 Butterflies are a little bit of anticipation or a little bit of uncomfortableness in the presence of others, so to speak. Even in course groups and gatherings, a lot of times there's that chitter-chatter talk at the beginning, you know, hi, what are you up to, isn't it? It's just a trait of this present joining business, and so there's all kinds of little things that seem to be normal things within this world, or just a ways of avoiding. Eye contact, you know, I mean there's another great symbol. Places where there seems to be lots of people, like New York City, like on the streets, when you walk down and there's none of this looking of eye contact. It's just another expression or symbol of the mind's fear of present joining, that's its dread. And it's a symbol of the other direction would be like the book about the aborigines and the message where the thing was raised, you know, how do you have a sense of telepathy where you can just communicate by mind and they said, we have no secrets. I mean that's a symbol of the other direction where if you've become totally transparent, as Sidney Gerard used to say, if you are a transparent self, if you have no sense of a private self, no mask that you're holding up, no pretenses that you're wearing, you are totally just revealing of your right-mindedness, then you don't believe in private minds as private thoughts. You don't have anything to hide from anybody else. That's where the telepathy, that's where the connection of minds seems to come in where the one-mindedness can be experienced. There's another line in the Course that says, the willingness to communicate attracts communication to it. That in one sense, in a deeper level of your mind, you've chosen to really be in communication with the father and then this holy encounter or these teaching learning sessions is just a symbolic expression of that willingness to communicate, attracting communication to it. It's still at the metaphorical level of persons, but it's a very helpful symbol. I seem to be in contact with other people who are really committed to this waking up. This is, of course, the willingness to communicate attracts communication to it. This is the symbol of your own mind of coming to that awareness. This personhood thing is very deeply rooted. To start, you can say the words, I am mind. I am not body, I am not, you know, in body, I am mind. But that's where as we keep going into things and looking at things, looking at things, you'll start out seeing, gee, I don't perceive myself as mind, as purely mind. And every concept that I hold has to be looked at and questioned because that's what's keeping me in my awareness of mind. It's my beliefs that hold up what I think I am. And that's where it's not just a matter of sitting around reading and talking, but it's really looking at those beliefs and questioning those because that's who seems to hold up this person. It's like, that's me, that's who I am. You know, I'm holding them all there, you know, and until I, you know, start to loosen my grasp on them, you know, even having the experience of it, you know, I think even just to sit around and affirm, I want the experience, I want the experience, I want the experience, too, is like, I have to really take a look, you know, but that's the looking within, the looking at the beliefs. The most beneficial form of practice that the Course recommends and that I recommend in the ultimate sense is completely unstructured. It doesn't, it's not dependent on a time or place. It's not dependent on a body posture. It's not dependent on repeating something so many times a day. It's sinking in your mind, sinking down and letting go of everything that you think you know. That is the most beneficial form of practice and salvation. And if you'll notice in the workbook, that's, as you go progress through the workbook, that's what you come to. But the majority of the workbook, the beginning parts are, is highly structured. And that, to me, it's for a reason. That's why repetition of ideas and trying to think of the ideas in a frequent number of times is important. The highly, the mind that is not highly trained, it can't remember its purpose. It gets off into all these specific things. It can't remember its purpose because it's so tied into this thinking in terms of goals. And gotta do this and I gotta take care of this and all these specifics. As we get into it, you know, as we continue along, it's going to come to the point where talking about the specifics and tracing them back will become less and less a part of the teaching learning sessions. And there will be more and more times of just sinking into the silence and not, you know, bringing up all these scenarios because the mind will be open and ready for the stillness and it will be attracted to the stillness. Present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no effects and therefore must it be that if you fear there is a present cause and it is this that needs correction, not a future state. And that present cause, again, is the belief in separation. That is the one thing that the mind has tried to conceal, you know, making up a world and seeing linear time and all these, the whole world is like the hiding place of the smoke screen to conceal this present cause that must be examined. I mean, right now, this present cause, that's all it really comes down to but the ego is trying to use all its magic tricks and do all of its fast dances and whatever to avoid being looked at. And that's a metaphor, again, because as if the ego is this identity. You know, talking about it in that way. It has to really be just looked at as thus and come to a point of, my mind beholds only what I think with God. You know, that puts the ego out of business, doesn't give it any kind of life of its own. The plans you make for safety are all laid within the future where you cannot plan. No purpose has been given it as yet and what will happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects unless he thought they had been caused and judged disastrous now? So in other words, we talked about the idea that there really is no hypothetical but the deceived mind believes that the hypothetical is real and it's disastrous. It has judged disaster in the past and it believes that disaster will inevitably be repeated in the future. And so it believes that there is cause for fear because these disastrous effects that have really happened in the past, pain, real pain, real misery, real scarcity, lots of proof of scarcity will actually come about in the future. More real pain, more real scarcity, more real lack, more real loss and that's what the whole ego system is based on. Belief in sin arouses fear and like its cause is looking forward, looking back, but overlooking what is here and now. Yet only here and now its cause must be. If its effects already have been judged as fearful. Another great line from the text is Jesus says the Holy Spirit looks not to effects for he has judged their cause. Chapter 27, Section 8, The Hero of the Dream, paragraph 9. The Holy Spirit does not look to the projections of the world and judge the effects of the world. He is not working in the world, he is not finding people jobs and finding people parking spaces and giving people sunny days for picnics and helping people lose weight and finding soul mates and so on and so forth. The Holy Spirit looks not to effects but has judged the cause. The ego is the belief that produced all the effects. All the images on the screen come from the ego and the Holy Spirit knows the ego is not true. So he is simply judging, he is looking at the ego and seeing that it is untrue. He is not judging all the images that have been projected from the ego. He looks not to effects. If I think that something happened a few days ago and I was very sad and in a lot of pain I had to believe that there was a cause of that pain. Something happened, I experienced the pain and now I look back on it and say that was disastrous. And turning that around is saying it was a total misperception that there wasn't anything that happened that caused me to feel what I felt that it was all a projection from my own mind and I was looking at the script and making a judgment about it and perceiving it, misperceiving what was happening. Even the eye that seemed to feel the pain was a misperception. From this moment it's just seeing how that must be so. I was misidentified. Even taking a step further back from that, from I was misidentified. Who is that eye that I was misidentified? You see, that's the deception. It's thinking that there was this real being, this real person back then that experienced this pain or that was misidentified. You see how it just put will of the box to the present. Do I believe that there is a present cause, small see, that is disastrous? As long as I do, then I have to believe that disaster is imminent in the future. It was real in the past. Hang on to your seat cause it's coming again. Even if this is constructed, that salvation and atonement are coming. But if it was real in the past, then I'm going to have to wait. I'm going to have to go through a period of more pain. That's what I've heard the voice and the word saying, you know, I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if it's worth it. That is the voice of the wrong mind. It's like the pain is real. It has been real and it will be real. And that's what has to be questioned. It only here and now its cause must be if its effects already have been judged as fearful. And in overlooking this, is it protected and kept separate from healing? For a miracle is now. It stands already here in present grace within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked. But which is all there is to time? The working out of all correction takes no time at all. Yet the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has in it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at now. Why wait till they unfold in time and fear they may not come? Although already there. You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it seems as if this is not so. Good in disasters form is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really sense in this idea. Yeah, right.