 In the University of Cincinnati I remember I would take these long walks out of the Burnett Woods and I would just ponder and contemplate, I'd say, how do I get out of this state that I seem to be in? And that's a version of what it was. It was like, well, the things that you want out of life, you have every right to ask for. That's how the Holy Spirit started with me. It was like every right. Because I was asking for love and intimacy, peace, freedom. I mean, I was just like rattled off as I walked through the woods. I would ask all the things that I wanted from God and the universe. And I would just say them and say them and say them and say them. And then I heard you have every right to ask for those. They are your birthright. They are your inheritance. You are worth every one of those things that you've just stated. And I was a little bit like... And then I said, now let's look at... move inward and see what it is that you believe will bring you that experience. So I would take them one by one and I would say, okay, one at a time, freedom, freedom. What do I believe would give me freedom? I said, if I had lots of money, if I had great mobility, if I could go anywhere in the world that I wanted to, great mobility of the body. And I just rattled off all these different things. And those were part of the beginning of opening the trap doors. Because I was told I had every right to ask for it. And then Jesus started with the discourse of like, well, you've been going about it the wrong way. And the discourse came walking through the woods with all these things that I was asking for in my life and praying for. I had to find the means to get them using the body. And I was sure that the body was involved in some of those things. Like freedom and peace and joy and love and happiness. And the whole discourse came in, no, I will have to take you there. You know, we're going there, but you're going to have to drop through these kind of trap doors of false beliefs. So whether you call them desires or whether you call them beliefs, you know, you can start to realize that if you really do follow them in, that the Holy Spirit and Jesus will dismantle all your beliefs about how to get that which you believe you don't already have. It's like turning it in on peeling the onion of the mind, all the layers of false beliefs, of seeking in externals to find those states of mind. So it's quite an inward journey. That's what I call metaphysical beyond the physical. I really get you in there. We're talking about desires and we're talking about there's all these levels with perception on the outside and then you go into emotion and then you go into thoughts, then you go into belief, and then desire, or I call it prayer, is the center dot or circle. And when you say, you know, I feel really good and whole when I go to bed and then I wake up and feel bad, and I want to feel good all the time, the way that mind works is whatever you want, it is so. Desire is that powerful. It's like your point of prayer. So anything that you truly desire, you experience. It goes, shoots right through the rings and whatever that desire is, shoots out to all of perception. So if you have alternating perceptions, like I go to bed and I feel whole, I feel whole, the world looks wonderful, all my friends are around me, I'm happy, I'm laughing, and I wake up and I feel bad, then what that is, is if you feel bad, the desire is what's at the core of it all. And so the first step, when you honestly want to open yourself to the grace of God, is to recognize you must first recognize the power of your wanting. You must first recognize the power of your wanting. See, the ego minimizes even that. I talked about how it minimizes the power of the mind. It literally tries to make you mindless in the sense of thinking you're a body, you've got a brain, and maybe a mind is part of your makeup, but it's basically, it's about pushing the mind completely out of awareness. And so that's why anything that you experience that starts to show you the power of your mind and the power of your wanting is a good thing. Like I would show the movie The Secret, sometimes in Course in Miracles groups, where it gatherings, whatever, and they immediately, actually you show the movie People Jump In, and go, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. That movie, that is so off, metaphysically. I've never seen anything so off. I mean, it's usually in Course in Miracles circles, it's a lot of criticism, a lot of criticism of the movie The Secret. Andy raises his hand. I've got two thumbs down for it. And what I'd say to people there is I said, well, actually any kind of tool or device that begins to show you the power of thought, the power of desire, is a helpful tool. That's how much the ego has pushed the power out of awareness. I think it's Mary and Williamson quoted Nelson Mandela, I think they attribute it to Nelson Mandela, but actually Mary and Williamson is the one who said, you're not really afraid of the darkness, you're afraid of your own power. I think that's something, maybe that's paraphrasing, but that's the essence of it, actually Mary Ann said that. And that's what I'm talking about when I say the first step. You're asking a very sincere question, it's like a prayer of the heart. Why is this so? Why can't I consistently experience this sense of lightness and wholeness, that's the prayer of the heart, that's the question, a very sincere question, and that first step is going to be you must recognize the power of the wanting. In other words, we were just talking about that, where the mind can say it's bad to desire and it's bad to feel. You know what that does? That shuts off the awareness of your power just by the judgment and the criticism and the condemnation that it's bad, it's bad to desire, it's bad to feel. When the way that it's all designed, there is no presence, God is not saying it's bad to desire or it's bad to feel. What it is, is the mind is in this self-criticism, it's like a judgment that literally just acts as a denial and a repression mechanism that pushes the awareness of that power out of mind. Copyright © 2020 Mooji Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved No part of this recording may be reproduced without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.