 Okay, well welcome everybody. Welcome to our all-day movie workshop. I'm Peter and I'm going to be the host today. And we've got a great looking movie coming up. I haven't seen this one so I'm really looking forward to it. So we're going to start the movie with David and then afterwards we'll have a 10 minute break. And then we're going to have some breakout rooms where you can share what came up for you during the movie. And then we're going to have a 45 minute break and then I'll be holding the closing session at the end. So I'm going to pass it over to David now. Thanks Pete. Hi everyone. Welcome. You're in for a great treat today. This month is known in the United States for the month of Thanksgiving. The celebration of Thanksgiving and it's always falls in November and I think that's kind of symbolic that we have Thanksgiving in November and we have Christmas in December. First comes the Thanksgiving around forgiveness that we can actually forgive the past and let it go. We actually have the power in our mind to release judgment. We have the power to see the world in a brand new way and feel the innocence of heaven in our hearts. That's something to really give thanks for. We don't have to worry about turkeys and all kinds of things like that. We're talking about Thanksgiving for forgiveness and then of course Christmas the birth of Christ in our heart. We are the Christ so it's our own birth. We're just celebrating our own birth as the living Christ. So we don't have to worry about old stories of majors and wise men and and frankincense and myrrh. We can celebrate the joy of the present moment. That's what Christmas is. Every day is Christmas for me so I'm having a Christmas celebration every day and for all of my Spanish friends joining in Feliz Navidad. I might as well start now. So I'm very excited about this movie because this movie is a relationship movie and we all know that Jesus uses the symbol of relationships in A Course in Miracles for healing. He basically says he tells us your brother is the mirror in which you see the reflection of yourself as long as the perception lasts. In other words he's saying that while you're asleep and dreaming your brother and your sister will always be a reflection of what's in your mind. Your brother, your sister shows you the contents of your consciousness and that's important because if you don't want to be a victim you have to start to see the judgment or attack thought in your own mind. If you don't want to feel at the mercy of a world that's external you have to start to realize that everyone that you meet or even think of is simply a pictorial representation of what you believe you are. So if you believe you're human then you will see everyone else as human as well. But that's subject to a lot of variation and it's subject to a lot of judgment. Positive negative good bad. It's not true. It doesn't really show you the true essence, the true innocence, the true joy of God's creation. So we need reflections to help us be aware of what it is that we're holding on to in consciousness. In fact Jesus says that you always should feel gratitude for your brother because of this mirroring that's going on. Without your brother, your sister in this world, the opportunity to realize the truth would be quite delayed. But if you allow the Holy Spirit to use relationships for forgiveness, to realize that there's only one of us and not more than one. There's only one of us. There's only ever been one of us. Let's be honest here that we were created as one by God so there's really only one of us. But to the extent that we believe in the other we need to forgive that perception. In the Bible Jesus says take the stranger in. That's another way 2,000 years ago of saying take the stranger, the ego, belief system into the light of your heart and it will disappear. Take the stranger in. It doesn't literally mean you should be inviting people off the street to live in your house. It's basically saying take the stranger, the belief in the ego in your mind to the light inside of you where the kingdom of heaven is and then the stranger will disappear. And you realize that there is only love. There is only love. There has always only been love. There's nothing but love. So you all voted this week on themes and once again there was a number of movies, a few that came to mind very strongly, but then I looked at your themes and I kept praying on the five themes that you voted on this week and then this movie that we're going to watch today emerged from Jesus with a little wink. The movie is called Sweet November. So isn't it nice in November he's giving us Sweet November. He's wanting us to have a sweet experience of November and the number one theme, 84 votes, by far the number one theme that you all voted for was how to meet my brother without a pest. Wow, that is huge. I mean if we can experience this theme today I know your life is going to be the most joyful, happy, vibrant life beyond anything you could imagine because when you can meet your brother without the pest you are meeting in the moment, in the present moment where truth is found. The second theme was the power of interpretation is everything. What does that mean? It means that in every single instant you still have the power of interpretation. Even sleeping and dreaming in exile, that you're in exile of God, you still have the power of interpretation. Even though the ego belief has been given faith and that's all it is. It's a puff of nothingness, but if you give your powerful mind to the ego then you give it, you make it into a belief that seems real just by believing it. And yet even if you believe in the ego the Holy Spirit's still in your mind too, so that's the split mind. Even if you've got the light and the darkness in there the power of interpretation is still yours. So you might say the one remaining reflection of true power which is in heaven or truth. In this world is the power of interpretation. It means in any second, in any moment you can either interpret with the Holy Spirit or with the ego. But it's the choice you have. Nothing is thrust on you. You have in a split mind you're choosing between two purposes. It's the ego and the Holy Spirit. But the range is set. Don't ask for another option. Don't say I want three options. You don't get three. You only get two. Ego, Holy Spirit. No matter what's happening, no matter what the situation is, no matter how your emotions are racing, it still comes down to you have the power of interpretation. And I would say, of course, that forgiveness is an interpretation. So that's the purpose of all relationships is to learn to interpret them in the moment with the Holy Spirit and that's what it means to forgive. Third one is practice prayerful communication. And if you really ask what is prayerful communication, again that that is being in alignment with spirit. It means that in every moment you're going to be open and receptive to be shown and given the communication. You're not going to react based on past patterns. You're not going to judge based on your past learning. You're not going to try to summarize or conclude anything based on the past. You're not going to hold an opinion based on the past. You actually have to practice prayerful communication. What would you have me do? What would you have me say? Where would you have me go? This is this is an example of prayerful communication where you're so in the prayer with God and the Holy Spirit that you're asking to be shown and given what the communication is every moment. You're not assuming that you know. And for most human beings, because there's such a strong investment in the ego, most human beings consider communication to be just reaction and response. React to what was said to you, respond to what was said to you. But prayerful, the prayerful practice of communication is to be sourced, to be tuned into Jesus and the Holy Spirit so that you don't want to extend anything at all except what is given you from the spirit. In fact, you have no need to extend anything but the spirit because that teaches you that you are the spirit. Once you pray to the spirit and listen and respond only to the voice of the spirit, to one voice, then you are aligned and your identity becomes identified with the spirit and not with the body or the person. The fourth one is transparency leads to healing. Hide nothing. Cover nothing. Do not shield yourself. Open yourself like the flower. Open yourself like a flower opening to the sunshine and to the rain. And this movie is a great example of that because we're going to have two people that are brought together at kind of an interesting meeting at the Department of Motor Vehicles is where they meet. Both of them have gone to get their driver's license renewed and that just shows you how the Holy Spirit can use any situation to open up a teaching learning relationship in which enormous healing occurs. I would say enormous and accelerated healing can occur but this is what many people would call like an accidental meeting although there are no accidents so it's all prearranged as part of the script. But the transparency means that as you are willing to expose your thoughts and your feelings and beliefs then you will begin to see that you are choosing them and all self-concept thoughts are of the ego and you can choose a higher interpretation with the Holy Spirit. All thoughts of the personality are of the ego but there is a higher use for the puppet that is the body than the ego's use because basically the Holy Spirit uses every situation as a means in a miraculous way to experience revelation which is direct experience of the light. So the purpose of relationships and the purpose of everything in this world, the purpose of words, the purpose of images and symbols, it's all a means given to the Holy Spirit to bring about this experience of revelation which is direct communion with God. Revelation also is, of course, it's temporary. It shows you the light but it just gives you a glimpse of the light and the only thing that supersedes revelation is waking up from the dream entirely. Who needs a glimpse when you can take the whole enchilada? You can have the full experience of being the living Christ and so revelation is very rare but it is a glimpse of eternity. It's like a little glimpse of eternity and the last movie poll is gratitude for all forgiveness opportunities. Isn't it great to start to look at everything that you experience as a forgiveness opportunity? What a wonderful way of looking at the world and if you just begin to open your mind to the idea that everything is a forgiveness opportunity, that's the first step at reclaiming the power of interpretation in your mind. Some of you might remember the very famous movie watcher's guide to enlightenment movie Groundhog Day. That's probably one of the most famous awakening movies that there is and you may remember that Phil, the weatherman, just goes through the same loop, the karmic loop, the wheel of time over and over repeating the same day in Punxsutton, Pennsylvania, Groundhog Day and then at some point I think he is ready to escape the loop of time and I remember the scene in that movie very amazing where he's telling his TD producer Rita, he's telling her what a terrible experience he's having because he keeps repeating the same day over and over and over and how depressing it is and how frustrating it is and I remember Rita says, I don't know Phil, maybe there's another way to look at it. Here comes the Holy Spirit. In the middle of the Groundhog Day loop, I don't know Phil, maybe there's another way to look at it. Some of you know the story of Bill Thedford and Helen Shuckman that they were professor, he was the head of the department and he hired Helen Shuckman back in 1958 at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and they were in the department and then in 1965, before Helen started hearing Jesus' voice, before she even had the visions and symbolic dreams, there was one day when she went to Bill's office and Bill was complaining about how bad their lives were professionally and personally and how there was so much fighting in the department and arguing and no one could get along and he was just giving about a five-minute spiel about this and then the idea came, perhaps there's another way to look at this. Maybe there's an answer, he was saying, to this frustrating, conflictual world in life and and he thought that she would just either laugh at him or get some kind of a very, give a very kind of dark comment but to his surprise Helen Shuckman said, you're right Bill, I think there is another way and I'm going to help you find it. Oh my, that's like Rita in Groundhog Day, you're right Bill and I will help you find it. Now that's what this movie is. This movie is Jesus giving us a Thanksgiving present. He's giving us a November present and he's saying I'm going to show you the key to eternal life is through forgiveness. It's through forgiving your brother and that means simply seeing the brother, seeing how I meet my brother without a past. That is no small order, that is giant. We are praying for deliverance, we are praying for resurrection, we are praying for divine innocence to see the perfect innocence of who we are and who everyone is. So that is a huge prayer, that is a huge prayer and that's what we're going to do today. We're going at the escape from fear today. We're going at the escape from guilt and in order to do this you have to realize that every time you look at a person, the person you believe you are or another person or a partner, every time you look at a person, every time you look at a body, you have a choice of interpretation. There is another way to look upon the body and the world, that is of the Holy Spirit and it's a miracle. It is truly a miracle and this is a moment where you perceive the world without a judgment, without any judgment, without judging good, bad, right, wrong, advanced, beginner, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. Beyond all the judgments of the world is a pristine interpretation that leaves you with a smile on your face because you behold the world as the Holy Spirit sees it. You behold the happy dream, you behold the forgiven world, you see the whole world sparkling and what is the main characteristic of this interpretation is that you still have a self-concept but the self-concept is forgiveness. It's the one self-concept that you can share with the Holy Spirit because it doesn't involve the ego. It's still a self-concept. Imagine you reach a point and you just reach a state of mind and it's so pristine and spectacular and you can say along with Jesus, I have forgiven the world. You can say along with Jesus, Satan is underfoot. Be of good cheer. Imagine radiating that thought out to the whole universe. Be of good cheer. I have forgiven the world. Now in order to do that it's very simple and all spiritual pathways, all authentic spiritual pathways always talk about emptying the mind. In Buddhism they talk about go into the void. All the great teachers have said, lay aside the judgments and the thoughts you think you are and open your mind, open your heart to the truth. Well what you are really seeing is the nothingness of what you thought was you, your former self-concept. So this sometimes can seem to be a blind spot. That's what the unconscious mind is. The unconscious mind is the blind spot. Just when you think you're happy, soaring along, gliding down the highway and then something comes to shock you, that is a self-concept belief from the unconscious mind coming up saying, here I am. Well here comes Iso. He doesn't like to miss these really good movies. He's looking for the softest spot to land. Get our Iso Cam going. There it is. Iso's like, you're still looking. You're gonna come on. You're gonna miss the movie if you don't get up there. There you go. There you go. There you go. So Iso's joining us again. He doesn't ever want to miss out on the movie. So here we go. So in this movie, this will be a movie that will show us the loosening, the exposing and the loosening of the self-concept. Our main characters are in the movie, sweet November, are Nelson, played by Akiana Reeves, and Sarah, played by Charlize Theron. So these two, Nelson and Sarah, are gonna be brought together at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles at a test. It's getting your exam to get your driver's license renewed, and the Holy Spirit's going to bring them together at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and then the Holy Spirit will use their relationship for the undoing of the self-concept. So for Keanu Reeves, as I've said before, the self-concept is everything that you believe about time and space. So it's not just the personality self that you have to lay aside. It's not just the mask of the person that you have to lay aside. You have to lay aside the entire realm of time and space that seems to surround the person, because it's all connected. And so it's not just the personal mask that you're dropping. You're dropping the whole cosmic mask. You're dropping the whole cosmic fig leaf, I call it. The whole cosmos of time and space is the self-concept. As long as you perceive it in parts, in specifics and details, that's the self-concept. And so for Keanu Reeves, his character Nelson, he's very identified as being a businessman. He's in advertising, and he's not only identified with an advertising self-concept, but he thinks he's really good. He's proud about his advertising job. His whole world revolves around his advertising job, his profession. His girlfriend is just like a little ornament on the prize of the advertising self-concept. His friends are just little ornaments that are all tied in. His whole world revolves around winning awards and being the best advertising salesman on the planet. So he is heavily invested in this business. We'll call it the business self-concept. Now Charlize Zirran is going to play Sarah, and she's a free spirit. She is really down to earth. She loves animals. She loves her neighbors. We see her, I'd say, in terms of loosening from the self-concept, she's more humble. Jesus tells us, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. And he explains to us that what does he mean by the meek shall inherit the earth? He said their egos are more humbled. And so when your ego becomes more humbled, it means you have less and less investment in the self-concept that the ego made. Ultimately you're the Christ, but you have to go through a process of dismantling and having the Holy Spirit dismantle the self-concept entirely. So Sarah is, she's quite free-spirited, and she's going to meet with Nelson. She's pretty much already, I would say, into the journey of spiritual awakening. So in one sense, she's the one that's going to be the one that's going to do the inviting. And basically Nelson has a lot of resistance. He's interested in being the top salesman. He's interested in the things of the world, and he's quite distracted. I'd say he's very much unaware of the spiritual journey. He probably, if he could speak to us now, he would say the spiritual journey is ridiculous because his goals are so aimed at the future and success as a businessman that he is unaware that there is such a thing. He probably would laugh at the very idea of such a thing as a spiritual journey. So they will come together and they will basically, the proposition is Sarah is going to invite him to live with her for a month, the month of November. Now that's a kind of a novel idea. If somebody invited you to live with them for a month, I'm sure it would bring up some some questions in your mind. What are they up to? What are they possibly thinking that I'm going to move in with them for a month? It's kind of a novel idea actually to devote a month for healing, to devote a month to to give and receive the maximal amount of healing. This movie came out in 2001 and I saw it, I don't know if I saw it in the theaters when it first came out, but I saw it shortly thereafter and I was very impacted by this movie. Not so much just the specifics of the healing that the movie showed me and not so much as the emotions that came up for me during the movie and the release that I went through and the healing from watching the movie, but even more so, it's something stayed in my mind like a little seed and some years later when I was traveling all over the world doing talks and workshops and and occasionally you know doing a short retreat every two or three days something about this movie stayed in my heart and I thought at some point, well that is a very novel idea. Living with a group of people for a month like these two in this movie they come together for November. I thought, wow, that could be very interesting. I wonder if Jesus and the Holy Spirit could use a month of healing through relationships by living together. So I actually was traveling around Europe and I went down to the island of Mallorca and I was visiting a friend down there Lynn and suddenly one morning it dawned on my mind that I was to plan a month in Mallorca in the fall and this was probably summer time when it was called high season, but I was to offer a month long retreat which became later on in Tabula Rasa a devotional retreat and then it went expanded to six weeks and and I did a series of six week retreats and now we we have a six week mystery school. It's evolved and where did this whole thing start of doing these living together in for a month or for six weeks. I think it started with this movie actually back in 2001 when I when I actually watched how much healing occurred in this in this context and I thought what an interesting idea to live together for a month really with a focus for healing and it not only impacted me in terms of an idea that I think a seed that the Holy Spirit and Jesus were giving me that would later flourish but I think you can even take it a little bit further than that if you want to. If you want to do this with me you can. I started to realize that the way that I was perceiving relationships was very linear and that Jesus was saying what if you could come together for a healing assignment for just a month and you gave everything you had to devote it purely to the healing of your mind without overlaying any of your past ideas on top of it like personal motivation like future goals like what you want to do with your life and what you want to achieve in your life what if you could just leave that behind and devote yourself for a month of healing and then Jesus said that's just a step in the right direction a month is still a month of time but he was saying if you could start to look at the world and look at people through the desire for healing your mind then you would advance in distance without measure you would go so fast towards enlightenment if you could start to take the future goals and your future ambitions off of your interactions with people instead of meeting somebody and thinking do we have a future together Jesus would say yo what about the present moment yo I'm here right now I think we can use this moment and you don't have to worry about whether you have a future together with this person honestly most of us just go through life seemingly with our past goals and ambitions and and the egos always got targeting people what what will they give me what can I get from them what will this lead to in the future and Jesus is quite frankly not interested in any of those things he's interested in the holy instant he's interested in seeing the Christ that's the whole point is to see the Christ right now it's not about seeing somebody in the future so I started to think wow after I watched this movie I started to think maybe my perception of relationships has been way off maybe I've been seeing the relationships from the past and planning what I wanted to happen from the relationships in the future maybe that was the problem was that I was seeing relationships in terms of the egos perspective what what can I get from this you know that's the egos motive what can I get from this so as an alternative Jesus is saying this holy instant offers everything and if you come to this instant without any preconceived notions of who people are what things mean if you come to this instant with no thought of bringing the past along or projecting out of future you are zooming into enlightenment zooming into self-realization because you are letting go of all future goals if you let go of past goals you will also let go of future goals because the ego made the past and the ego projected the future and to really see your brother without a past means that you have to want God in simple terms you have to wake up in the morning and say this day is God's it is my gift to him today I have only one goal and that is God I have no goal for the future I have no desire to to reinvent the past or to repeat the past I my goal is God my way is set I would not let the past interfere with my goal for God and when you dedicate your day to God you begin to discover what it means to be present you begin to open your heart and mind to a gap a love to seeing everyone and everything as exactly the same and that only happens in forgiveness the ego doesn't know what that even means you know the ego is like well obviously this is a world of differences but but the ego doesn't know anything and in order to really start to see that everything is the same you first have to realize that that the lesson of forgiveness is in your mind it's not in your body it's not in anybody it's not inside of situations it's in your mind it's a way of looking on the world in stillness it's a way of looking on the world with the Holy Spirit so this movie today is going to give us a great great opportunity to to see our brother without the past we're going to see how the Holy Spirit can use a relationship to let go of everything that you think and everything that you believe about yourself in the past and there is no higher purpose for relationships you know relationships are not about outcomes and though the ego would tell us there's some kind of specific fantasy relationship in the future that would make us happy it's just not true there is no specific fantasy in the future that will ever make you happy now it's a trick and when you open yourself to this you are basically saying I hope I've been wrong about the way that I have perceived the world I hope I have been wrong about the way the ego set this entire world up I would rather have God as my goal with no hesitation with no embarrassment with no holding back God is my goal God is my goal so let's watch this movie with the prayer of our heart being God is our goal why God is the Creator God is our source and that's what Self-realization is all about it's about knowing your source and knowing yourself as you were created by that source that's that's what this whole it's the whole point of everything and to reach that we have to be willing to step back and let the Holy Spirit interpret the world for us show me the world a new Holy Spirit show me a brand new world Jesus show me the world in a way that I've never seen it before it's so new that I have no past reference for this glorious beautiful sight so enjoy the movie stay with the prayer and I will pop in during the movie to give some commentary but this movie is your declaration of release from the past this movie is showing you that the way that you perceived relationships in the past was was not helpful it it did not serve but fresh right now pristine sparkly this is our opportunity let's sparkle I see Ali get the sparkle fingers are out let's get our sparkle fingers ready ready for this one so enjoy enjoy this movie some of you haven't seen it you're in for an amazing treat