 Can you start to get a sense of if I'm seeing something out here as a skew, it really comes back to my mind and my belief that it's possible for anything to be skewed. Oh sure. It's like there's nothing to be done out here. It's always bringing it back to my mind and the belief in my mind that would have me interpreted or see it the way I do. Holy Spirit doesn't look at any of that and say this is all a skew. This is really non-stop. This will never work. It's the ego that looks at it out there and says boy this is bad news. This is not the way it's supposed to be. But there is a way of looking with the Holy Spirit and knowing that everything is in order. And I don't have to want anything to be different than it already is. That's where the pain comes in. It's wanting anything to be different than it is. That's where the pain comes in. Well then where is this answered prayer? So that when we pray it says here that your prayers are always answered. I don't know where it was when I hit it earlier. Talk about prayer then because the whole reason for prayer, the concept that we've had, has always been to make the out here be what we think it should be. Or better. Better. So if I'm going to pray. Prayer doesn't work like that. No, so prayer doesn't do that. But this is saying Holy Spirit answers prayer or God answers prayer. Let's go back. I thought prayer was going to make you perceive things differently. But then you get into this will of God and what is the will of God. And then there's things, the will of God is my will. It's all stirred up to me. It doesn't fit together. Yeah, you prayed two or three good questions in there. Got a lot. That whole thing. Good material here. Yeah, prayer is a good one because, you know, even from the Bible, seeking you shall find, knocking the doors to be opened. You come through Eastern routes, the law of karma, you know. As you sow, you sow, you reap and everything. However you want to take it. It's all this fundamental thing that giving and receiving are the same. Now, there's a part in the song of prayer. Prayer, forgiveness and healing. Where Jesus describes prayer as like a ladder. That when you're really bound into the world of form, you can't help but pray for form, you know. Help heal my child. Help protect Ann Martha on her trip to India. Help end world hunger and poverty. You know, you can't help, but if you believe in the reality of the things around there, how can you help it pray like that? And Jesus is saying, as he told Helen, you know, it's not wrong to pray in that way, but there are higher realms of prayer. And it gets back to what George was talking about when you start getting back to perceptual. You know, help me see this differently because there's a prayer that the Course makes and says in many, many different ways because that's really bringing it back to its perceptual problem. And I've got distorted perception and I need another way to look at this. I need to see peace instead of this. And really it comes to the deepest level as you go to the higher realms of the ladder it's described at one point Jesus says, your prayer is your desire. So if your desire is single and whole and your prayer, of course, is always answered, then peace, joy, you know, if your prayer is for God and nothing but God, you know, then the state that you receive is a state of joy and peace and everything. When you have tainted with desires for other things, you know, Mary and Williamson in her book, I forget how she put it. Do I want peace or do I want him to call? Yeah, that's what it was. I want him to call, you know. I mean, there's a prayer, you know. That's a good example of a prayer in the sense that it's more important that he call me today, sometime today than my pieces, you know. And so you can start to get at those levels of desire, how important it is to get in touch with our unconscious beliefs and to really start to see what the ego's beliefs are and what its purpose is and then to say, hey, I'm not going to keep plugging this appliance in. I'm not going to keep following this ego because I want peace. I don't want this pain and misery in that happiness. So that kind of addresses that idea of prayer. It certainly gets away from prayer for specifics in the sense that a lot of prayers, even among unity and a lot of new age types of thinking, are very much tied into abundance and courses on abundance and everything and literally praying, visualizing, using the power of the mind to visualize the kind of house, the kind of life, the kind of whatever you want. Once again, Jesus is not condemning. But it's more still worth, now in the middle rung, that in a sense, the experience, if you visualize something and you hold that in mind and you hold that in mind and it seems to come, that's a powerful experience that there's some power to this mind thing, that my mind is powerful. It's definitely an experience that flies in the face of I'm a weak little helpless nobody and I'm at the whim and the victim of everything in the world. But what the Song of Prayer does in the Course in general, says, okay, now you're starting to learn that your mind has power and you actually can, it seems to manifest things. It seems that way. The script is written, it's already happened, you're still just watching the past, but it seems as if, experientially, things are coming to me that I want and that I focused on to my mind. Then Jesus says, okay, now you're starting to see that your mind is powerful. How about peace as your only goal? Peace of mind, enlightenment, salvation. Take that powerful mind that you're starting to realize that you have and give it to me or give it to the Holy Spirit and start putting peace as your goal. Peace is abstract. It's quantified peace. You know, it's this abstract kind of purpose again. It's hard to get a grasp on. How am I at peace when I'm with my brother or my sister? Peace and judgment don't go together. Peace and interpretation, it definitely gives a lot of experience. But those are like the higher ones where instead of praying for specifics, please bring me this, please give me that, please turn it into World Hunger and so on and so forth. That would be a sunny day or a hot sunny day when we're having our family picnic or whatever. Instead of praying for specifics, you start to hold this abstract goal of peace in mind and then allowing and accepting you don't have an investment in the form as much and the peace starts to come because you're not invested in the form. And the joy starts to get so intense as you start to ascend up that ladder that it's not seen as a sacrifice, that those things seem important that's praying for certain specifics, seem like a real big deal. The joy starts to be so intense from the well starts to bubble up inside so much that it's like, ah, I can't believe that I thought that that would have brought me happiness and peace. But it's time sometimes you can't see that. You need to have that experience of praying for something and getting it. So that kind of goes in prayer. And then you mention will and I think we touched on that last time that God's will for his son for us is perfect happiness. I liked it when it was put that way. I've heard all these things that I've grown up about. Well, it's God's will that people starve and it's God's will that this happened and this and that. God's will is for perfect happiness. Now, the Course also goes on to say that God's will is not known in this world. That this world was made to cover over and to make up a will, an alien will, which is the ego, apart from God's will. This is where all pain and grief and misery come in. And that when we talk about free will, free will is when the mind has accepted the atonement and is healed, then the will is free because the Father and the Son's will are one and the Son knows it. The Son knows that His will is not apart from His Father. Jesus knew that as a fact. So, the speak of free will in this world is still talking about something with, you know, philosophers have said, you know, that's a big question, free will versus determinism. You know, it's been a philosophy to speak debate for centuries and centuries that the script is written that everything that's happening on the screen has already happened. That's a destiny argument if you've ever heard one, you know, predestination. It's all spun out and it's already happened. That's almost, it's hard to fathom. That was in that instance when the mind latched on to the belief that it stepped right on its creator. And that, people have a lot of resistance to that idea because that's like it gets to this free will and this destiny. What do you mean? It's already happened. You mean it's all, that's destiny. There's no choice in that. And from that point, just with that area, the perceptual world, the script is written, it's already happened. You've heard of psychics that can tell the future. All they're doing is reading the past. They're reading the past. Whether they call it the future or not, they're reading the past. You mean this has already happened in Oberlin? In that instance, it was ever? Exactly. It came in there? It came in there. Well, how come it seems like the system has stretched out over eons again? I mean, even in this lifetime, it seems like I've been here forever. And the ego says, no, no, the past isn't over and gone. Like a blip. Dragging it, bringing it in, it keeps wanting to keep the past alive. Am I ever going to get rid of this ego? He tells us, we can't help but let it go, you know. But the second part of that is, a lot of times, I had a sense of this destiny thing. There was something to this destiny thing, but I also had a lot of part of my mind that kept saying, wait a minute, where's this choice coming? Like when I study behaviorism and all these different things, like what do you mean I'm like a rat? Train me to be whatever you want. Don't I have any choice in this? And the course is saying, yes, it's all overdone. This is all part of the unholy incident. And here's the present. This is the holy incident. And you can decide to accept the atonement, which is in the holy incident. And just at that instant, you'll see that the past is over and done. It's more and more going into the holy incident, which is in our mind. It's in the stillness, just where the meditation and the quiet comes in. So the instant's over. And basically, from the ultimate medical standpoint, you know, this whole perceptual world that's seen to happen, you know, God doesn't know about it, and that's kind of a lot to follow. I know my life's meaningless. Even God doesn't know about it. Even God doesn't know. But from a mind that believes that this is really happening and you know, that it's happening to me and this is my life and I've got this job and these relationships and I'm this person and everything, then Jesus said, here's your stepping stone, kind of like you have decision, but really the only decision that you have since the past is over is which lens are you going to look at the projection with? Are you going to align with the ego or the Holy Spirit? In every instant, you have a choice to align with the ego or the Holy Spirit. What's your purpose going to be for the world? A lot of times it seems like we click into our pilot with the ego. We're so familiar with waking up, going through our returning routines, getting in our grooves and our ruts, and it really seems deep and heavy, seems like, gosh, this is a heavy rep. And those are just decisions lined up with the ego. But as we work with the Course, he trains, helps train our minds to decide more consistently with the Holy Spirit until the point comes when we can go down to that cornerstone, lift that up and see that the ego is really the leaf. No reality at all. I could never have separated from my Creator. That's a silly idea. We can all the thoughts and beliefs and concepts that are built that came from that little belief are all false as well. So, I really, it's just like, it's good news because it gives us hope. It can seem overwhelming. It can seem like, oh my gosh, I haven't even made a dent. It's like, I've got to pick up all the grains on the ocean, ocean beach, and I've got a handful now. And it can seem that way and everything, but all Jesus is asking for is our willingness, you know. Just, it's so, he just says, just focus on now. It's all you've got to keep your attention on. Just try to keep on how you feel right now. When you do start to feel upset, just try to be willing to see a difference. To lay aside your chest. And that simplifies it from this long, contorted, linear thing that's like, no. And one of the ways the ego tries to come along on the spiritual journey is just that very thing of having you look at where you are and feeling overwhelmed and desperate and hopeless about, you know, getting to where you think you want to be. You know, it's like, that's a good ego trick too. I mean, that'll pull you down as well as anything. But, you know, when you start to entertain the thought of, oh, I'll never get there, you know, or whatever, if you can just recognize that that too is an ego thought and then just be regarded. That's the best thing to do with it. Recognize it's an ego thought and be regarded.