 So if you go and read Martin Luther King and so forth, you will realize that Martin Luther King is much good as he was bringing and extending in his life. He was aspiring to be as Christ-like as he could and Mandela was aspiring to a higher state of awareness that so was Gandhi. So my heroes I realized were all struggling and aspiring. So I became more interested in what they're aspiring to. So in the course of miracles what that did was it was coming from the master himself and he was basically saying he said basically David you know you're psychotic, you've had a total break from reality meaning heaven in Nirvana. You've had an absolutely total break. You're totally psychotic, you're schizophrenic, your mind is split, you're listening, you're serving two masters. When I said in the Bible it's impossible to serve two masters. You cannot serve both love and fear. And you're schizophrenic, you're listening to multiple voices in your mind. You're hearing many multiple voices. Every day when you walk out on the street, you're hearing all these different voices. You're schizophrenic and you're hallucinating. You are absolutely hallucinating a world that doesn't have any existence whatsoever. It's a total figment of imagination and you're absolutely hallucinating. Now what would you do if you had to deal with somebody who was psychotic, schizophrenic and was hallucinating? They need some major help. And what I discovered was as I the more I started to read the course I thought wow this is describing my mind. I may have heroes, I may even think I know what social justice is and I certainly did because how else would I be an activist without having a strong thread of social justice moving inside my heart. There's a part in the course. There's actually a subsection of one of the chapters where it's titled The Justice of Heaven. And when you read that section in the course, The Justice of Heaven, he will basically tell you that there is no justice in the fragmented world that you perceive and there never will be. He's not saying you can hope to reach a goal of social justice at one point. He's saying you are going after a ghost. You are chasing a ghost. And that had a big impact on me. I one time watched this video called The Story of A Course in Miracles and it had Milton Friedman was in it. This is a speech writer for the president of the United States, William Whitson who was a former general, Pentagon general who was working as an ambassador for the United Nations to China. I got to watch people with one lady worked with dolphins. What I loved about that story of A Course in Miracles was I got to see a range of people throughout the human condition all trying to practice A Course in Miracles. And what really got me was when I heard a politician like William Whitson who ended up marrying the publisher of The Course Judy Skutch say the most impactful line for him from A Course in Miracles because he had spent his whole political life trying to make the world a better place. His whole political life fighting for social justice, he said the most powerful line for him was when Jesus said seek not to change the world. Seek rather to change your mind about the world. That is what I mean by we have to come to an admission that we have a perceptual problem. If we're looking through a kaleidoscope of cracked perception and we're trying to get activated about certain things and certain people then we have to realize we are still part of a cracked perception, a hallucination and the reason why we're not happy is because we're still so bought into this ego belief system. Now another thing that helped me was this idea that everything that involved social justice revolved underneath on the belief in victimization. And I started to work with The Course and I kept going through it every chapter and I go through the lessons and I go through it over and over and over and what Jesus was saying in there he says beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. I thought that's amazing. He's calling this is like a temptation so what I perceived as social injustice as people taking advantage of other people as people being mistreated all over the place he was saying that's a temptation and it's a temptation to look, continue to keep looking through that darkened glass instead of turning within to the Holy Spirit for a unified perception of the world. So the hardest thing to swallow about A Course in Miracles seems to be this perceptual problem thing because the ego has already done a strong convincing job that's your human your time and space you're stuck in it like a fly stuck on a flypaper you're stuck in it and there's all of this injustice around you everywhere you look and it doesn't matter whether it's it's your your mother giving you a frown or it's somebody being beaten in prison it doesn't matter whether it's a tone of voice when you're expecting a happy loving tone of voice and you hear a harsh condemning tone even just a tone of voice it hurts the only justice is the justice of forgiveness which is what I was talking about earlier all things work together for good it's the highest state of mind there is to reach a state of perfect acceptance and when you see something and your emotions well up like that's just not right which happens as we watch the news as we watch movies as we're interacting our families in our in our work environments but that's just not right what the Course is saying is like you're never upset for the reason you think you're never upset with what you perceive is happening you are upset by your interpretation of what you perceive is happening and then through his workbook he's going to show us that everything that we perceive is an interpretation and as long as we have egoic interpretations we're going to be upset so for me when I really decided to practice the Course I would latch on to a series of lessons that just resonated in my heart and people have asked me what did you do when you faced all kinds of temptations when you got upset when you were disturbed when you were angry fearful guilty shameful all those things I would practice lessons five six seven eight almost like a cadence he goes like here you go what do you think about that five six seven eight I'm never upset for the reason I think I'm upset because I see something that's not there I see only the past my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts talk about a reorientation whenever I would get upset about anything I saw on the news in my family with my partner with my cat with my three-legged cat whenever I would get upset my three-legged cat tripod I would still have to work it back to five six seven eight I'm never upset for the reason I think and you see how practical that is it's almost like Jesus is saying here you're having a tough time I understand that but I'm going to give you some real practical lessons to help lift your mind out of the the judgment and the darkness that you feel