 One way you can tell you're not just intellectualizing is that when you start to really give yourself permission to allow this darkness to arise, well, it's emotional. It's intensely emotional. You can see at that point why intellectualization was used as a defense to not feel, because it's so intense. And then, the more that you go into it, it's very much like in Buddhism where they talk about a lot about emptiness in Buddhism, empty the contents of consciousness, empty your mind. And actually, when you follow the Course, if you keep practicing that workbook lesson and you keep working with it, you will start to feel more like, almost like you literally, like your mind is being emptied. Like, almost like the Holy Spirit's got some kind of a vacuum cleaner just whoosh, sucking these concepts out of there, things that you used to get all ticked off about and leave and get all worried and concerned about. It's like you go, huh, no charge with that. It used to really bother me to hear that word or to hear, to see those sights or those sounds. You know, you start to feel a real softening and emptiness. And all of the Buddha talked about going into the void. He was really talking about just emptying the mind of everything. You think, you think, you think, you know. That takes a lot of trust, too. I mean, the only reason why we fill our mind with all these things is we really believed it was helpful. I mean, for example, let's just say one discipline, education. The reason why we go through this endless amounts of education is because we actually think we're getting more intelligent, more skilled, better prepared and we're becoming more fulfilled through increased education. And of course, I went through kindergarten and then first grade through sixth grade school, then I went through junior high high school. I couldn't stop there. I had to go for ten years of university downtown of high school. Talk about an addiction that's absurd. I always tell people, why didn't it for you? Now, let me tell you, go the other way. Go to the empty realms because what happens is you may feel more intelligent but you don't necessarily feel more peaceful because the ego has latched onto that intelligence and it's identified with that intelligence and it likes being knowing more, knowing more than the next person. It's really caught up into that. And what I found is the way that you can tell when you're really stepping back is this sense of stillness and peace and defenselessness. Jesus says in the Course, whenever you feel the need to become defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion. So anytime I would feel just a little bit defensive, I would start to drop in, trace it in a little bit and go, oh, I'm still identified with it. And it could be with anything. It could be with the Course of Miracles. You could be out and you're at a cafe and you've got your horsebook open, some friends are there and somebody comes along and looks at it and starts knocking the Course of Miracles. What is that stupid book? What's this crazy? This is crazy. It says the world's an illusion. This is crazy. You feel a little defensiveness arising. Jesus said you just identify yourself with an illusion, even with the Course book. I remember one time I was going to the Course group for years and I went to this one group at a New Age shop. At the end of the group, I was standing there talking and I had my worn out little Course book. So I said, can I see your Course book? I said, sure. She turned and she walked right out of the door and just disappeared. It didn't even hesitate. She just took the book and she walked right out of the door. And I just continued talking to whoever I was talking to and she was out for maybe five, ten minutes probably walking around the parking lot or whatever. Then she came back and she walked in. She came and she put it back into my hands and she said, just testing. It's just that we start to realize that nothing happens by accident. The Spirit just wants us to be the living spirit, the living experience of that and to not be identified with any concepts. To raise them all up, to empty our mind of all of them and in that sense as you do that the world seems a little more and more surreal and it's more and more like you're watching something. Just like when you're watching a television show or a movie there's like an awareness that it's really just a TV show or just a movie. It starts to be more and more predominantly that feeling that same kind of watching feeling. You do feel mentally very passive whereas if you get really back with the Spirit the body can still seem to be done through but you're no longer identified with the doer and that's where the strain comes in is identifying with the doer thinking you are that which is doing something good or bad. There's a heaviness so you feel more done through and you feel more like you're watching and there's a sense of peace there with it. I mean I've had experiences I would train my mind over many years and then there was somebody on internet interaction I had with them and they said I want to come up to Sandusky, Ohio and I want you to meet my friends and my children and we'll go to amusement park and I remember going up there and we went on all these roller coaster rides this kind that I would never have gone on as a child and it was like nothing my stomach wasn't flipping around then we went into this thing where it was kind of like one of those omnimax kind of those big huge screens and it goes all around you 360 degrees and everything and I walked in there and they had all these bars like rows and rows of bars those seats right there they were supposed to I don't know what the bars are for but they started showing this thing you film of going off a cliff and being on the back end of a fire engine in San Francisco that's going around in Pennsylvania and people started falling over and grabbing all the bars like they were just hanging the floor wasn't moving nothing was moving probably as they filmed it it would have looked really funny there was a bunch of people hanging on the bars running into each other branding all over the shore and I was just standing there and I was like this must be the mind training because I wasn't interpreting what was the body's eyes were seeing I was standing there very still I wasn't even holding onto the bar people were bumping into me knocking into me and everything and I was just standing there and then at the end of the show a lot of people were all in the floor and I was like they brought the lights on and I just walked right out and the people couldn't even walk they were so busy they couldn't even get off the floor they were just grabbing around but you see that's what the course is teaching us lesson number two I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me clearly it's just a movie but the mind was interpreting motion and it was interpreting all kinds of things it wasn't just a bunch of shadows on the wall or surrounding it was interpreted as actual situations and lots and lots of motion talk about getting motion sickness these people were on the floor and I noticed it transfers like when I've been in planes and on boats and one time I was on a ferry in the Pacific Northwest in the United States and I was up at the front of the ship like Leonardo and Kate it was right up to the very front and I was up there with a friend in my Beverly and we were right up at the front and they were looking out watching the water and we didn't realize it but behind us was one of those gigantic fog horns you know and they just let go with this BOOM kind of sounder egg and literally she jumped like two feet off the ground and I just noticed that I didn't even move and I was like huh it must be the mic training because loud sounds unexpected loud sounds but the world would call startling loud sounds don't make us jump but everything that we feel and everything we react to is all coming from inside our consciousness and as we find that still point inside our consciousness and we rest in that then that's how you can tell the world it's like you're watching the world not in an intellectual way but these little kind of occurrences show you that's what I thought about that's interesting in the past I would have too but it just wasn't there so it's those experiences that show us that they just keep showing us and showing us we're getting a little more detached so we can work with this