the truth. That's important. That means know thyself, self realization, self actualization, atonement, salvation, whatever you want to call it. I mean, up, you know, that seems to be very, very, very important. And then I start to say, okay, I'm going to step back and let you lead the way and I'm going to let go of my past learning and my, you know, my preconceptions of what I believe this is all about what I believe David is all about what I believe David's goals should be or could be for the future and start letting things unravel, starting letting things fall apart, and actually know that that's part of the, the answer to prayer is the self concept that the ego made to take the place of spirit to take the place of the I am presence is going to unwind it's going to undo it's going to dismantle it's going to even seem to fall apart. And I need to be ready to just say, let it fall apart. Let it.