 Thank you everybody for coming. This is David Hofmeister, so he's going to be giving us a beautiful talk for the next 45 minutes or so. And just to start us off, we have one of the only books in the world that has its own soundtrack. So we actually have a song called Unwind Your Mind, inspired by the book. And it's sung and played and written by a friend of ours called Pete James, who's actually at our monastery right now, getting ready for the Story Fields Festival. So we'd love to just open tonight with that and just thank you all for coming. When all your private thoughts get heavy, Your sister, I am your mother and child Let yourself fall into this one in your mind Or what you're looking for You don't have to fix yourself anymore Just unwind When you see yourself as weary Go to yourself as hired and unkind Or what you're looking for You don't have to fix yourself anymore Just unwind That was Pete James. He planned to be here, but he couldn't be here today to do it live. So that was a beautiful song that he wrote just recently, very recently. Thank you all for coming today. It's really a joy to be here. You know, we've been out in the Salt Lake City area for some time and it's just really beautiful. It's kind of appropriate that we would launch here right here in Salt Lake City. It's kind of like our global book launch. So this is it. I asked today, I said, When do we officially launch? She said today. I said, oh, okay, here we go. Yeah, this book, a lot of times when books come out, the author will thank a lot of people that had a lot to do with the book. And I could just, if I started going through all the people that are part of this book, probably the 45 minutes, I could just spend 45 minutes just naming a lot of names because it's been a culmination of about close to 20 years of collaborations that have gone into this book. And some of you who have seen the book know that it's actually three books in one. It's kind of like a trilogy in one. And there was an enormous amount of collaboration that went into this book because when I started to teach A Course in Miracles in the early 1990s, people occasionally would just show up and back in those days put a cassette recorder beside me and record some of the dialogues that I was having with the students as we would meet on a daily basis going deep into the mind. And then amazingly some of those cassette tapes made it. They were stored in a hot attic and that wasn't the best for them. And it was kind of like when they tried to restore the Sistine Chapel, restore a piece of art. They were restoring recordings that were done with not the best conditions. And a lot of those dialogues are in there. So this book actually has dialogues that go back into the 1990s when I was working very closely with students on a day-to-day basis. And it was so in-depth that they were kept and archived, you might say, and eventually we were able to publish this book. So it's been about 20 years in the making. And the biggest question I get about spiritual awakening and spiritual enlightenment is how? How do I do this? And just like the song that Pete wrote, it's like you already are what you're looking for, what you're searching for, and you don't have to fix yourself, which is pretty much the mentality of the world of self-improvement and fixing yourself. It's more just learning to release judgments or let go of faulty thinking, faulty beliefs, faulty perceptions, and so to speak, peeling the onion to come back to the core of your essence, which was created by God. So this book is really, if you give yourself over to it, that's really what the book is about. It's about coming back to a remembering of who you are. And I've been getting a lot of comments since the book was first released as we released some preview copies, and people are saying that the questions are helpful, it's question and answer format, and the questions are helpful, but people are saying they're asking questions that I had verbalized, but I had somewhere in me, so it's helping pull the questions out. And part of the journey is asking the right questions so that you can be shown or the truth can be revealed to you. So that's a beautiful aspect of this book is that you can kind of immerse yourself as you work with people and you watch how I work with people, it really makes it very, very clear. It's nice. It's a bookstore. How do you come back? So it's really a journey in the mind. When we go inside, none of us were really given an owner's manual or none of us were really told how to go inside. A lot of us read that in different spiritual traditions that you're supposed to search within for the answers. And so I think this book, in one sense, gives you the how. Just as you're reading, just as you're engaging in it, you actually are experiencing the how. It's kind of sneaking in on you without you consciously knowing what's happening, just from your willingness to join and to engage. So it's been like a labor of love, you might say, and I feel like it's something that's very spontaneous this journey inward. So it's not necessarily a linear progression, but basically the book lays it out in terms of what may be most helpful to look at first, kind of laying the foundation, and then moving into unlearning the world. And then finally, transfer of training, which really just means make no exceptions to the truth, to the principles that you're uncovering in your mind as you go forward. And as you make no exceptions, that's where your peace of mind and your joy and your happiness become more and more consistent. It's only when we make exceptions, you can see that in your own lives. If you feel like in many situations you can just speak what's right on your heart and say what's right there, but in certain cases like when your parents are around or your children are around or certain people in your lives where you find yourself kind of leaning to please them or to get approval from certain ones that are in your life that seem very important, you can see you might slide and make some exceptions to what seems to be your heart wanting to speak through and shine through. And so this book is a way to start looking close at these things and not make any exceptions. Regardless of what the encounter is, who you're encountering or who they are in your life, you can start to not make exceptions and that's where you grow in the strength of integrity because when we make exceptions, then there's a form of self-deception that's going on when we're afraid to speak certain things to certain people. And it's the same with emotions. There's certain emotions that you're really not in touch with as you begin to open up your mind and open up your heart then you do get in touch with some pretty intense emotions and this book is in that sense a gentle guide as well to take you down deeper and deeper and deeper. So how many here are familiar with a Course in Miracles? Okay, we've got a full house. So many of you who've worked with a Course know that at times it can seem challenging and so forth. You might say in one sense this book is like a companion to a Course in Miracles. It quotes the Course very frequently but it's designed to give lots of examples of metaphors, parables, things that bring the principles to life so that you can apply them more readily and more consistently in your daily life. And that really is what the Course is about. It's actually aiming at an experience. It's aiming at a state of mind. It's not just another book to learn or another theology to memorize. It actually has a workbook, as you know, for practical application. So in this sense again the book is designed to be a companion for that as well. Also as you go deeper and deeper you learn that nothing really is personal and it takes a lot of unlearning or unwinding to come into that experience that nothing is personal because the ego takes everything in a very personal way. That's where the emotions come in. That's where the charges come in. So this book is named Unwind Your Mind and it might have received its title from the metaphors that I've used over the years of kind of like as if you had a, as if your mind was like a screw drilled into a board of oak and it's in there very tight and you can't pull it out like you would pull a nail out. You literally have to turn the screw. You have to take the turns and the turns and the turns to get that screw out of that hard piece of wood and that's a metaphor I've used and it's come through a number of different ways and that's just one that's been like a recurring metaphor that I found very helpful because that's how it seemed in my life that I had to go at this. I had to be very persistent. I had to continue on even in the face of doubts and fears of wanting to just give up, turn away, you know, distract away and so forth to keep the persistence there to go and keep doing the work, applying the lessons, applying the lessons. So some people say crank it up. We're like cranking it out. You just keep at it and keep it turning, turning, turning. It does also seem to be an experience that the more you have loosened your mind, the more reflections you see of that and I would say over the years I find that there's a quickening going on, a huge acceleration. It's like the awakening seems to be occurring at more of a, what the world will see is like an exponential rate. We're meeting people. We're coming together. We're joining together more and it seems like the laughter and the happiness seems to be bursting through like sunshine bursting through the clouds at a much faster rate and it really is a demonstration that when we're healed we're not healed alone. As we accelerate our healing process in the mind we draw forth more and more witnesses to that and for me that's taken the form of actually living in communities, spiritual communities and traveling around the world because I meet so many people that are reflecting back this healing in mind, this happiness and this joy, the gratitude. I just get emails every day of immense gratitude. A psychiatrist just wrote to me today just before I came down so I put it on our Yahoo Global mailing list a letter of deep gratitude where he had just begun with the first chapter of the book and he was just reading something on form and content and he had a major flash, a major insight that he was just so grateful for so he had to just spill out his gratitude in an email. Those are the kind of witnesses that as we go through the healing we experience the witnesses all around us of healing and that's really, you might say that's kind of like your barometer even though you don't really need to try to figure out where you are on the healing journey but you can start to feel the witnesses, the reflections that you draw into your life the healed relationships that you experience are all part of that awakening it just comes more and more waves and waves of those witnesses and those examples so I've been really blessed to have that experience of those waves of gratitude and I just feel like I haven't tried to actually write a book this book kind of came of itself with all these collaborations I didn't set out to write the book since we're all Course in Miracles students are very familiar with it you know that basically the Course is teaching that God is the author of reality and that's a beautiful lesson that's the only lesson we have to learn is that God is the author of reality to go along with that it's basically saying that there aren't any other authors so if I see to sign a book today you can say who signed it just say God is the author of reality because it's very humbling to start to see that you aren't the author of your own life and I know sometimes the Course in Miracles gets put in the New Age section of bookstores but a lot of times the New Age can teach create your own reality and the Course is actually teaching reality was created for you by God and you can accept your own reality but you aren't the creator of reality and also that you are not the author of your life that God authored you in spirit God authored you in truth and the most you can do when you forgive is accept yourself as God created you so that's a little bit different teaching than create your own reality which can get more into manifesting and make a better you try a different you try a different you on and someone from California a friend of mine Patrick just wrote he wrote in a review of this book he said what makes you think that you as you know yourself in this world is a good judge of what's better because the personality self is part of the mask that was made to cover over our spiritual reality so it was bringing up that point of when you talk about creating the world you want or the life that you wanted kind of implies that a person would know that and really this is the exact opposite this is more surrendering to the spirit in you your intuitive self which can lead you back to an experience of your actual self your spiritual reality so even though I've showed up here to give a talk you know from a lot of my gatherings on YouTube and Spreaker and all over the internet that I enjoy interactions and I would be happy to answer any questions about the book or my life or anything that's on your heart really because that is the most important thing for me these are always very spontaneous gatherings and coming together to join in an experience and the book is a good springboard for that and I'm happy to open up the floor to everyone now if anyone has anything to ask or share God is but love and so am I yeah you're describing this devotional reverent life where you just give your mind over to God you give yourself over to the heart of God and you see that you have your life and your existence your being in God and that would be an example of bringing the illusions to the truth and just emptying the altar saying no I wouldn't put anything else on that altar but you God putting God first there's a I don't know if you remember that movie with about the life of Gail Sears Chicago running back years ago but I think he came out with a book God is first my family is second and I am third and yet when we get into the blessings of these deep teachings we start to realize that our true will and the will of God are actually the same so even some of those really famous prayers by saints and mystics not my will but thy will be done there comes a point of humble recognition of acceptance of accepting yourself as God created you where you can say my will and thy will are one and that's the most humble experience that there could ever be it actually would be arrogant to try to think that you could make yourself different than God created you so the book really helps with the mind training of starting to realize that everything is an idea and that ideas leave not their source and just like Christ could never leave the mind of God the ideas and everything we perceive in this world as much as it may seem to be out there isn't really out there the way the healing occurs is this integration of seeing that anything that you're bothered by anything that you're disturbed by frustrated by it's because you're still trying to see it outside of your mind and the Spirit is gently using this book and as far as the unwinding to bring it back to see that you have empowerment actually your mind contains all the thoughts and therefore this idea of projection is an attempt to get rid of something you don't want and eventually you realize that you want God and you would see nothing outside welcome you're sparkling like you're smiling so big it's like you've been here for the whole actually she didn't even have to be here for the first 20 minutes she just walks in grinning from ear to ear that's what we mean by drawing witnesses I'm like there's a spark for her back there she just walks in see what we love it's us I wonder perhaps what I do over thinking that's going to be a problem on the since starting the course I've kind of struggled with the idea of I need to do nothing as it applies to like just like daily activities like work and you know I get a little anxious when I think I need to do nothing I want to believe it but then I have trouble applying like to get rid of anxiety about the thoughts of you this man well we could look at what seems to be doing seems to involve decisions and we could say are continuous but the mind is not really aware of all the decisions that it's made there's a lot of decisions that are turned into beliefs they're unconscious decisions they become almost like we could say solidified as beliefs and they're assumed to be true so for example with sickness who in their right mind would choose to be sick who in full awareness and open full consciousness would choose sickness it wouldn't but if there's unconscious beliefs that involve a lot of guilt and shame and darkness then it seems like the body has symptoms or there's an experience of discomfort and being ill at ease and dis-ease but it's the same with the idea of nothing in the sense that if you have unconscious beliefs that you are a body in this world and you have lacks and you have needs the best part of the course is that Jesus says instead of doing a top down approach just kind of waving the magic spiritual wand and everything just disappears it's a bottom up approach and so you can't really receive answers beyond what you are capable of understanding so you don't have to try to beat yourself up with an idea from the course like wow that sounds sentimentally I'm with you there but practically it doesn't seem like it's going to work at all it seems like it would create more of a tension like if you stayed home we'll say and you just went okay I need do nothing so I need not work I need not fulfill responsibilities and duties and so on and so forth there could be a tension just like if you were employed and you signed an employment contract to fulfill certain duties and responsibilities and then you decided to go with the I need do nothing solution there could be a dissonance there could be a friction between the reflections of the boss and you if you said you were going to do something you didn't do it so that's why the book unwind your mind back to God is really having you take a close look at your beliefs and your thoughts because what you do comes from what you think and as long as your mind is still we'll say trapped or addicted into ego thinking the doing will seem to come automatically from those thoughts people don't often have to consciously think every single day why am I getting up getting out of bed brushing my teeth and going to work and doing these things because there are needs that they perceive that seem to have to be met in some way and though some of us I had long talks with Jesus about money doesn't grow on trees and I was having telling him this is the way it works here and he was saying yes you do believe that and I will work with your beliefs so ultimately I would say I need do nothing is it is an ultimate truth in a sense that you merge your mind so much with the Holy Spirit with the will of God and you merge and have such an experience of being this that the needs are gone you literally transcend your needs from the bottom up through miracles in a very systematic and practical way it's not just getting a beam of light hitting you or something it's actually releasing false ideas false concepts and beliefs and then having an experience where you can have your mind rest in a state of such deep stillness that there are no needs there are no desires there are no ambitions and you are one with God but I would say instead of using I need do nothing in a way that seems conflictual to you it's just more just ask yourself honestly with everything that you seem to feel to do what is it for and just by asking what is it for with the jobs and the different things that you do you do unwind you do start to loosen and you open your mind to a new purpose you open your mind greater and wider to forgiveness and in that sense it's very practical the more spontaneous you become the more tuned in and aligned your motives your heart becomes pure and therefore the actions just flow from that pure heart and you disidentify from being the doer and in the end your awareness is literally beyond the body and beyond any sense of doing for example when I come to give a talk about these kind of gatherings my mind is very still and actually very blank so I'm not making mental notes of highlights or topics or what I will talk about it's just being in the prayer of spirit give me the words bless the people bless myself bless everyone with your presence it's a prayer of selecting of words or selecting of topics even and yet I'm still practical if I'm asked to speak at a conference and they send me an email and they say we need a topic listen we're putting out flyers we're doing the whole thing we need a topic then I give a topic I don't always speak completely on that topic although it's all connected but I just show up and let it come through for example of not having a sense of doership with it not having the pressure of that not like trying to decide an outcome or how it should go yeah Francis and I did a television show this morning some of you have heard of her TV show out of the blue comes Francis Zoo and we talked about that we're taught and experienced the truth within and the kingdom of heaven is within and heaven doesn't have an outcome heaven doesn't come out it doesn't concern itself with the world of form with morality and ethics a lot of the things that seem very very practical and important in the world are given over to the spirit but it's more like you come inside to the truth try to find it in the forms and the images so yeah when you mentioned outcome that's exactly what we talked about on the show today that there's no need to come out there's no need to give your mind an attention to distractions, idols images, judgments comparisons you can sink inside and drop beneath them all yeah I have a question I love the way you're saying and I mean it's clicking I'm just working on getting it I love it and I can get the point that to do a way you know I can do a way that my psychological needs wants you know come more back to my center something I do have a part normally is believing that I'm not a body and one thing I tend to do well I do a lot of things where I believe I'm not a body you know thinking about outcomes when I'm thinking that I'm not a body I go into the future because I'm worried about taking care of it what do I got to do so I'm not believing this so much but what I kind of do is all these ideas that these physical answers and I guess would it be right to say that I'm not supposed to collect my body but rather take care of the mind and then the body will follow or what would you have to say about this I have some people coming that really don't believe that you're believing in the mind I have a part that I believe in so I don't know can you call in yeah I think that's just like a perennial idea that free your mind and the body will follow is free your mind from the beliefs of the ego the pursuits of the ego the distractions of the ego and the body will follow that unified purpose and then you'll feel a sense of completion and a sense of harmony and a sense of wholeness and that's where the pieces is in that and it's very helpful in the course and also in this book it's just telling you specifically that the body is meant to be a communication device and it's important that you start to more give it over for that purpose instead of using it for all the other purposes that the ego may look for because when you use it for communication increasingly you approach communion so there's communication and then communion which is communion with God and that we could call revelation but you can't prepare your mind for revelation without miracles otherwise it would be too traumatic to be have the world disappear in a flesh and to have everything disappear and be gone so you practice letting it be used as a communication device so if I've got a body problem I can think of it as sort of it's a challenge it's a challenge but it's something there to speak to me and kind of so I can question you know like you know so I can question yeah it's like a nudge it's a call back into your function is function unfulfilled being ill at ease or being uncomfortable is just function unfulfilled and then as you open up to function and you become more and more aligned with your purpose with your function which again is communication then you complete that communication function and that returns you to communion which really the mind never left but in awareness it was pushed out of awareness so that's the way it's been the parable of David's kind of been documented you can go back and look at early YouTube's when there was hair or beards or things and me going around wearing the same peach colored sweatshirt or whatever the people would say do you have any other color you know back in the other days around I wasn't really thinking about wardrobe or anything I was just happy to be going around shining but it was just getting into my function of communication which was no small thing for me because I was David was very shy there was a sense of being very inhibited in many ways I wanted a function of communication to kind of open up my heart open up my mind and become aligned with the spirit so that was very important so the next time that you experience a problem with the body that would be a good reminder just to tell yourself ah this is calling me back into my function instead of jumping right away with or you know how how will I deal with this well one thing I'm told is that you can be in pain and suffer or you can just be in pain so I can have pain and have judgments about it and work maybe even as I'm slowly letting those judgments go some of the body that I'm so concerned about here being some of those problems will start to fill in yeah even as something as simple as what seems to be fatigue the more inspired you are the more in function you know you find that the vitality comes from purpose not from sleep or from rest so that's a common tired cured with rest and this is tired cured with purpose cured with function you see how different that is maybe there's something else going on to you that I'm not suspecting something something in the mind alright I appreciate that answer thank you zipping by very quick that's one of our shortest gatherings on record I like that you mentioned that because if I think I've got these veins or body veins maybe there is something else behind them that it's not quite what I think so there's something there that's it's asking me to I guess it's asking for correct perception yeah that's related to Josh's question about about doing things and the I need to do nothing because as long as there's a sense of lack and a sense of need then it seems very practical in the linear world to meet those needs and that's what the human condition seems to be it seems to be meeting needs and then they occur again and you meet them again and the idea of efforting and working and striving seems very very real because the needs seem real and the striving seems real and because the needs recur if they just stopped you know you said I had my last meal and that's it I'm not going to eat again because I've completely transcended hunger you see that I would say that were you know Jesus said to the woman at the well drink of me and you will never thirst again and that was I think a call to vertical perception a line with your Christ self a line with God and you will never want for anything again you will never thirst again so forth so that really fits in with what we were talking about with Josh you don't try to skip over anything you don't try to mitigate the body and say well I'm spirit so I'm not going to do anything anymore in all my travels to course groups around the world I've heard some amazing stories of course of miracle students one student just I think he stayed in his bed for maybe a week or ten days or something but it was a mess defecating and urinating that was his version of I need to do nothing I'm not in bed literally he tried to take it literally of not moving the body and just stayed in bed but that's the thing with anything if you if you try to apply it at the form level without looking at the beliefs and the emotions and the thoughts then you know talk about putting the cart before the horse you know you've really spun it around I actually had one woman in Wisconsin one time who met me came all the way up from Florida and she was really good at hypnotherapy she was like a master hypnotherapist and so she decided to hypnotize herself and I said well what did you use and she said I used part of a workbook lesson I'm not a body the one that says I'm not a body I am free I am still God created me she just hypnotized herself with I am not a body and then she found herself like running into glass and she was pushing the body out of awareness but she would try to walk through glass doors and she kept feeling the bruises on the body and the bumps and the bruises but she actually hypnotized herself so much that she was pushing the body out of awareness using hypnosis really the course is not advocating that at all it's like working with the effect using the mind to work with one effect and not going for forgiveness eventually she said I think I think I was missing something and I said well yeah the course doesn't really advocate you hypnotize yourself that you're not a body she carried it out so far that one day she went into the bathroom and she looked in the mirror and guess what was gone the body she couldn't she couldn't even see the reflection in the mirror she had put so much effort into I am not a body but that's not what we're advocating we're advocating a shift of purpose in the mind for the body and all the world and then you see the world differently and then what seems to be formed just flows from that spiritual guidance about trying to deny the body or certainly push it out of awareness we're just trying to loosen our hold yeah on the use of the body the ego is used to the body yeah yeah cause I wasn't even thought about hearing my mind I was just you know what can I do physically this and that really I could cover over problems but I can't really fix them do them so thank you appreciate it okay we're winding down here anybody else have any questions or can I ask you about relationships and you know our society we need to find a partner you know and how the course talks about relationships are winding down relationships and you feel unbeaten to have their family yeah we're welcome okay we can continue on we were talking about on this show today the idea that as you go deeper inside and you come to a sense of integrity and you come to a sense of purpose and wholeness and completion then what seems to be outcomes which are form outcomes start to fade and fade in your awareness and your desire the bible said the kingdom of heavens within and that's what it says in the course seek not outside yourself for it will fail and you will weep each time an idol falls so when you cling to a concept of the self that involves what we'll call externals again that's the belief in an external world when really it's all in mind but when you pursue that then it does seem to be that's how it happens you travel a long gaily for a while and then the rug gets pulled or there's some kind of outcome that's judged as negative, harsh a sense of loss, a sense of abandonment and yet the mind comes back around and as Carly Simon says if you're willing to play the game it will be coming around again it just seems to circulate over and over and over as long as you're seeking for it and the turnaround towards holy relationship is if you start to see everything as thoughts and reflections of thoughts that you use relationships as mirrors and you pay close attention to your feelings and when you're not feeling happy and joyful and free and alive then you can notice the tendency is going to be to try to see something wrong in the world and so it can go from seeming to be a blessing like thank you friend, partner for helping me see what I need to heal to projection and then you know that gets into seeking perhaps other partners looking for satisfaction in many other different ways and really getting away from the gift that's offered because it's a huge gift so I think it has to be a shift of purpose again for what's the relationship for that's what's going to provide the healing it's not looking for form outcomes and a lot of times people talk about for example like the dating scene it's very scientific in terms of looking in terms of compatibilities almost like interviewing candidates a lot of times when people have what seems to be upward mobility they'd be very successful in the world they don't have a lot of time on their hands because they work so much but they have a little sliver of time so it's like they kind of go in will hire a service kind of research and development in terms of that and it's no different than maybe going to a grocery store and shopping for the best fruits and the best meats and the best candy and so forth trying to maximize your value you know it's much more seen then as not as a reflection but more as a commodity and then you know that's the way that everything is viewed in this world in terms of products, commodity it just it's depressing actually when you follow that out and you actually try to maximize your personality by getting the best in all ways including relationships then it's very much I call it like that's like Dixie cup relationships do you ever remember those Dixie cups where you take the little paper cups and you just take one out and you take a drink and then you throw it away and you take the next one and get a drink and you throw it away that's very much what dating can turn into it's like Dixie cup relationships now of course that was back in the old days nowadays they have these speed dating where you actually can go into a room and you get like 5 or 10 minutes then you have to switch and switch and switch so it's it's actually it's designed to be Dixie cups and you're supposed to get in as many Dixie cups as you can in an evening or something so you know it starts to you know you see the contrast there my experience is that I cannot really see myself and so it's only through my relationship with others that I show who I am and also it's really to use a slightly different lexicon being in a relationship with someone else as it is made for me to identify or be the grandest version of the greatest vision of who I can be so I embrace relationships I think they're wonderful we're all in relationships so this is a relationship right here now yeah once we start to see it from kind of a holistic or a quantum view that this is a relationship this is the way it looks right now this is the way we ask it to be to tell us to inform us and when we open our minds up we're receptive we're paying close attention to everything we want to be fully aware we want to take it all in take it all in and I was saying that whereas the spiritual journey from the ego's perspective it's like what have I got to give up now give up, give up, give up, give up let go, let go release, release, release from the higher perspective with the Holy Spirit it's just everything is is integrating everything is our mind is our consciousness and we can be all encompassing that way we don't have to turn our heads or push anything away or try to distract away from something we can be totally embracing of everything that's in our consciousness and when we have total embrace then we have peace when we want to push something away and say that's not me I mean some of the stuff even I've heard it over the centuries one of the things I used to hear was somebody say but for the grace of God there go I and you could almost say when you get into this integrating it's because of the grace of God there go I you see it just turns the whole meaning around from this idea that persons can be saved somehow there's a saving grace for one and not another which is really not how it works at all as long as there's one prisoner that walks the world in chains then you know your mind is in chains even as you've set all the captives free then you have freed yourself and freed the whole world at that point I can tell you you won't be concerned about what people believe because people don't believe anything people are beliefs and whatever the past that you still have unresolved that you don't want to look at they're going to do you a favor and act it out so that you can tell exactly what you need to heal and that's why they show up a lot of attraction some of you might have seen George Clooney's movie Solaris at our community they're showing they've got the movie Solaris with all my commentary and they made it half way through like Friday's the other half but actually Rhea who plays his wife comes back to him near this planet of Solaris and she is not whole she's just basically acting out everything that he still sees in her in the past he still has unresolved issues around her suicide so she comes back you know Solaris represents the mind what you give you receive what you sow so you reap so he still has that unresolved so she comes back and he shoots her out and she comes back again because it's unresolved and that's the way it happens with relationships we should always have full appreciation and gratitude for the relationships because they're doing us a great service in mind in fact it would be difficult if not impossible to forgive to raise into awareness an unconscious belief system what's going on otherwise you could just be like the ostrich and have the head buried in the sand for millennium just pretending things are okay when it's really not comfortable at all thank you for that well it's not really essential to the curriculum but I think it's a belief system that the spirit can use sends you in the direction of eternal life as long as it is used in a helpful way of seeing that love is all inclusive and no one can ever be turned away from that love or choose apart from that love then I think it has benefits kind of over the heaven and hell you know the ones that go to heaven and the ones that burn in the fire it has advances but ultimately it involves time and the course is really designed to take you into the holy instant and have you even question your beliefs in time the beliefs that you could incarnate not many times but even once you know strictly speaking even when the bible says the word was made flesh Jesus says in the course strictly speaking that's impossible because you can't take something that's spirit the word of God capital W and make it into something that's finite and limited and so ultimately that's another belief that gets undone it's an explanation it's an explanation for the impossible and in the end you do give up all explanations of the impossible and you just accept the truth and that brings you out of the impossible so do you think that when we die it's like we use our bodies that never reach through death but it's more like instead of leaving the realm and leaving the world it's more like the mind as long as it's invested in the ego it's got like it's remote control and it keeps changing the TV channel and just keeps changing the channel over and over and over until it realizes it's pointless that it's not going to resolve it in form so it's a little bit different than the idea that you know how they have on sometimes on graves that was a rip rest in peace it's like but peace is not reached through death it's reached through forgiveness and resurrection so yeah you could yeah we're changing the channel peace channel and seem to go at it I think it's lesson 132 goes into that it's talking about there is no world in that there is no world apart from what you think and there are those who come again he says well come again you could interpret that in a reintegrational perspective or just trying to choose something that is really not really a viable choice but you know some of you remember the matrix trilogy and it was the end of the second matrix film where Neo goes and he meets the architect and basically the architect says the door to your right leads to the source and the door to your left leads back to trinity in the matrix and he does not give it some prayer and consideration you talk about relationships he goes immediately I'll take door number 2 he wants trinity he wants to go back and try to save trinity and then he finds himself unconscious that's how the second one ends he makes his choice to not go for the source trinity in the matrix and then he finds himself unconscious when the sentinels come so that right there is a teaching just in itself all of this has been helpful for some reason like in the past couple of weeks I've been studying pretty heavily and watching youtube videos and stuff like astral projections you know how you mentioned what is it for just I've been sitting here thinking like for me at least as an ego I just realized I have unsuccessfully I've been able to leave the body and go on a vacation yet because that's what I see and then I just realized you know thinking and changing the channel too I might just be trying to escape and change the channel like astral projection sounds really awesome I don't know if there's benefits to it if you've talked about it at all but in a way it frees you of a body but maybe at least for me in the wrong way it seems like now to try to get away from worries and stuff every time you sleep you astral projection I just want to remember it you want control yeah yeah it could be my friend here in the front was hit by a truck and basically had a new death experience an out of body experience and that out of body experience you were just telling me right before our talk tonight how amazing that was just to view the body from outside the body yeah I've had a lot of people that have come to me over the years where they have their first out of body experience or near death experience I call them near life experiences because they talk about going into the light I said you had a near life experience flip it around because this is assumed to be life biological life and it's really all inverted backwards and upside down but it was a powerful experience because you know it's an experience of gee I'm not viewing the body through the body I'm viewing the body outside the body and just that just that one experience can be a loosening of the belief that you're a body it's actually a reflection of a miracle that you're not the body now it's the same, some people have it when they have a drug experience they may take some form of drug and have a very expansive experience the problem is is the cause and effect of believing that the drug caused this expansive experience and then before you know it they have a drug addiction they will come back to that drug and will attempt over and over and over to repeat that expansive experience when really in mind they were just ready for an expansive experience the drug was just a part of the perception it didn't cause anything at all and we could say we're not saying go out and get hit by a truck at all but we're saying that you can have an experience that is a very powerful symbol that you are more than the body and that's good that's what meditation is for that's what practicing the workbook of A Course in Miracles is for and you need those symbols along the way otherwise it would be too terrifying so it's almost like taking it piece by piece in something that's that can be appreciated and it's gentle not so dramatic that you feel violated you know because the mind when it's addicted to form it needs to gently kind of open up like a flower so to realize your body is a good thing but just without the need to get rid of the body because that's actually getting more of the lid we're saying that there's something there that I'm supposed to see past or get rid of if you're coming at it from a perspective of trying to get rid of the body or get rid of the world you're subconsciously making it real you could just think of it as instead of trying to take a vacation from the body as you get into your function, miracle working function you're every time you choose the miracle every time you say spirit perform a miracle through me you are taking a vacation from the ego because that's what the miracle is yes that's what you want and that's why the the astral projection I mean I would just say instead of trying to push hard for something like that a vacation from the body there's lots of great movies somebody just mentioned this movie Eden there's a movie that was made called Eden that you might want to watch it's a housewife who basically she spends most of the movie astral projecting remote viewing doing all these things and then ultimately coming back becoming quite fascinated with all the realms and the things that she's exploring and starting to come back to the question about what's it all for you know and that's really it's the same with psychic abilities you really have to be honest and ask what is this for because the ego can use psychic abilities just as easy as the spirit and the ego will use them to keep you trapped sometimes I use the what was it years ago Deon Warwick psychic hotline you know well of course if you have a psychic ability the ego's first thing will be I can make some good money off of this you notice how it's got a one track mind it's always looking for gain material gain or some kind of gain of skills and abilities personal gain you know that's it's one track mind so it will take a psychic ability and it will try to turn that into a profit and then oftentimes you actually will lose you can even lose the ability because you've misused it you know for the ego and then the ability seems to fade away yes well it's it's referring initially to the bible the word became flesh the word capital W became flesh Jesus is commenting on the bible actually by saying strictly speaking you can't translate one realm into another so word of God all of the material is illusion which is based on consciousness which is yeah I think I remember often times asking myself what is the word of God that was a question I had but Jesus says the word of God is I am as God created me so it's really speaking of the Christ nature the pure Christ nature and it seems like 2000 years ago the word became flesh but strictly speaking he's saying you can't ever translate spirit into perception you might say that as you give perception over to spirit and it becomes an alignment with spirit's purpose then you have a true perception or a happy dream or a forgiven world is what he's aiming at but ultimately what is eternal and what is time eternity and time don't coexist one is real and one isn't and that's really what he's pointing at with that teaching I don't have questions but it goes back to something you said earlier you mentioned the word resurrection and since I was a child I was taught that resurrection or your salvation is actually that you will have to find and so completely offset what the Course is saying so from a Course or from your point of view what is resurrection it's just healing in mind it's the mind that was upside down with upside down thinking coming right side up and so it's like turning the tables on the ego where you eventually accept atonement or you accept the miracle and you see that you are not at the mercy of the world the world has never left your mind you are one with everything that's what the quantum you know quantum physicists call the unified field where everything is totally connected and that's also an example of resurrected mind but it's not a body and of course we grew up with Jesus story where the stone got rolled away it goes in it comes out and he's got a resurrected body and he goes around and he speaks and so on and so forth but that's like a symbol and there have been teachers who have talked about this I've talked about it quite a bit was actually when you look in terms of mind and consciousness that you could say the resurrection occurred before the crucifixion and people will say wait a minute you got the story backwards no crucifixion resurrection but when Jesus was baptized by John and he was in the river Jordan in the way the script was playing out so to speak and the dove came down and landed on Jesus's head and then the voice from the heaven spoke and said this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased you notice from that point on that it doesn't sound like a man speaking anymore I and the father are one before Abraham was I am you know it's like whoa something happened there there is some kind of a resurrection or something there's there's a healing that occurred and then he started calling apostles you see after that you could say literally the resurrection of the mind came before the crucifixion scene so you know by the time the crucifixion came around there was no pain there was no suffering it was just teach only love you see how that flips the whole story around so for those of us who were raised Christians and studied the bible you know that's it can seem like a mind bender but actually it's a mind clarifier because it makes sense that the spirit could heal the sick raise the dead and demonstrate that spirit is all powerful and the body is nothing and also Jesus demonstrated really that money was nothing I mean there was that one story about paying the temple taxes and getting a coin out of the mouth of a fish but basically we don't read in the gospels of Jesus pulling out his wallet and talking about hey Peter look at all look at what I've got you know he's just you don't even hear any stories of him even carrying money and when he's teaching and teaching for hours and hours the apostles get concerned that Lord you haven't eaten and he says I have manna that comes from it's the spirit you know it's just an apparition that's being used the body is like just a symbol being used to teach the kingdom of heaven basically that's it and even when the crucifixion comes why the apostles had so much trouble was because of their own upside down perception they thought this guy is still the man and when they saw what happened with the crucifixion through their upside down perception it's got to hurt it's a lot of blood and that's got to hurt and then when Jesus reappears he appears not to the apostles but Mary Magdalene because she was really the one that she had the eyes to see she was ready to see if she was paying attention to what he was actually talking about the guys weren't but the girl goes hey I have seen the Lord and there you go she's crazy much for apostles it really comes down to how willing are you to see with a new perception not you know the form of things I would like to add one thing I much prefer at one to atonement because I think that really nails it right on the head that the real is that we are all one we are simply manifestations and aspects of God and it's only our belief that we are simple from God that we feel we are led to suffering so I can't I just love the concept atonement yeah I think from a course perspective atonement is correction so we're here to experience the correction so that we can experience the oneness atonement leads to atonement and that's the goal is to forgive except the correction yeah it's good yeah I want to thank you all for coming and we have books here some of you may have already had them I heard early on that Charles had bought some for Doug Roy's group and I've already autographed one of those I said that's the first time in my life where I said who do I make it out to Doug Roy's group that's the first time I was like okay so that was beautiful but Charles is with us in spirit his beautiful shining spirit has been with us I guess somebody said he's living in back in Texas now San Antonio back to San Antonio thank you dude beautiful thank you everyone for coming and we have some resources here if anyone would like to have a look at them and just let you know about Strawberry Fields Forever that's coming up and Salita is here if any of you are locals and felt to come so please feel free to come and have a look and if anyone still doesn't have a book they can be purchased at the register and yeah I think David's happy if you would like a little love note that's my friend thank you very very much