 Do you dare to be happy? You never really had the power to make that choice, to have a life apart from God. And that is the correction. There's no punishments involved. It's like, why did Jesus keep telling the prodigal son story over and over and over two thousand years ago? Because it's like, because the whole story was about, I love you. I don't care whatever you believe, you've squandered your inheritance, that's, come on, I welcome you. You know, let's have a party. I welcome you back. No consequences to squandering inheritance, no consequences to being off, it's not like the father in that parable said, what have you been doing? Feeding pigs? Oh man. I just gave you so much, and I whizzed him and everything, and they're just feeding pigs. Come on. There was no, in the prodigal son, the father was just celebrating. He actually runs out to meet the prodigal son. He's so happy. He even tells the other son, who's pretty jealous about this whole thing. He squandered everything. The father all he could say is, you know, your brother, my son was lost, and now he's found. Now he's so excited that he's found himself, that he's come back. The whole emphasis of the parable is always on the find. There's nothing emphasized to the father about the going out. There's not any sense of like, it's not like 12 steps, you know, where the father says, now, you can either do an inventory here, I gave you the inheritance, okay, inventory, just do your steps. You squandered it, you blew it, you were feeding the pigs, don't deny it, you were feeding the pigs, and you know, and you disobeyed and blah, blah, blah, there was no inventory in there. The father just has the unconditional love in the parable, and just wants to welcome the son back. And actually, you know, when you really start to follow the process of the Course of Miracles and Jesus, the welcome never ends. You have such a welcome to everything and everyone in the universe that it wouldn't matter what the person in your memory seemed to do or didn't do, whether it was a positive memory or a negative memory, it's like there's just this experience of joy, of welcome. The welcome never ends, it's just like a wide open door. Now that's the best way to describe the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit does not even know of the concept of punishment. Of course the Holy Spirit is the representation of God, so God does not punish, God does not offer consequences, sometimes even in this world when people are going through difficult times they'll say, hmm, God is testing me, why would you want to spend eternity with a God who tests you? You know, like some kind of like a little aunt, you know, like in Bruce Almighty, you know, where Bruce is saying, God, he's like a magnifying glass, he's trying to burn the feelers off of me, you know, he's joking as if God is torturing. But again, we're back to the saying that God did not create this world, God is not just like the song says, God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance, I don't like that either. Why is he watching me from a distance? That's just to follow the first commandment, love the Lord that I got with all my heart, so am I, and he's watching me from a distance, that's not fair, just to give him my all and he's just going to watch me from a distance, what's comforting about that, from a distance? Well, that sounds almost like you're under the magnifying glass or under the glass, you know, and it's like hmmm, squirm a little more there, you know, or I'll test you, I'll test you to see if you're pure enough, ah, got you again, not pure enough to come back to the, you know, who would want to know God if God was like that, it's more that the Course is teaching us, don't try to bring the truth into the illusion, don't try to bring concepts of God into your world of fragmentation, you know, we've tried to build temples and towers of Babel and we talk about sacred rivers and sacred oils and it just gets me, I still, when I go online and I see these sacred oils that we're using the time of Jesus, you know, for only $29.95 you can buy an ounce of the sacred oil and it's like, come on, like the Holy water, you know, some of us have been through the Catholic Church, you know, the Holy water. Some of you saw the Devil's Advocate with, they got Al Pacino, he played the Devil, he goes in and he looks up at the pictures of Jesus and so forth and he puts his finger right in the Holy water in the Catholic Because the devil always, like, say, Ahh! Take that for your holy water! The Course is saying, yeah! Let's take that that there is no holy water. Isn't it great to know that there is no holy water? And even these things of baptism and getting spring old or don't or whatever, those are just symbols, of cleansing or of rebirth You know, it was just, they were very light symbols. The Lord's Supper, you know, do this and remember it's me. The ego turns it into this big control mechanism. You gotta eat the damn wafer and the drink the damn wine and then you're in the church. And if you don't follow the rules, you don't get your wafer and you don't get your wine. You're out, you're out of there. Control. Everybody to watch you, who's not taking the wafer today? Yeah, it's all guilt. It's the ego's like using the whole symbol. And let's go back to it. Let's roll it back a little bit. He said during the Lord's Supper, the Last Supper, do this and remember it's me. Jesus knew the human beings would be eating meals for many, many, many centuries to come until their telepathy got so good that they could live on the mana from heaven until they didn't have so much of a bullies system of lack that they could just live by their divine inheritance, by their high vibrations. Remember he said, drink of me and you will never thirst again because he was on that high mana. He was living on the vibrations of love and light. The apostles were always concerned. He didn't have enough to eat and all this stuff and he'd be out there teaching for days, not eating any bread or anything. And he's like, just don't worry about the food thing here. Let's just concentrate on the kingdom of heaven and the healing, you know. And it was all because of that. But the very thing of do this and remember it's me, he simply knew that people would be eating for centuries and centuries and centuries. And when you sit down to have a drink or have some food, remember my unconditional love that I love you forever and ever and ever. And that's all that it meant. It was not meant to be ritualized, but the ego just simply hijacked the very simple message of unconditional love through in some penance, through in some purgatory, through in some other concepts that are very fearful. You know, all this stuff about the blood of the lamb. Jesus says in the Course that people don't understand the significance of the lamb. The lamb was simply a symbol of innocence. There was nothing in Jesus' teachings about slaying lambs and smearing blood and all this stuff, you know, everything. There's nothing about that. It's just the lamb was just a symbol of innocence. And there was no sacrifice in the teachings of Jesus. He didn't claim to be personally the only way to God. It was the Holy Spirit, the universal spirit that said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. But there was nothing specific or personal about that. It was simply the Holy Spirit using the body as a communication device to convey these beautiful teachings, which was basically, you know, to, you know, be of good cheer, I've overcome the world, I'm calling you out of the world. What he meant was I'm calling you out of the thinking of the world. Like we need to expose these ego thought patterns, these ego belief patterns. And he wasn't necessarily saying, you know, that you had to like go live in a cave or live in a tree. That's not, some people pick those teachings, you know, I'm calling you out of the world to think that they better, you know, find the closest cave. We've actually got a place, Lisa and I were driving down, if you drive down the road, there's this doorway cut into the middle of these canyon walls. We were driving along, Lisa said, have you ever seen that before? It looked almost like some kind of a crypt or something, you know, but there's no sense of being called out of the world of trying to get away from people, or trying to get away from society. What you start to realize is the concepts of the ego, which involves the persona and which involves society and so on and so forth. Those are just false beliefs that you have to raise up to the light and realize that your holy mind need not buy into these beliefs. You know, like you start to realize that you're not really in society, society's in you, society's in the sleeping mind. And you have to raise all those false concepts and beliefs up to the light and then they'll disappear. So constantly, Jesus says in the Course, bring the illusions to the truth. Bring the illusions to the truth. I mean, there's nothing in the Course about trying to save people. There's nothing in the Course about trying to save countries or beam light to evil countries. There's nothing in the Course about trying to bring the love and light of heaven into the darkness and beam it here or forgive this one over there, this and that. It's all about going inside and looking at your belief system and handing your beliefs over, giving it back to God and saying, take this from me. I don't want this anymore. And that is a real rapid way to have this turnaround, this shift of mind that you're going for. So it's not so much about dropping out of society. It's more of giving over all your ideas about society to the Holy Spirit and then letting the Holy Spirit use the symbols in a very simple way. But when I say simple, it's not gonna mean that you're gonna get some kind of a mission to change the world. You know, it's really gonna be when you really authentically do that. It's just about a changed perception. So it's more like it's an undoing and an unlearning of false definitions which takes you higher and higher to forgiveness or to the remembrance of your true Christ self. So it's very practical. You know, it's nothing is, you don't ever leave with the form. You just do the mind training and then kind of like St. Augustine said, love and do what you will. Jesus says, what you do comes from what you think as you purify your thoughts. You don't have to be concerned about the doing because the doing's automatic. The doing's just an outcome of your state of mind. You don't even have to think what you're gonna do during the day. You know, a lot of us have grown up with lists. We make all these lists and then we get guilty when we don't complete the list or we don't complete the to-do list but it's really about listening from all those things and just being in the flow and the guidance and the free flow during the day, you know, just letting the spirit inspire you.