 Hi everybody. Welcome to our Tabla Rasa online retreat weekend. I'm Peter and the theme for this weekend, I place my future in the hands of God. So we're gonna have a beautifully deep weekend and we'll have members from the Living Miracles community talking today. Also, we've got a movie workshop tomorrow and a closing session on Sunday. So it's gonna be a full weekend. So to start with, we have David Hofmeister and Francis Xu, David's in the States and Francis here in the studio in Mexico. So I'm gonna pass it over to you both now. Hi everyone. Hi Francis. Hi David. Hi everybody. What a great topic. What a great topic we have for this weekend. Yeah, we were talking this morning, it's just so profound when you start to get to the core of placing the future in the hands of God because we have to admit it, our programming has not been to place the future in the hands of God. That's not our education experience. That's not our experience that we learned from our parents. That's not the experience that we learned from society or the world. It seems like it's more, you have to aim for the future, aim for a better future and work hard and learn lots of things and prepare. And if you really do it right, you'll have a better future. And then Jesus comes along in his course and he says, be not content with future happiness for it is not your just reward or you have cause for freedom now. He flips it over and he says, the present moment is where we're going together. So we're not going into the future or as the movie was, back to the future. We're not going back to the future. And we're not going back to the past. So what a treat Francis to be able to be here with everyone and practically talk about this and go into our own experiences with placing the future in the hands of God. Yeah, I feel like it's such a precious function we're given to kind of constantly be reminded by the spirit and extend the spirit's message of what truly is that can free us completely. And I think for a lot of us, myself included, we didn't really, at least for myself, I didn't really grow up putting God as my goal of this life. That's what my life is about, it's about God. And that's it, that's end of discussion. There's no question, but really it's kind of like, okay, deep down we are searching. I was searching for happiness, I was searching for the kind of love that I can't even put my finger on. And yet the world that is in front of me offered a lot of pathways toward that goal. The world offered everything seemingly. It says you, oh yeah, there are many, many pathways, but definitely is within this world. Let's find it, let's find it through getting yourself established, let's find it through getting, collect a lot of approval and a lot of recognition. Let's get it from, accumulate a lot of money so that you have the resource to buy whatever you want, accumulate, get more, get more, get more and go wherever you want. The world is your oyster, you know, collect, collect pleasure, collect stuff, collect experiences. That's where you find it. And wow, wow, what a distraction, but what a realization when we reach the point to see that the world really only offer one option no matter the form it takes. But that is according to Jesus' beginning of finding the real alternative because all this world is offering is a delay and it's a distraction and it's saying, you know, everything you want is offered right here. If this one doesn't work, let's go for the next one. And you know, here we are together from all over the world. We're here coming together to say, well, I think, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's, it's interesting because I think the world seems to offer many, many options and then the world, the ego teaches us, well, yeah, there's many options, but if you have money and resources and friends and friends in the right places and connections in the right places, oh, the ego says there's even more options. You'll have more options if you have money and friends in the right places. And it tries to lure us into thinking that our salvation can be found in some outcome of the world. And all of it's based on perpetuating the belief in linear time. That's at the bottom of it all, you know, when people say, what's underneath this whole world? I showed a movie a number of times. It's in our movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment called Dark City in which the main character starts to, people are falling asleep and he starts to go into the underworld, the subconscious and all there is is a giant face down there. And finally, when the face opens up, it's, it's a clock. It's time. Linear time was invented by the ego to block us from remembering eternity. So it's, it's not just the specifics of what's going right or wrong in terms of the world or world events, but it's actually the very core, the very fabric of what we believe as linear time was invented by the ego to keep us from knowing eternity. And Jesus does say, he says time and eternity conflict in your mind. You can't really know both. It's really one or the other. He's saying eternity is true and linear time is false. And yet, if we're honest, we see that everything we believe about everything, our bodies, the environment, our families, our friends, our, our occupations, our ambitions, our future goals, our imagination. It's all based on linear time. And the funny thing was I, I just asked Jesus, is there, as we talk about placing the future in the hands of God, is there, is there any kind of passage from the course or the workbook that would be helpful to kind of reorient ourselves to see how important it is to place our future in the hands of God, to let go of trying to plan and control the future and to give it over to God. And he took me all the way back to lesson number eight. He basically says in lesson number eight, no one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward. The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which you're seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time and cannot in fact understand anything. The one holy truth thought one can hold about the past is that it is not there to think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this because it is not really thinking about anything. So with that little send off from Jesus, it's like when we think we're thinking about the logistics about our food, our clothing, our family, our friends, what we're going to do today. Does anybody here ever have you ever made a to-do list for what you're going to do? Jesus is laughing because the to-do list is part of the defense against the holy instant. The to-do list is part of the defense against eternity. If we're perfect right now, which Jesus assures us we are, then he's saying whenever you originate a plan based on something you value in the world, achieving something, accomplishing something, being successful at something, a skill, an ability, any kind of worldly achievement, he's basically saying you're defending against the awareness that you're perfect right now. So Francis and I were talking this morning and we said, yeah, well, yeah, that is the bottom line. We both went through our educations and we both went through 10 or more years of university. We were bent on careers, on finding the right relationship, on getting settled down and getting accomplished, like Francis was talking about. We were doing what the world told us to do, to be happy. And then at some point the wheels come off, where you're frustrated, you're disillusioned, you're singing that Peggy Lee song, is that all there is, is that all there is? You feel unfulfillment, you feel there's got to be more, you feel something's not right. Why are other people so happy and I'm not? And thus begins a sense of disillusionment for some people with sadness, it's depression, for others it's frustration, anxiety. This is the human condition, it's the belief in nothing. Like Shakespeare called it, much to do about nothing. It's the belief that the world is much to do about something and you have to achieve something in order to be worthy, in order to be successful, in order to be valued, you have to achieve something, but it's all part of a hamster wheel of time that's designed to keep us from knowing who we are right in this moment. So we're going to have fun this weekend because Francis and I have been through this. We went through the unfulfillment. We went through the disillusionment. Francis, I know you, you did diet regiments. You know, you, you really put yourself into some pretty strong disciplines going to the possible, the possible retreats, diet regiments. You know, you really have business, business owner, successful business owner. You had two houses, a husband, you had what the world calls, you had the, the good life in quotes. And then that wasn't enough. It wasn't even nearly enough. So that, that's when you start to realize, uh-oh, something is fishy, something is sneaky about this world when you do all the things that you're supposed to do to be happy and you're still not happy. That's when you start to go, hmm, something's, something's fishy. That's exactly it. That's the moment. I know that, you know, like my mindset was so set on what, you know, the world have laid out, like reach this point, you will be happy. Reach this point is multiple. You have to have the best relationship. You have to have money, investment, assets, and recognition, success, career. It's all have to be met. Then I'm like, okay, all of them, you know, and they're well underway towards, you know, I thought why is, at one point I really felt why is happiness seeming, seemingly going further and further away from my life, further and further away. That's something really like exactly what you said, David, something started to, to feel, oh, it doesn't make any sense to me. And I remember, I just really paused just in my mind and asked this question, what is going on? What is that is missing in my life? Because nothing is missing in form. Why am I not happy? And that is like a very significant question for me because I think that was the first time I didn't have an answer in my mind. And it was a complete blank. I couldn't generate an answer for myself. And then what happened was, I was asking whether I'm to stay in Australia where I was living at the time or go back to have a change of scene, change everything, change Korea again. And then this voice came to me and said, stay. There is something big waiting for you. You need to be waiting here. And that voice was like this was the miracle the first time I thought something happened to me that violates all the laws of this world, basically. But it was so assuring and so right. I had no experience of fear and freaking out. I was just, oh, okay. And I will wait here for my next step. But this is what is happening to myself and to I perceive in everybody's life is that once we stop, even just for a brief moment of investing and be so certain about what the ego has to offer, what this world has to offer, even just a moment, a miracle comes in, a miracle that violates all the laws of this world, comes in to show us there's something else that is right here. That's right here with us, you know. And that is really what I think the goal of on verily pursuing the goals of the world has suddenly started to get shattered. And I think it's a blessing in disguise really when David and I were talking this morning about the disillusionment that has to happen, that has to happen to stop ourselves from keep focused on the goals of this world. That disillusionment to start to see that something is not is not really giving me what I want. And there is nothing that is giving me what I want here. It is a true blessing. That's where we can start to allow some lights to come in. Yeah.