 The way that that statement is meaningful is, again, to a mind that believes it's a person. You can see, where would that have any meaning? Well, isn't that what you're talking about, though, when you say use the body for an expanded perception? When you're still, that's still based on the assumption that there is a person, there is a body. I don't see that as being any different. Yeah, you were also saying also to prepare the mind for something. And I'm just saying that those are all interpretations and runs on the latter. That, in Alderman's sense, those don't prepare the mind for anything. The mind just sees the falsity of all of that. There's nothing positive about behavior. So what good is the miracle? I'm just saying, you were talking about the behavioral component of the miracle brings the mind. And when you get to the deepest aspect of looking at what a miracle is, there isn't a behavioral component. A miracle could be described in another way as right-mindedness. Is there a behavior to right-mindedness? So when we talk about a behavioral component, that's one of those runs on the latter for the mind that believes it's a person. That can be helpful. And all I was saying is isn't that the same run that you're talking about when you say that the body can be used to bring about an experience? It's just important to be very clear on this, you know, that of all the runs and that what are runs are runs. What we're pointing to is the point of the experience of just seeing it all as false. It's kind of like what Rhonda was bringing up the other day about learning. The metaphor is it seems as if in this world that learning is passed on in a linear sense through generations. It certainly seems that whether you talk about nature out there, of certain things seeming to be instinctual, certain things seeming to be learned, or you talk about the learning that takes place of a child in a family, or the learning that takes place, you know, from a kindergarten teacher to a child and to elementary teachers and child and so on and so forth. What I'm saying is if you pull that back, you see that everything that the mind has learned is of the mind, that there's no learning that takes place in the world, even appearances to the contrary. It certainly seems as if there is learning that takes place in this world. If you perceive yourself as a person, you could say, I'm coming over to the house for a teaching learning session, kind of like as if persons learn something, but persons don't learn either because that would be learning of the world. It's the mind, the mind is where learning is. The mind is, you could say, the mind is the classroom, and that to simplify it, there's only two lessons. You know, we were talking about yesterday, there's the lesson of the Holy Spirit, right-mindedness, there's the lesson of the ego, wrong-mindedness, and the mind is attempting to learn two different opposing lessons. Well, that seems maybe pretty deep and abstract when most people consider learning to take place as I learned how to walk, I learned how to ride, I learned how to drive a car, I learned how to do accounting work or to play the violin, I learned how to cook a baked potato in the microwave or whatever the learning seems to be. The learning seems to be taking place out there in the world of form, but what we're doing is taking it way, way, way, way back and seeing that the mind is the classroom and the mind is the learner, that the body or the person never learned anything. This was a distinction that came up when we had the intensive on the Bay here, the two weeks intensive when one of the participants kept saying, this is a classroom. My job is a classroom, my relationship is a classroom, this is a classroom, this is the world is where all the classrooms are, in forms. As if you're a person who's learning and you're passing through different classrooms, my job classroom, my relationship classroom, my family classroom, so on and so forth. That's not it at all. It still anchors the mind as its belief as it's a person learning in the classrooms of the world. What we do is we pull it all the way back, way back to the mind and say, the mind is the classroom, there's only two lessons and I'm learning one lesson or the other all the time and I need to get real clear about these lessons because I don't want to continue this conflictual attempt of being a conflicted teacher and a conflicted learner since the mind is teaching all the time what it is and learning all the time therefore what it is, that's where the discernment has to come in. I need to be very, very clear about these two lessons so I can lay aside one and learn the only one that I could ever learn, which is the reflection of my reality. I still have a hard time with the idea when we're talking about one mind and the bodies don't learn and I guess because of the reading I've done that led me to the course or while it was just being introduced to the course of metaphysical readings and masters of the far east and stuff, it seems that there are other beings that have reached enlightenment or have come to the truth and awareness of the one reality and yet if there's only one mind it seems like if one achieved that then all would have achieved it but that doesn't seem to be the case, it seems that some part of the mind is just asleep all potentially part of it is awake. Well we could come at that by saying that the assumption beneath that is it seems to be you could all be beings or persons reach enlightenment and that would have to be from the worldly perception that persons reach enlightenment. It could be a stepping stone to say that one could say a Buddha or Jesus for example of course as Jesus was the first to awaken from the dream so if you took that kind of framework that's a metaphor it's a symbol that kind of like as a model what he did I can do too but it still assumes that Jesus was a person that he actually had a life in this world he was a living walking breathing being and you can see there's all of us with all kinds of assumptions that somehow that there is life in this world that life isn't kind of like at the end of the movie being there where it says life is a state of mind that's what the Course is teaching that life is a state of mind and yet when the mind believes in the world and it believes in organic life or inanimate and versus animate it makes all these associations is that things that grow and breathe and move are life and is that things that don't grow and breathe and move like a stone for example some people may say a stone doesn't really have life sometimes if you go to some new age shops you might get different versions of that too the crystal oh it's got such power and energy this and that but there's all kinds of variations and everything but still the whole assumption there is that there is some life in this world when I believe in individual people then individual enlightenment seems to make sense it seems to be the case it seems to be helpful even yeah it seems to be symbolic there was no hope and there was no truth that is only symbolic because it's seen from the perspective of there are in fact individuals when there aren't in fact individuals you know looking at it from the other perspective it's like coming at it from the direction of the world it looks that way coming at it from the direction of heaven or the real world or whatever you want to call it makes no sense at all there are individuals who pass over into this other world of enlightenment one by one the metaphor I've used you've seen the paper in here but that if we said that everything on this side of the paper so to speak is the world the cosmos time and space and that the paper is symbolic of the real world or true perception in the sense that the real world or true perception just is like the bridge and then over here would be heaven total oneness and unity the other side of that thing this is of course a metaphor because there's no paper this is an illusion and this that I'm describing are both illusions but in the metaphor this is the cosmos this is the real world or true perception that from this side so to speak it seems as if from the world side it seems as if there's Jesus and perhaps few other beings we could call them enlightened beings seem to have ascended they kind of seem to go right into the paper and then that's the last we see of them we still hear of their ideas and even the metaphor of Jesus you know when Jesus says I am in charge of the plan of atonement as if it's this big long linear plan it's leading back to God it would have to still be speaking from the paper right? there's no plan of atonement in heaven there's nothing to be atoned for there's nothing to be forgiven there's no time processed millions of years there's nothing over here so even when we have statements from the Course about I am in charge of the plan of atonement and so on and so forth that has to be speaking from the paper that metaphor and it's a helpful metaphor I remember I was talking with a fellow one time in Kentucky who was a student and he was saying well here's my version of the Course he said I'm studying the Course I'm working hard at this and I know that if I hang with this I will come to enlightenment and then I'll do just like all those others like Jesus and the other beings before me I will ascend and I said well what happens then and he said well then the world will continue on and other beings will slowly come and ascend I said how can that be I said if the world there's no world outside your mind and you made up all the bodies and all the projections and everything once you come to enlightenment where are those where are those worlds where is that world, where is everything else oh wait a minute gosh you're like oh because it's like just trying to just take that in and look at that that whole perspective of oh so it's not like after I ascend that there will be a world that will continue on with all these other beings they're a little slower than me a little less fervent in their passion to wake up undergoing the process some that are lost cases some that seem to be lost cases where it seems it's going to take a long time for them to get to this place you know that doesn't make any sense Jesus says how many teachers of God does it take to save the world one he says again speaking to this mind he says you cannot understand this and grasp this or another way he says in another place no one in the world can understand what this means of course not no one in the world can understand what this means so basically Jesus is a symbol of the right mind talking to the wrong mind the Holy Spirit taking on the form of a voice that speaks in the mind is the symbol of the right mind talking to the wrong mind