 Ego's biggest tricks, one of the tricks of the ego that it does not want you to know about. Because if you know about this trick and you raise it up into awareness, then you no longer fall for it. And that's the best way to wake up to divine love is not following for tricks. But this trick, like a scheme or game trick. Yeah, a trick of the ego. Now, if this world was only pain and suffering and hurt and tragedy, if it was only that, would it be easy to drop? No, you could drop it like a hot potato. If everything burned, you could drop it like a hot potato and boom, it's back to the kingdom of heaven and nirvana. But the ego disguises itself and as everyone knows from this world and this cosmos, there are a lot of things that seem to be very attractive in this world. Very attractive. Like fool's gold, you know, that's what makes it so sneaky. That's the trick. If it was all this pain and suffering and misery, you could drop this world so fast, it would be gone in an instant. But the ego uses the duality of pain and pleasure. In fact, in this world, to the human being, these two things seem to be what? Very, very different. So much so that we could say there's whole philosophies built on maximizing the pleasure and minimizing the pain. And the ego is never going to tell you one thing. They're the same. They're identical. Pleasure and pain are identical. Now on the surface, when you first start to take a look at this, Jesus teaches this in A Course in Miracles. It's a big trick. There's a lot of faith to say, okay, I'm listening. How are you going to explain this one to me? Because it sounds pretty profound, but it doesn't feel that way. Everyone who's experienced the pleasures and the pains can say, I think I can tell a difference between pleasure and pain. And he's saying, nope, you're in a state of mind in this world. It's so confused that you can't even tell the difference between pain and joy. That's pretty confused. You can't tell the difference between pain and joy. In fact, he says that pleasure is part of the flip side, the trick from the ego that's actually called the attraction to guilt. In other words, the ego can make the guilt so attractive that you keep going for it. You keep grabbing for it. You keep grabbing for it over and over in linear time. And you keep falling for the trick. And you keep getting stuck in the guilt. Then that's what the ego wants you to do. It wants you to remain stuck in its game, in its universe. So I use the example of, a lot of people have heard of Marilyn Monroe. Sex appeal, gorgeous in terms of body, movie star, actress, fame, money, famous husbands, Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper, Arthur Miller, famous playwright, even famous husbands, even had the president of the United States in her era, John F. Kennedy, lusting after her. Now, from the pinnacle of the world's perspective, she had everything, right? She had the fame, the money, the famous husbands, the president lusting after her. She had everything the world would consider as valuable. And she was depressed. She was suicidal. Years later, Elton John would write the song Candle in the Wind about how sad and lonely this woman was. And that's a good example. Marilyn Monroe actually comes to mind a lot as a very good example about how if you follow the ego's teachings in the mind, you will come to a place of depression. You will think you're on the roads, kind of like in Pinocchio, when he gets distracted away into Pleasure Island. He thinks, I don't have to go to school. I don't have to take responsibility for things. I can just go with all the other boys and have fun all day in Pleasure Island. And what happens? It turns into a really horrific experience for Pinocchio. And this is a little parable for the whole human race. Now, on the surface of things, it's like we could look at this metaphysically and we could say that how is this working? How did the ego devise this sneaky trick to keep us all feeling guilty and stuck on planet Earth or in time and space and forget our eternal reality? Is that the world was made. Remember I said there were these two thought systems, fear and love? And it was an intolerable conflict to try to believe in both, to try to hold both fear and love in your mind. So the world, the cosmos, was an attempt to, it was intolerable to throw the guilt out into time and space to relieve the tension. So instead of feeling this terrible feeling like, oh my God, I've separated from God, I've ripped my mind away from God, which was a horrific idea. The ego made up time and space is a way to dilute it. Not so horrific as one terrible instance. Let's spread it out over millennium. Little teeny bits of pains and pleasures experienced over millions and millions of years. Almost like I've used the example, if somebody had a drop of poison they were going to give you, we're talking really potent poison. And they said, I'm going to give you a drop of poison and you must drink of this poison. But you have to do that, that's the one condition, you have to drink the drop. Now you can decide how you want to take it, but you've got to take it. You could say, okay, put the drop in the ocean over there and I'll take a drink of the ocean. You see how it would kind of dilute it a little bit? Put the drop in the ocean, let it splash down and let the tide come in and out and then I'll take a drink of the ocean because it would dilute it. Well, that's what the ego tried to do. It tried to make up a world of time and space so it could dilute the guilt of believing the separation from God was possible so you'd be stuck in this little human body and seemingly dealing for lifetimes over and over of pains and pleasures and meanwhile the ego never tells you the secret that pain and pleasure are the same illusion. In fact, Jesus says, why are they the same? They both reinforce the reality of the body as your identity because they're dualistic. Now joy or love or peace, these are natural states of mind that don't have to do with the pains and pleasures of this world. That's your natural inheritance. This is what's been covered over by all this dualism. So I have to say in my life, when people think about going on a spiritual journey, one of the things that scares people the most is they think, I read about the lives of the mystics and saints, some of those Catholic mystics and saints and I've read Saint John of the Cross and the dark nights of the soul and this and that and starving and fasting and penance and all this stuff, it doesn't sound very attractive. I mean, you know, it's much easier to just have a life that seems to have a little bit of a mixture of things. But what it is, is what I'm saying is when you go into work miracles, which is really what the Course in Miracles is about, it gets you in touch with your purpose, which is the joy. And that has to take over in your mind to the point that you're not going to fall into the tricks of pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure, which is purely seeking for a satisfaction. You know, what can we say about pain and pleasure? One thing we could say is they're temporary. They come in little bits and pieces and there's no lasting satisfaction. I mean, when you have a particular food or a particular sexual encounter or you see a particular experience in the climate or the world or whatever, it's very, very transitory. And then the ego says, okay, now you've got to go back again, go for it again and again and again and again and all of us know that it just doesn't satisfy you. You end up feeling a little bit like there's got to be more. Like the old Peggy Lee song, is that all there is? Is that all there is? Everybody in this world sings that tune at some point.