 Is this my true identity? On the little traditions, it's basically called inquiry. The path of inquiry. And the inquiry is a way of getting underneath the underlying assumptions. It's kind of like if you have an assumption, and we'll call it even an unquestioned assumption, that then turns, it's like it crystallizes and it turns into a subconscious belief. That's really a good definition of a subconscious belief as an unquestioned assumption. And when we say unquestioned, it's like the mind is too afraid to even raise it up into awareness to question it. It's like something that is acted upon and acted out upon because it's just so sacred to the mind. And so I would say in my life, there were different parts of the course that jumped out of me initially, but something that I was doing before I came to the course that just was accentuated in the course was to learn this course requires that you question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden or will obscure your learning. And there was a time, maybe within a past year or so where somebody said, was there any key phrase or key ingredient or the thing you found was like your secret in awakening or anything like that. But it was that phrase that just jumped at me. I would say it just gave me more permission and allowance to continue on with what I was doing already. Because when I was in graduate school, I was just questioning everything. I didn't have graduate assistants around me. And after they talk with me for like 15 minutes, they say, would you just stop that? It's just awesome. You're just questioning everything. And then I would usually listen to them and I'd say, well, what do you suggest? And they would say, get a life. A man, get a life. Like you are wasting your time spinning your wheels. And I would say, well, what do you mean by life? And they would say, get a relationship, get a debt, get a job. And I said, yeah, and what? Grow old, get sick and die. And they say, yeah, that's the gig here. And it's been the gig for thousands of years. So if you're here on planet Earth, yeah, that's the gig. So get with the program. And I'd just say, absolutely unacceptable. Absolutely. If that's the gig, I don't care if this is the gig on this planet, but there's just no way what that's nothing to devote a life to. And I felt like I was just questioning in a very authentic way. Like I just didn't want to accept something just because someone said it. Or even because someone famous said it. They say, oh, so and so said it. And they give the name, and it's just that's supposed to mean, oh, you better accept this one. And I would question, question. There's always a great admirer of Krishna Murthy. I just felt such my heart exploding with love when I would watch some of his talks or listen to some of his talks or read his books. I would just be like, wow, I would just have a big smile on my face because he was big on inquiry and questioning. In fact, just volumes of it for decades. It's got to be the Guinness World Booker record for inquiry. I was like, wow, spectacular. And that's what I was doing. And then most people were quite put off by that. Parents, girlfriend, teaching assistants, professors, if I dare, begin such a thing with my professors. It wasn't popular at all. And eventually then the course came into my life and I went to the woods kind of like a combination between Henry David Thoreau and Robinson Caruso to live in the woods and catch rainwater and read my course and have some organic gardens and grow some food and basically do some meditation as much as I could. But I basically was the path of inquiry and contemplation. There was too much resistance for me to meditate. Just the monkey mind was just going crazy. The more I simplified my life, the more the monkey mind went crazy. And then I would simplify my diet. I decided to go with the Thoreau diet of bread and water. And Thoreau actually decided to experiment to find the most efficient, easiest form of bread that he could come up with. And I decided to do the same test. Yes, the pancake one always wins. And so that was the kind of thing where I was having bread and water. Bread and pancakes. And then one day I went out. I kind of like, I was like in Eric's phase. I was just totally letting it all go. Letting it all go. And one day I went out to like a Walmart and I just walked down the aisles and the ego of me just rose up. Just looking at all the things that would satisfy it. It was just a great experiment to walk through a Walmart when you're in one of those renunciation phases. It was like a tease to go through it. But eventually I just came back to the inquiry. So to me getting down to that decision point and getting deep down in the mind towards the escape hatch it really did seem to be a lot of contemplation and inquiry. I didn't really necessarily use like with Ramana Maharshi, you know, who is the I. I just wasn't at the place, you know, as your girlfriend is screaming at you, you know, you just, who is the I? I did such that, you know, I was like, yeah, well, I don't know you. It just doesn't, it didn't seem to touch on where I was at in awareness. But I did tune into the Holy Spirit after about two and a half years of immersing in the Course and then the Holy Spirit and Jesus would guide me with the questions. It would be like a dialogue. Like they would say, are you ready to question the belief in career? And I was. I was actually at the point. So I said, okay, I still have needs. Money doesn't grow on trees. You know, I still, I feel like I'm still going to have to work and I talk to Jesus about all these things. But are you willing to let go of the idea of career? In other words, are you willing to let me instruct you about the next job? Instead of trying to put it like, as a crown jewel of this leads to this, leads to that, leads to that. And I was. I was actually at that point when that was a big step for me. I wasn't ready to just believe that I could materialize money in my backyard or something like that. I told him I can't go that far, but I am willing to question the belief in career. And that was helpful because I had a lot of strain and stress. When you're, you know, seemingly in this culture in the United States and male and in your 20s, late 20s, career is actually a pretty prominent belief. You know, it's a pretty strong one. And so Jesus worked with me step by step to say let's just take a look at this one. And it would be more like we would whittle away at it a bit. We didn't start with questioning the whole idea of linear time. But once I got into the course, I could tell that those workbook lessons were aimed at questioning all of my time ideas too. Everything that I believed about time. And then everything that laid on the surface that was resting on linear time. If you take linear time out of the equation the whole thing collapses. I mean, you couldn't talk about any topic in a meaningful way without that underlying belief in linear time. So that's the jugular. And Jesus talked to Helen Shuckman, who was a psychologist as well, and said you never go for the jugular. You know, you don't work with patients and go for the jugular. They come, they feel warm welcome, they feel connection, they're poor. You say, what are you feeling? You know, what would you like to talk about today? They give you the presenting problem. It's about the perceptual world. You know, a husband or a partner or a child or some financial issue or health issue they've got. And then gently the spirit takes it down. And in my case it was through inquiry. So I feel like a course of miracles is a really good path of inquiry. It's a system, it's guided, it's very all-inclusive. I really didn't feel like I had to add to the course and look for the missing piece or looking for a better course or the next evolution of the course. I didn't have that feeling when I was reading the course. I thought, this is like a complete system here and I can give myself fully to this and I need not try to pull in a lot of other things. I've been doing that by the way anyway for quite a few years. So it was quite, actually a relief to feel that feeling like, you know, you can dive in here. You don't need to keep skimming across the surface and taking a stab here and there and trying to come up with like some kind of synthetic philosophy or synthetic religion. I think that I had a bit of that going on earlier. I was looking for the synthetic blend. Take a little bit of this, a little bit of that and just mix it together in a test tube and have my own individual David's special blend and it was like, you know, but David's the problem. David's special blend is not going to get you out of this world. You're going to have to have more humbleness, more humility than that. So that was really in a nutshell. The inquiry, I think, takes us back to that decision point of escape. Well, it sure does give us the inquiries. It gives us the inquiries to us. Yeah, it does. It's just there and you recognize it too. I guess that's the biggest problem in trying to do inquiry without any sense of like structured guidance is it just seems too much hit or miss, way too overwhelming. Almost like, oh, what a mess. What a tangled mess. What tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive. It's so tangled that you feel that it's almost like something that you're called to, but it almost just seems too overwhelming. But with the course, it's systematic. It's all laid out for you like a roadmap. Just follow the steps here, go here next, here next, and it's just so, so precious. I feel like you can't have a better roadmap than from one who has already taken the journey and come to the destination whereas everything else a lot of times seemed more like speculation. This seemed more like, ah, I hit the goldmine. I followed some of the nuggets in other books that led me to the course and then when I opened the course up that was the instant feeling like, okay, Peter, we've just hit the goldmine and then the very next feeling was like, okay, now it's on me. I can't really say to God, you never really made it clear enough. You never just always wish you washi, you were always hidden clues and having to dig so hard and everything. This is like, oh, I've got to practice this now because now I don't have any excuses. I could recognize it as my way out and then I had to practice it. But that was good.