 When you listen to people that have addictions, they'll talk about indulgence and repression. And some of them have tried the indulgence method of just indulge and indulge and indulge and indulge and I'll get over it eventually by just over-indulge and you know, that doesn't work. And then the other method is repression, you know, I'll just not have it. Even though I want it, I'll tell myself no, no, no cookie, no ice cream, you know, it goes on and on. And this is very much what Siddhartha, you know, had to face, you know, when he talked about, you know, if you tighten the string too tight it won't play, or if it's too loose it won't play, if it's too tight it will break. He was talking about the middle way, Jesus is talking about the miracle. The miracle is getting in touch with your divine purpose, what your joy, your happiness is, when you're lined up with God, and the more you're able to habitually line up consistently with this purpose. The appetites actually start to dry up, just like if you had rain and you had a puddle of water and then the sun came out and just was shining, shining, shining all day, the puddle would just shrink and shrink and shrink and then it would evacuate, it would be gone. You might think of it instead of this big struggle that you have to fight against the ego and the appetites, it's just thinking, you know, the more I get in touch with the Holy Spirit and my divine purpose, that these things will dry up. I will receive my sustenance, my joy, my happiness from this purpose. And another way of coming at it is to say Jesus talks about distorted miracle impulses, that the call to experience yourself as you truly are, and the call to experience God as God truly is, is a miracle impulse. It's like it's coming into your awareness as your function, saying, this is your greatest joy. Like the movie last night we watched, August Raj does this little boy and he said, the music's all around us. All we have to do is listen. And at the end of the movie, when everything comes together, mother, father, and child are reunited, there's a giant symphony of joy and happiness, all you have to do is listen. Listen, he's saying. When we train ourselves to listen to this intuitive miracle impulse and we follow what this impulse guides us to do, we have just exploding joy and happiness because it's our function. We are in our function. And when we listen to the ego and its belief in scarcity and lack, all this cravings, its getting mechanisms, when you get something, get more, the ego is never satisfied, Jesus tells us. No matter what you get in its name, it will be taken from you and hurled into the dust. It's these graphic words for you will never satisfy yourself through these getting mechanisms and appetites. So that's why again, why we talk about exposing the ego and loosening from it because as you do this, you can receive those miracle impulses directly into your awareness and respond to them instead of acting and using the world of images to try to satisfy the distorted miracle impulses in a way that will just be very temporary. And we could say that it's more than just like food, we could say hunger, sex, for thirst. You could go through all those things that were in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they would all apply there. But when you move closer to self-actualization, you literally transcend those lower orders of needs and appetites. And that's what we're about doing. That's where the seeming addiction, the struggle finally leaves when it's out there. David, maybe you've just answered the question I had. If one's focus is always on letting go of distractions and focusing on stillness at all times, is it necessary to go through the layers and the darkness that is probably still there? Will that, like you said, like the small pond of water, will it evaporate in and of itself without having to work through it? And I'm open to both approaches working through the darkness, letting it come working with it, or I'm wondering whether if one's focus is just on stillness at all times and they observe the darkness coming up, is that also a practical approach to letting it go? Yes, it's a practical approach and it's very much part of traditional spirituality. If you would even look at the history of mysticism or the history of spirituality, meditation and focusing on the stillness is like right there at the core. Now Jesus does have a section in the course, this section called I Need Do Nothing, where he actually calls those methods of long periods of meditation and contemplation. He actually calls them tedious and time-consuming. Oh great, this is Jesus Christ thinks that meditation and contemplation is tedious and time-consuming. Great, from your perspective, very nice. But he does go further, he just doesn't leave it at that. He says your way will be different, not in purpose, but in form. And he says a holy relationship is offered you as a means of saving time. So this is why I speak so much about relationships. This is why I speak so much about the mirroring aspects of relationships. Yeah, there have been many mystics and saints that have kind of got a pretty good feel like, okay, our kingdom is not of this world and I get that it's not going to be found in society and so they just take the next step and they go oh, okay, I'm off to the caves. I want the fastest track to God and it seems like going into the cave or the monastery or the convent is the fastest. And then Jesus comes along and says well, actually it's not. There's even a faster way. What? Oh my God, tell me, tell me more. A holy relationship is given you as a means of awakening. And then he goes on to define holy relationship in that same section. And it really gets your attention when he calls meditation and contemplation tedious and time-consuming and then he's going to drop the fast track. Okay, what is it? He defines holy relationship this way. He says you and your brother are together. Okay, that seems like a pretty simple sentence. You and your brother are together. He's describing the whole mind. He's not describing a partnership or a couple or an ashram or something in the world saying you and your brother are together. He's saying you literally are the same one. You're not even your brother's keeper. You and your brother are together. You're the same one. There's only one of us. There's just one Christ here and through the ego there seems to be a hallucination of multiplicity in many, but there's really just one. Now that's, I think, getting to what you're bringing up, Derek, in the sense that if you go for silence, I would always recommend everybody meditation practice. It's so, so, so helpful. It's what Talon has been working with over this past winter. It's what I went through. It was even to live in the woods like Robinson Caruso and up in Michigan and Kentucky. But I will say that that silence does kind of stir the ego up, kind of like going into a hornet's nest and just waving a wand around in there and the bees come racing out of the hive. Those are all the little attack thoughts. Like, who is disturbing my busy activity with the stillness? You know, the bees come running out, like to stir up and the attack thoughts are all over.