 That's of course going to be the answer to waking up, is to get a closer and closer and closer connection to the Holy Spirit. Get more and more and more finely tuned into discerning, because it's like you're... In this world you're in a maze where you've got, or a labyrinth where you've got to make all these turns every day. And you're not sure if you're making the right turns. You know, just like the mouse, it's in the labyrinth. It's doing its best to kind of get out and escape the labyrinth, but it's not quite sure. And that's why it can take quite a lot of time to get out of a maze or a labyrinth. But the more tuned in you get to the Holy Spirit in a very deep, authentic way, the Holy Spirit can really give you very specific guidance. You know, we were talking about that in the car last night, and we talked about that here yesterday. Go here, go there, do this, stop doing that, call so and so. You know, it can be very specific. And of course that's going to save time, because then you don't have to rely on your past learning to evaluate, try to evaluate what is the best thing I can do based on all my past history. Everything I've learned from my upbringing and my education and my life experiences, you can say, OK, that's all that. And now I've got the Holy Spirit with me who can use the symbols of the past, but in a way that will guide me out of the maze. In fact, I would say the more willing you become, it's like you seem to glide and flow much more easily through the maze. And at some point it's almost like you're lifted up, you know, like the old days of the rapture, where all of a sudden you have these mystical experiences and you're lifted up and you look down on the maze and you go, oh, wow, cool. I'm not there anymore. I'm not in it. I'm not stuck in the maze anymore. Of course it calls it above the battleground. The only way you can find true peace is to be above the battleground. You have to have a higher perspective in looking on the world in order to have a consistent peace. And Jesus says, you cannot find peace on the battleground. So this again gets more into the subtle reinterpretations of, I have heard people use that quote from the Bible, be in the world but not of it. And all I'm saying is when you work with the Course you have to be very careful of what your interpretation of be in the world but not of it is, because as long as you still feel identified in the world, identified with the dream figure, identified with the images and you have a lot of charges and meaning around those images, then the peace of mind isn't going to be consistent. You still find yourself reacting and responding to certain people, places and even situations we talked about yesterday that situations are artificial constructs, that the ego made up to chop time and space into little increments and say, oh in this situation with my husband or in this situation with my daughter or this situation with my Course in Miracles group, situational thinking is part of the problem too. It goes that deep that when you start to align with the Holy Spirit your mind starts to feel much more abstract and then even those thoughts about various situations that tend to arise in consciousness, those start to dissolve and disappear and evaporate because you start to get more of an experience that you are indeed everywhere, that you are literally not defined in a human body and by a small little band of human experiences that literally your mind was created by God and it's vast and it's expansive. So if you work with the Course long enough then certain passages start to come out like in the workbook. When I am healed, I am not healed alone as one of the workbook lessons. And in that lesson he says, when you accept the gift of the healing, legions upon legions will arise with you. Arise with me? Yes, you are the savior of the world, not personally. That's what we might call a messiah complex. Somebody goes and stands on Union Square in New York City and I am the way to choose a life. Follow me and they think that it's actually a body that you're supposed to follow or a personality. That's what we call a messiah complex in psychology. But that presence, that state of mind, the Holy Spirit, I am the way the truth is in life. And the Holy Spirit of course goes by many different names and many different cultures. It's not in India, it's not the Holy Spirit and in China and different places. But that presence of love is the way the truth is in life. So you begin to open your mind to feel this expansive feeling where you just feel totally connected. You feel more like, in quantum physics terms, like the observer. You feel this as a calm, peace, detachment like you're watching everything and at the same time you're simultaneously one with everything. So it's not like you're watching everything from a place that you're apart from it but you're watching it from a unified perspective. Which is quite a, you know, it's not a human perspective at all. Human beings don't watch something and say, oh, that's me, literally. They tend to go to a movie theater and go, oh, I saw a movie today. But they don't think of their daily life experiences or their everyday moment by moment experiences as a movie. They tend to make that split again between a movie, that's fiction, that's fantasy, that's make-believe, that has actors and actresses that are paid by a movie studio to act things out. And yet when they go to the movie they have a lot of emotional reactions as if they're right there in the scene. As if it's really happening. As if they leave the theater and they really are shook up sometimes or sad or they have all these emotions bubbling up after they've seen what they consider a very emotional movie, that they have engaged in the movie and they have not seen the movie as a movie. So that's why it takes a lot of mind training and we really emphasize, first of all, the metaphysics working with the course and really understanding clearly, clearly, clearly what it's teaching because the ego is frightened of those metaphysics and you have to really go into them in a very open, careful way. And then the most part is, like the workbook, the practical application of the principles, not making any exceptions to the principles. When you start to really apply the principles in every aspect of what seems to be your life and your world, that's when the joy starts to become more and more tense because you free your mind from those pockets of exceptions. Okay, I can get this here and here and here and here, but I draw the line with this, this, this and that. I remember years ago I was in Roscoe up at New York in the Casco Mountains and I happened to be doing the workshop on forgiveness with Ken and Gloria. The very week that the Persian Gulf War was really heating up and I mean heating up by scud missiles flying across and hitting Israel, oil refineries getting blown up and flames going into the air. Saddam Hussein getting on, you know what I'm saying, God is with us and George W. Bush was the first one answering, no, God is on our side. Which is probably the most interesting thing of a war going on and watching the religious and political leaders claiming God is on our side. Jihad, oh, God is on our side, we'll show you. It's kind of like it reminds me of watching the Ten Commandments with Moses and the Pharaoh. My God's bigger than your God. Oh yeah, you want to see? It's like showdown time. The God of Israel versus the Pharaoh. If you watch it, it's kind of funny. It's like every time the Pharaoh thinks they've got Moses to put his staff in the water and all the water turns to blood and I mean it's kind of one of these Star Wars on Earth. But the thing about that Persian Gulf War, we were doing this seminar on forgiveness and all during the week I just was sitting there and just really watching. I didn't have anything coming up. But I watched the participants because some of the participants started off in the week and they were really angry at Saddam Hussein. And then as the week went on, they started to get angry at George Bush for his remarks. You know, read my lips. The anger started coming up there. And then the more the week went on, some people started to get angry at the media. Why is the media showing all this? People aren't watching television shows anymore. They're watching scud missiles. You know, it was like drama. It was like watching soap opera and it was taking up all the television time. They weren't having any programming. It was like war glorified so that everybody could go, oh my God, you see that missile that landed there and then they show the faces of all the people that were wounded and then they show the political leaders. And so people started to get angry at the media. Like why is the media wasting their time and energy putting such a focus on this instead of other things? One woman I watched went through the whole week and she was just like me. She was just smiling and watching the whole thing except on the very last day, the night before she had seen a news report and they showed a bird covered in oil on the beach from one of the refineries that had been blown up and the oil slick had drowned his bird and there was this bird carcass, this little bird carcass, all draped in black and she lost it. She was like, I'm angry at all the humans. Death to all the humans. How dare they do this to this bird. You know, fighting over oil and killing this. This bird was just flying around, probably just landed to go for a fish or something and turned into Darth Vader, you know. So she lost it. And to me, that showed me the dynamics of projection that underneath, as long as you still hold on to the ego as long as you still believe that there's something real happening outside of the world there's still that belief in victimization and the ego needs a target. It can target Saddam or George or the media or in the end it can target all human beings for what they did to the bird. I'm mad at both sides, I'm mad at the whole region, I'm mad at the whole planet for what happened to that bird and that's just what projection is, is trying to find a scapegoat, trying to find something informed to get angry at so that you don't have to look at the anger you have inside your mind that comes from believing that you can separate from God. So for years, you know, a lot of us have books like the Bible where it seemed a bit in the Old Testament like God was quite human. I mean, God would get angry and zap the tribe or zap somebody that got out of line and in more fancy terms from ten years of university we call that anthropomorphism which is just assigning human characteristics to something that's not human. And God is not human. So when we said God is angry or I know the Christians all they make it on this thing like one of the things from the Bible is that God is a jealous God. And recently I saw an interview with Oprah Winfrey where she was raised in a Baptist church and she was all caught up in the flow and the dancing and the spirit and the minister was going on and on and she was probably just a young woman or maybe only still a child maybe like 12 years old or something like that and she was all caught up in the whole thing in this Baptist church and she was listening to the minister and she heard the minister say God is a jealous God. And Oprah said, she said she stopped even at that age and went why is God jealous? If God is so powerful and so all-encompassing and omnipotent and omniscient and she even knew those words at that age if God is everything why is God jealous? That was when she first started questioning her religion that God would be jealous of jealous of what? How could you be jealous if you're everything? Jealousy, she thought, that's really a human trait and in the end what you start to see is the same thing when you get down to that anger that's underneath that if you have anger you first have to come to an admission that you believe anger is real and justified and if you follow that in even deeper you believe in an angry God because where is this anger supposed to come from? Did it just pop into awareness suddenly from nowhere? What's the source of the anger? The ego covers itself and hides like a little spider in a web and projects out a big web to project that anger onto all these things in the world and keep it hidden but the ego itself is where the anger is it's where the fear is in the guilt the ego is the fear in the guilty anger so the ego is seemingly ingenious it doesn't really exist but when it's given the power of the mind it seems to be quite intelligent and ingenious we always say military intelligence is an oxymoron Ego intelligence would be again kind of an oxymoron but it does seem to be ingenious Jesus says and so what it does as part of its plan to cover itself is it makes up an angry God it's the one that invented the angry God God will punish you you've heard about that when they had a lot of aides outbreak you know there were pastors and ministers that were saying God is punishing you for your lifestyle that's the punishment idea a punishing God and a punishing angry God is an ego invention and of course the ego is going to come up with a substitute for the real God because it has to it doesn't really believe the belief that there is no God it is the denial of God so it's going to come up and invent its own God and that's why people even will get angry at God and start projecting their anger human beings will project their anger onto God as well because how could you do this to me how could you leave me in this position or it's quite common to have anger projected onto Jesus or to spiritual figures and Messiah and believers like that because even Helen Schuchman describes the course if you re-sew her poetry your book The Guests of God you can see a lot of the anger and hurt coming up a lot of feelings of abandonment how could you leave me here you said I am with you always even under the end of time where are you where are you in my life even though he was speaking to her she had great difficulty opening her mind to his love the ego investment made her very much afraid of that and when Helen died she really did think that she had done a great job and she did with a great job channeling and describing the course but Jesus did tell her at that point the course wasn't my gift to you my gift to you is the love the course was just a symbol for us to use as a backup to heal the fear and the anger and the doubt so it's never anything in form as a gift the gift is the love and the form is just the tool or symbol that the human being can use to reach that love and whenever you feel anger coming up it's good to remember that anger is never justified it's not that you shouldn't should or shouldn't feel anger it's that whenever it arises it's like when you notice that your mind is trying to justify the conditions well look what they said to me well they haven't called me back in two weeks or they stole the money I have it on videotape I have evidence I'm then walking out of stealing my wallet and my purse what am I supposed to do, not be angry that's not reasonable whenever you find yourself making a case for the anger that is best to come back with those early course lessons on 5, 6, 7, 8 I'm never upset for the reason I think I'm upset because I see something it's not there, I see only the past my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts and you start to realize oh yeah, it's these attack thoughts this false identity this crazy substitute identity that I made up and I'm holding on to and nobody really gets angry, what I say is you're not really angry you're just feeling the ego's anger when you identify with it and as soon as you pull your mind away from the ego you don't feel angry anymore is the ego angry, oh yes it's like doing a spiritual temper tantrum you know how children sometimes when they get really upset it's just our wailing and banging or like your friend outside your apartment throwing trash it's like the ego is doing a temper tantrum and if we had to define what that tantrum is it's like the ego is saying God make my fantasy world real and it's like it's throwing a tantrum over a millennium you know, a time and space saying you make this cosmos real but God wouldn't be God because God is the God of eternity so he's not going to make the ephemeral, the temporary what is limited infant he's not going to make what is lacking fulfilled and complete because God doesn't know of fulfillment and incompletion God is love knows itself but it doesn't know of illusions the Holy Spirit in the Trinity is the one that sees the illusion but knows that it's not real and that's why the Holy Spirit is our bridge back to God but God does not know about time and space so when you pray to God you're really praying in Christian terms to the Holy Spirit like help me see this differently help me release my mind that I've really been attacked that something really has gone wrong so that I can wake up from this dream and remember God and the Creator so that's that little spiel I just gave that incorporates not only the metaphysics that we're teaching but also the practical application that isn't it great whenever you feel upset angry, fearful, shameful, guilty nervous, anxious, whatever the upset is the degree or the direction of the upset you've always direction can be aimed at what seems to be the self the personality self or it can be aimed at any one of the other images in the cosmos it doesn't matter the degree the rage or the annoyance or the direction of it's your fault over there it's Saddam the saints fault it's my fault as a body it's just aiming the ray gun where am I going to fire what am I going to zap and then you have to bring it in and really be willing to let go of those attack thoughts because those attack thoughts are keeping you from experiencing peace and the trick is to try to not see them as attack thoughts but projection is a trick that seems to say no there is an image a situation, a person a country, something outside of my mind it's doing it to me apart from my will I'm completely innocent and I have no part in it and they're doing it to me that's the egos trick every time you feel justifiably upset you've stepped right onto the egos playing field and you've bought the bait hook, line and sinker and you sink you sink the sink in awareness when you take a bite out of that it could be the opposite too that like I am doing this to someone else it would be the same thing or did I did this to somebody else I will never be able to forgive myself for what I said for what I did for what I didn't do for the way I abdicated to follow through on a duty, a commitment, a promise it's guilt the same way everyone seems to have it wired up a little different but it's the same core so whenever you make a decision it really doesn't matter what that decision is it's the guilt and the reaction that you feel from it yeah and we can say that it doesn't so much matter going back to what you said in the beginning it doesn't so much matter the form of the decision but if we bring it back to content the two decisions that we are dealing with on a daily basis is the right mind and the wrong mind Jesus calls so a right minded decision has no guilt with it it's joyful, it's peaceful it's loving, free, happy it's a decision you make with the Holy Spirit and a wrong minded decision again, it's not so much mattering what the particular form is it's that you're looking through a darkened glass like the Bible says in Corinthians you're looking through a dark lens and that's the decision that is so obscure that's why when we practice the Course it's like what are you talking about I can't tell the difference between the right mind and the wrong mind that's a common admission when you work with the Course and it may be that you could work with the Course for years or decades and still have difficulty deciding knowing when you're right minded or wrong minded because the resistance to that discernment and the clarity is the ego's resistance to being undone the ego thinks it will be obliterated destroyed if you get clear on that distinction so I've spent my old life going into that distinction and then teaching what I would learn in many seeming different situations world travels meeting teachers, students people, this body's been knocked down to the ground as I've gone around the world instead of just sitting in my couch in my house and just meditating trying to meditate the ego away I decided I would follow the Holy Spirit it has led to a little bit of a knock down drag out a couple of times but I could share those parables those all got used to for me to really see that oh, it's my mind it's just a mental issue I also see a tight connection between judgment and decision decision seems very close to judgment and whether ego doesn't necessarily have to be there whether you wear a blue shirt or a red shirt, the ego wasn't in that but if you happen to have some sexy provocative shirt on that would be an ego picking that shirt would be an ego decision then there's the judgment in there judgment I have can you just talk a little bit about distinguishing decision and judgment let's use the idea of the blue shirt green shirt or like a provocative shirt or blouse or something because that kind of gets to the thing like where do you draw the line what's a judgment and what's not a judgment the blue shirt is a judgment even the blue shirt is a judgment in fact I did a gathering one time in Florida where I had a little bottle with a little blue bottle cap and I said now if you can follow me and understand what I'm going to teach you about this little blue bottle cap it will unleash your mind it will unlock the mysteries of the universe and this one little blue bottle cap but we can use a blue shirt because we don't have a blue bottle cap available if the blue shirt how is the blue shirt a judgment you know most people think no I'm being very objective I'm just objectively describing a blue shirt but first of all no two people see the same world and so you could not find universal agreement if you went across all the cultures differences you went to China Asia and South America Australia all the way around North America and you lined up 100,000 people and you said okay we're going to do a simple experiment today this is David hi David David's wearing a shirt you can translate to different languages so they all know what we're talking about simple question where is David's shirt fill out the form you would not get 100% uniformity on the answer to that question she probably has some colorblind people that were in the audience they go great the Chinese great so if you don't get 100% uniformity on the answer it's not true the truth is true and only the truth is true and the truth is always true the truth is never not true so that's just a good experiment to show that perception is relative no two people see the same world so yes blue shirt is actually a judgment and it's actually an ego judgment it doesn't seem like World War 3 is going to erupt over it is not blue it's azure no we say it's not azure okay white no it's not that there's going to be a fight breaking out over the color of the shirt but the blue shirt is taking a symbol out of all the images of the whole cosmos the whole tapestry of all time and space when you pull one image out which we call it the shirt and you call it blue it doesn't matter what you label it and you give it a size and a shape maybe it's unlarge and maybe it's cotton or polyester here we go this object this image now we start to give labels to this is what ego does it is invented a fragmented world and it names labels the fragments and as you read in the course in the workbook it tries to carve them out of reality if you read the lesson we could go through a course workbook lesson that would really get it lesson 184 where he literally describes the whole process of labeling separate things and giving them names and carving them out of reality and in this sense he says you make fragments of a hole that are really not there but the hole is hole we could say it would be like having a jigsaw puzzle and when the puzzle is all made you see the whole picture but it would be like taking out one little piece in the middle of the jigsaw puzzle and that would be called the blue shirt going like this look what I found there was a blue shirt in that puzzle and Jesus is saying never happen it doesn't have any reality so this I wanted to share that example with you using your question to show you how subtle now let's be practical I had a philosopher one time I was in Florida and we got on the topic of judgment and I was at a unity church and we were talking about I spoke at the service and we were having a big lunch together and his name was Fred and he was a philosophy professor who had gone to the course group several times and the people at the course group hated this man hated this philosopher because he would ask all these deep questions about well wait a minute what about judgment how can we practically not judge he would bring this up as a philosophy professor and the group couldn't answer his questions the deeper he got and they chased him out of the group they would not let him come to the course group so I'm at this big table at the unity church and I don't know this at the time but Fred was looking across from me and he's talking to me and we're eating and I said oh Fred they've invited me to the course group on Wednesday night why don't you come and the whole table at a unity church grown like oh you've crossed the line David you've done a terrible thing oh Fred has been invited back to the group we thought we got rid of him and I said what like in the I Heart Huckabees what what what what's going on here they said you don't understand David Fred is a philosophy professor at the local university he gets into these deep discussions and we can't not answer his questions and we can't even find stuff in the course that answers his questions he just he asked his questions about judgment and how do you live practically and how can you live without judgment and all this and that they're really good questions the Holy Spirit I would put the same questions the Holy Spirit and I did put the same questions I studied philosophy too in college so I could identify with Fred so I said Fred come so Fred I said come come so we did he came there was a room full of people and everything and Fred was there but Fred had been he perceived himself as so attacked by this course that's why he hadn't come back there that he was quiet mom's a word he was he's like he just was not speaking up so we go the whole first half of the gathering and Fred doesn't say one word or ask one question he made it into the house but he's just sitting there among them but he's like got his lips sealed so then we take a break like we usually do have some tea, have some cookies and you know I went up to Fred and I said Fred this is a golden opportunity launch, launch all your questions the Holy Spirit is with us right now we call on the Holy Spirit it will be a blessing to everybody these are deep questions but the Holy Spirit is right here with us ready to answer your every single question and everything and so I really had to encourage him during the break so he did he launched all his major questions all of them and the second half of the gathering and the Holy Spirit came ripping through in a spectacular way which we'll talk about the answer to the question about judgment and at the end of the gathering everybody was in such a state of stillness it was like peace had descended on all of us and everybody was just silent and eye gazing just like everybody was looking around connecting with everyone's eyes because the presence of love was so strong Fred had helped initiate this by not people pleasing and by launching his questions and then the little dog they had a dog called Sparkles came in with the tail wagging and he went around and he individually looked in the eyes of everybody in the room with his little tail going Sparkles was sparkling almost like now you're getting it it's probably the first course of miracles meeting he's ever been to the humans had reached the same state that he was in you know dog is gone backwards you know look at everybody going hey you got it finally you know it took you a long time to banter around with that blue book with you finally so it was so good but what Fred's question was was he had actually come up to me on Sunday and he said to me at one point he said David let's be practical you talk about love and forgiveness and joy and happiness and he said but you're traveling with this woman Beverly and Beverly was right next to me and Fred said now practically speaking if you're walking down the street with Beverly somebody comes up with a knife and grabs a whole of Beverly and puts a knife to the philosopher puts a knife to Beverly's neck don't tell me you're going to be meek like Jesus and you're going to be totally gentle and loving and look at this man gaze at this man with loving eyes of perfection and see his perfection and innocence when the guy is grabbed Beverly and puts a knife to Beverly's neck you're going to do something you're going to defend her you're going to do something like you're not going to let your travel companion so he said that's my question this was before we even got to the group these are the kind of questions you would have and I said oh Fred thank you for that question please ask that question at the group on Wednesday night for everyone's benefit and it's a hypothetical and Fred was like hypothetical and I said yeah it's a hypothetical question it said as if question I have to start to look at hypothetical questions where are the hypotheticals coming from you know and do you believe in hypotheticals he was like so I said ah ask your question and we'll go into the whole idea of hypotheticals because that if you can understand what hypotheticals are and if you can understand that everything that you think about the past or the future is hypothetical assumes that you believe cause and effect are apart assumes that you believe in lots of potential possible outcomes it's all denying the present moment time was made to deny the power of now time was made to deny the holy instant the present moment of release all thoughts about the future and all thoughts about the past are hypothetical including grabbing Beverly and sticking the knife to her neck and then asking me what would you do in the what in the future if there were a hypothetical situation when this happened so when people ask me questions there's no tough questions you know some people would say ooh that's a tough one for David he's going to have to think a couple seconds on answering now I was like oh no let's come bring your question and we'll get into some real deep teachings there and he did then he asked the question of judgment which is what your question is it's like where what is judgment so first I'll talk a little bit about what judgment seems to be and how it seemed to arise in other words in the kingdom of heaven which is perfect oneness and perfect love there is no judgment what would you judge between if everything is just pure oneness and abstract love and light there is no judgment in heaven maybe that's why in the sermon on the mount Jesus said very simply judge not that's the shortest sermon if you wanted to take all the teachings of Jesus and boil them down just go to the sermon on the mount and take that one little two words judge not well that would do it right there then he puts less jibby judge so he's saying it's like a boomerang effect if you judge you feel judged and it's not going to feel good that's why he was saying judge not you want to feel the love so that's a real short summation of the sermon on the mount now what is judgment when the mind believed that it could separate from God that would be a judgment when the mind projected out a cosmos of time and space of planets and black holes it invented a device to keep the illusion or the projection in place it's just a construct but it also invented a device to make the illusion seem real and what that device is is judgment to the Holy Spirit the projection of the world is not a problem the Holy Spirit answered that like is that all you can do is that the best you can do you can take care of that in an instant but the ego is like something just happened here my whole defense mechanism was just something happened to it it was totally reinterpreted the instant that it seemed to occur so the ego immediately went on the offensive defensive and said I gotta do something with all these images now that I made up I will fragment the pictures we were talking about like a glass that was fragmented over a mirror that was fractured and fragmented it took the images and it started to arrange them into hierarchies and patterns so that was how it defended its projection oh if I make hierarchies then it will seem like some are more important than others and therefore it will make the whole thing seem real and that's why the very first principle of course in miracles and the 50 miracle principles is that there are no hierarchies of miracles there's no order of difficulty in miracles the way it is actually stated and the ego its very first premise of its 50 unholy principles would be there is a hierarchy of difficulties there are separate things like blue shirts there are separate objects and among those separate objects and images they can be arranged into hierarchies into degrees into gradations into levels all of these gradations and levels to keep the illusion seeming to be more than an illusion so this is why you have stories of people working with the course of miracles where they read through some of the text doing the work with lessons and they start on lesson one nothing I see means anything and he says gently let your eyes move around the room he gives you things look at the chair and table move around the room most of the night and try not to make any exceptions to the lesson of the day I've heard stories of people they'll go around the room this couch does not mean anything this shoes do not mean anything that fan does not mean anything then they look over on their coffee table it's their family photo the Kleenex box does not mean anything there's a famous story with Ken Wabnik where he was visiting a group of nuns one time in New England somewhere and he went there and they were all these nuns were reading the course of miracles book and they're all excited and they were going through some of the early work with lessons like nothing I see means anything and so forth and working around and they were going around the church where they were going with the stainless window the stainless window does not mean anything the pulpit does not mean anything the fuse does not mean anything the carpet does not mean anything and then they came up to the Eucharist they were like oh we'll skip that the body of Christ they weren't really in the position to say the body of Christ the Eucharist does not mean anything you see that's what we mean about transfer of training when someone you have a self-concept and you have an identity attachment to a child on a photo or a husband or a wife or something or the Eucharist or fill in the blank with whatever you have in your mind that's where he goes like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa we're not taking it that far we want miracles but not that bad we don't want miracles that much and we don't want the atonement and if the atonement means I have to be completely wrong about everything that I have believed in with the ego then that seems like it's like that section where Jesus talks about that in the teacher's manual what he accomplished healing what will healing cost you it costs you the whole world you see he says in that section in the teacher's manual the whole world you see because how would I see a blue shirt if my mind was healed I would see the whole world in a different way my mind was not following the ego I wasn't looking for the ego's filter so then he will ask the next question is practically speaking then David do you still see blue shirts to your body's eyes still perceive it and what it is I always quote that part from the teacher's manual where it says the body's eyes will continue to report differences but the healed mind will put them into one category they are unreal it's simply forgiveness is simply reaching a state where you realize that all the boxes all the fragments all the labels man, woman, Jew, Arab you know, Hindu all the different labels including the names we were talking the other day about when you start to forget what day it is and you might feel I better watch it, I'm losing it or when you start to forget people's names uh oh this spiritual journey cannot be good I'm losing track of people's names I can't remember the name you can just again realize that you're on the right track and that if you need to know a name the Holy Spirit will give it to you if it's part of an interaction a friendly interaction with somebody and you're going need a name here, if it's helpful and the Holy Spirit goes Frank Frank but if you don't get a Frank it's like hey you know, you're given what you need to serve the plan the Holy Spirit is giving you the symbols of what serves so you don't even personally have to be responsible for remembering anything it's like I've got this pool of all of time and space I feel like it's in my mind and when I'm in these gatherings I don't think what I'm going to talk about I don't premeditate things it's all very spontaneous in the moment right now these words are being given to me by the Holy Spirit it's just flowing spontaneously there's not a pause or there's not a wondering what to say it's just being given very authentically from the Holy Spirit and it's a blessing because of the purpose from which it's coming from there's nothing special about the words you don't have to be a great orator a great speech maker to be a teacher of God he said that yesterday a teacher of God can heal the world without a sound that's a great idea from a teacher's manual you just reach a state of certainty and stillness in your mind and heal the whole universe but this is really I mean in the early years when I was traveling speaking someone would ask a question and they were asking the question at the gathering it was almost like a spool the old days when you had the old sewing machines the little singer the little spool up there I could feel as they were asking the question the answer was spooling up from the Holy Spirit and then I'd be like pulling on the thread like here it comes and watching it I'm going to have to remember that very good that's the way that it felt with all these questions it wasn't like a question that's hard to answer it was like no the spool is there and then I would like be hearing the spool for the first time because ultimately it was for me really we're never answering anybody else's question when somebody asks us a question it's really for our own benefit