 We will always trigger some lessons for our children's parents, so how much guilt do we have about those? How much responsibility do we have as parents and how much responsibility can be put on a child? Beautiful. Yeah. I actually did a parenting conference over in Sweden. Very good. We had the children were there and the parents that we got into that. It's really, you might say, parenting is again the mirroring that parents and children do a lot of mirroring back. And that's where, even though the relationships in this world were set up by the ego, the Holy Spirit uses those same relationships to help us get in touch with what's going on in our mind. And I would say out of all the issues and all of the mirroring that goes on in parent-child relationships, probably the central issue and the one issue that we really have to deal with is called the authority problem. It's controlled. In fact, one time when I was traveling in South America, I was in Argentina. And the course is really big in Argentina. There's a lot of people working with the course. And I was out in Burro, Argentina, away from the big cities, and I was with a group of mothers and children. And the mothers were saying, oh, we're working the course and our small children are teaching us so much. We're learning so much from them every day. And I said, well, could you give me an example? What is the major lesson that you're learning from the small children? And they told it to me in Spanish and then they translated it into English. And the English version of what the small children were teaching the mothers was, you're done. That was the whole translation. I said, that's it. You're done. In other words, this game of inequality, this game of superior and inferior, this game of you have more powers, I have less powers, is over. You're done. And it's really good to get to the point. And of course, that's what is played out on a daily basis. That the only problem we have in this world is we have forgotten that we are perfect equals. And that this whole world was made on differences and to teach inferior or superior. You know, that's where the problems come in. And so it's kind of interesting because certainly from a developmental point of view, you would say that young children seem to come into this world very dependent, much like very elderly people seem to leave the world in a state of dependence. And you could say that in terms of skills and development of the brain and motor skills and so on and so forth, it doesn't seem that parents and children are equals in the level of form. Certainly they seem to be, young children need to be taken care of and nurtured along. But we could say that in terms of attitude, the central problem is one of inequality. So what we find is that when you trace that back metaphysically, that the control issues that parents and children face are projections of the control issue of the ego, believing that it has its own autonomy, that it has its own authority, and that basically the core ego belief is I can be the author of myself. That's what this planet was made to demonstrate. I am not authored by God. I can be the author of myself. If we give it a few more words, I can make myself to be any way that I want to be. I can be male-female, I can be tall or short, I can pick my color, I can pick all these aspects. But it's kind of like this cosmos is invent yourself. Invent yourself in a damn well way you want to be. Talk about uniqueness, talk about ingenuity, diversity, multiplicity. It's all kind of like turning your back on oneness, on love, on the sameness of heaven and trying to make up a self-different than the self that God created, which is pure spirit. So it plays out in many, many different ways. We can say the authority issue can play out with authority figures like police officers or doctors or lawyers or politicians or anyone that seems to be in a position of superiority. But most definitely it plays out in parent-child relationships. And I think that's a beautiful lesson when you sum it up as you're done. It really reminds you every day to be very, very humble. Now in the Course in Miracles, Jesus says that teaching and learning goes on all the time. And he has some interesting things to say. He says that the teacher and the learner are in the same order of learning. In other words, they're in the same realm. Teachers are not above learners. It's not better to be a teacher than it is to be a learner. At a mind level we're teaching and learning every second of the day. And we can tell whether we're learning the Spirit's lesson of forgiveness or the ego's lesson of pride and autonomy by how we feel. The best way to know which lesson you're teaching and learning is how you feel in the most simple, direct way. Of course the ego will complicate that even because it's invented its own feel-good emotions. And that's why when you go much deeper into the Course you start to even realizing that that actually Jesus teaches that pleasure and pain are actually the same. Talk about something that is really different from the human experience where one seems to be something to avoid at all costs and one seems to be something that you pursue. He's basically saying they're the same because they both reinforce your identification with the body. And the body is substitute for the Spirit. So at first glance you can say, I don't get that at all. Pleasure and pain don't seem to be alike at all. But if you get to the purpose underneath why they were invented it's because they both reinforce a false identity. And remember this is distraction bill. We're talking about a cosmos made carefully designed by the ego to keep you trapped in ignorance, trapped in unawareness. So it's not something that you should put on your list of, okay, my New Year's resolution is I'm giving a pleasure. It doesn't really work that way. You have to get into what we talked about at the beginning, into your miracle working capabilities using your mind for the miracle with the Spirit because that's how you tap into the joy. That's how you tap into the peace. That's how you have an experience that there is something beyond the everyday human experience, the human awareness. There's something far, far, far beyond. And I think all of us in here, and I could even say for centuries, have known there's something more. Everybody knows that. It's not that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get that feeling in your gut that just got to be something more than this. But the how, you know, when Jesus said, Judge not, you know, on the Sermon on the Mount, now we've had for 2,000 years everybody going, did you figure that one out? How do you stop judging or love your neighbor as yourself? Love the Lord thy God, the only heart and soul of mine. You know, we've had the commandments there. We know that those top commandments resonate. You know, that's the way. But the how, and so something like a Course in Miracles is just giving you the how. It's just saying, trust me, I know the way. Here's a text. The only reason I'm giving you a text is because it will make the workbook lessons more meaningful as you try to apply it. It's not to become some scholarly document. I remember years ago, there was a Course teacher who said, don't ever let the Course touch the ground. And I was like, oh, God, is it like the American flag or something? What's going to happen if I leave my book on the grass? It's simply a collection of words that were given by the Spirit for us to use as a tool for training our minds. And we need it. Frankly, we do need it. I mean, there's a lot of great tools. Of course, it's just one among many, many great tools. But we need it because we need the how. We need it because we need to learn the means. You know, we've been talking for centuries about love. We've been writing songs about love. You know, we've been singing songs about love. But we need an experiential way to forgive. And to me, that was the path that was given to me. And when the Course came into my life, I felt like, this is really an answer to a prayer. I mean, that's the first thought that came in my mind. This is an answer to a prayer. And the second thought that came into my mind was, now I've got no excuses. Before I could say, oh, please, it's all too vague. Look at the Bible. That's just too vague, you know. Absolutely too vague. What do you expect of me? But with the Course, I think we can actually say, we can now go, hmm, okay. You've given me the means. Now I have to apply it.