 Okay, well we're going to have a great afternoon here. I can feel it plunging, diving, dropping down down into simplicity. Truth is simple. It has to be simple to be recognized if we're told the truth is true and nothing but the truth is true then then the simplicity of salvation has to become apparent. So as is typical of these gatherings and retreats we will be open to exploring what is being experienced in this journey, a seaming journey on planet Earth, but but actually we're coming into a let-go or a surrender or an embrace of something that is completely unlike any experience on Earth or that seems to be on Earth. So right before I came up I was watching a bit of a science documentary and they were saying that pretty early in his career Einstein discovered something that he basically called quantum light. He gave it the name quantum light, but then the rest of his life he he became more and more convinced that he had no clue of what that was. He just gave it a name. But in his entire career he didn't really approach an experience of an understanding or a direct experience of quantum light and recently I was traveling in the United States. I went to the Midwest and a woman had synchronistically come across my book On Wine Your Mind Back to God and she immediately began opening up and reading. She got a ways into it, but she ended up at some point in the book just being drawn back to to a phrase that's pretty early on in the book and her eyes were directed back to it. She went back chapters to it and then she's wrote to me an email. What does it mean that the natural condition of the mind is abstract? What does that mean? I kept looking at that word. My eyes kept resting on that word abstract. And I was drawn back to it in one of the earlier chapters and I don't understand what that means. And so I ended up going to her bookstore in Columbus, Ohio and she just laughed telling the whole story of how I seemed to get there and all the synchronicities that happened, but she still was laughing when she was telling that story because there really is nothing in time or space. There is absolutely nothing in perception that can help you out with that question, what is abstract? You can't even go to a museum and look at abstract art and get a hint of what abstraction is because abstract art, you know, people could say maybe it's more undefined than traditional art, but abstraction completely transcends that. She said, can you give me a synonym? Is there or synonyms? I said love or light or eternity. I started giving her, but then again, there's nothing in perception that fully gives us the meaning of love. In fact, The Course in Miracles says this course is not aimed at teaching the meaning of love for that is far beyond what can be taught. So 31 chapters, 365 lessons that a manual for teachers and no, not even close. This course does not aim, it doesn't even aim at teaching the meaning of love. It wouldn't even attempt such a thing. Now we have more books called The Course of Love and, you know, there's so many books, but this word gets tossed around a lot. It's the same with abstraction. And I feel like what you can do when you come upon that is it's just come to a place of humbleness because basically what we're shown is that the body's eyes do not see, the body's eyes do not hear, and everything that goes for seeing in this world is not seen. There's a word that's a little more accurate than seeing. It's called hallucination. It's more accurate to say I'm hallucinating than I, oh, I see. And I know when I first went to Argentina, I didn't know Spanish, but I would keep talking group after group after group, and I would see a lot of heads nodding in the audience up and down, up and down. They were going, claro, claro, talk some more, claro, claro, claro. I see. But not the kind of seeing this real sight. It's more I see. I understand. I resonate with what you're talking about, but the seeing that we're moving towards is not a seeing of perception. And so there's a humbleness that comes with that. Also, I was watching some things with quantum physics, and Jeffrey, what was that? Spooky at a distance? Is that why? Spooky action at a distance. Spooky action at a distance. That's from Einstein. When they started to get into entanglement, Einstein, you know, he would go so far, him and Niels Bohr would get into discussions because at some point, talking about particles in far dimensions of space that were behaving the same way as if they're totally connected, basically, as far as Einstein could go with that was spooky action at a distance. When Albert Einstein's using the word spooky, you know, there was some fear for Albert. He was scared by how similar the particles were behaving that seemed to be totally connected. You do something to one, it seems to, the other one reacts as well. You change one, and the other one changes. He called that spooky action at a distance. But actually, what that is pointing towards is what the mystics, the saints, Buddha, Jesus Christ, all pointed out to absolute, pure, perfect oneness. That's another group of words that we could talk about abstraction. It's absolute, perfect oneness. Absolute sameness. And as far as scientists goes, the course is spooky because they're still talking about particles, two particles. And if they start to behave very, very much as if they're behaving in the same ways, when the two seems to behave as if one, that's where the spooky action at a distance comes in. So what you can see as you keep deepening in spirituality and your own spiritual journey and practice is that you can count on scariness, you can count on terror, you can count on fear coming up because the ego, his only purpose is to exist. And perfect love casts out fear. So the closer you come to opening up to an experience of perfect love, there will be the terror of annihilation, the terror of loss, the terror of losing, even the familiar, familiar smiles and gestures, familiar things, green grass, leaves blowing and shimmering in the sun, the familiarity of a smile, of a caress, the familiarity of a simple gesture. There's a tremendous terror and loss of loss of the familiar, but everything that's projected was made as a substitute for this abstract love. So that's where the terror is coming in. It's the belief that you can actually have to lose something to come back into the experience of oneness, that there will be a sacrifice of something dear in order to experience this love and oneness. And so ultimately it's a shift of valuing where in heaven and nirvana, love is valuable. In fact, love is all there is. In fact, this abstraction is what Byron Cady has called what is, loving what is. It is love. It's love and it's what is. And it seems to be like there's going to be some kind of a loss involved in order to come back to that experience. That is really nothing that could be further from the truth, but that's where the convincing comes in. The convincing that giving and receiving are the same. The convincing that to have, give all to all. The convincing that there's no loss. And also it means that it's a coming around to claiming your true responsibility, as Jesus says in the Course, for accepting the Atonement. But if that's the sole responsibility, if you have only one responsibility and that's to accept the correction or accept the Atonement, then it must mean that every other responsibility that seems to be what you're experiencing in time and space is set up by the ego. No matter how sneaky it seems to be, no matter how valuable it seems to be, we start to come closer and closer into an experience is that the only thing that will help me, the only thing that will bring peace, the peace that passes the understanding of the world is by accepting this correction. And everything else ultimately, by definition, becomes seen as a distraction against that. And so typically for the human being it's like, well, what should that mean that I just should abdicate on all of my responsibilities, like let them all drop, let them all fall. Ultimately, all it really means is it means giving your make-believe responsibilities and make-believe duties and roles and so on and so forth, giving them to the Holy Spirit to unwind the mind from them. It doesn't necessarily mean abdicate in the sense that the way the ego sees things is I'll just drop it, I'll drop it cold turkey. It's like very much like I say, if you take a screw, if you drill a hole and you screw a steel screw into a piece of oak, which is very, very hard wood, and you wind it very tight and you tighten it into that oak, the chances of you just pulling that thing straight out with a hammer are not very good. You will have to unwind, just like it was wound in in a very difficult, complicated way, you will have to unwind stroke by stroke, turn by turn, and that's where the Holy Spirit comes in. You can't just say, okay, you're telling me that these are unreal responsibilities, so I'll just drop them cold turkey and the Holy Spirit's cycle. You better let me handle that unwinding because as long as you still are invested in that, as long as you're still invested in that screw being wound in there, then you're invested in imprisonment and there's a strong investment and it's a strong hold. You've given a very powerful mind over to a very twisted thought system, you're going to have to be unwound. So that's why really the purpose of the Course in Miracles is just to put you in touch with your internal teacher and that's why the last five workbook lessons of the Course are this holy instant, what I give to you, be you in charge, I would but follow and whatever I need, it's a moment of silence, it's a thought, it's a word, whatever I need that will be given me. It's like weaning away from the book, it's like the final five lessons of the workbook are like saying, okay, you've done very well, now let's wean away from these workbook lessons and come into direct connecting and your own internal listening and turning to that presence inside when you have a question, a doubt, a need, whatever, rely, rely, rely on that presence. So really that's how I'd like to use this afternoon is we need to, we can start to identify things where we feel we're trapped or we're imprisoned or where we feel fear and doubt but ultimately we need to rev up this trust we have inside, we need to be inspired in the trust in order to take the steps to listen and follow and take the steps that are given us to take the turns of the screw. If we don't do that then we will just remain talking about spirituality but not actively involved in the undoing. It just becomes words then, it becomes repetitions, you know, like a lot of times in religion where you just say you're Hail Marys or you repeat your mantra over and over and over, almost in a ritualistic way. Okay, is that enough? 5,780,000 Hail Marys or ohms or whatever tradition you want to use, you know, did I do it enough? Is that okay? Do I get in? You know, it's it's still almost like an exchange, almost like it's a quantity thing and what we're being asked by the Spirit is we're being asked for a quality, a quantitative experience of surrender, of I give up, of lead me, show me, guide me. We want to go fully into that experience which is what brings the release. In the end, abstraction doesn't involve numbers, you know, there are really not ultimately, there are not multiple holy instance, there's just one and oftentimes people talk about the present moment as if it's just like a bead on a necklace. It's a moment among a lot of moments, that's not it. That's the ego's definition of the instant, of the moment, one among many, but in the end, the many is the illusion and the one is the reality and you have to go into the experience of that one. You may get a glimpse in terms of like revelatory experiences and revelation is a direct experience of light, abstract light, and that's very, very helpful, but again, you can't then put it on a timeline and say, oh, I experienced revelatory experience when I was seven years old or maybe one when I was 31 or whatever because that's still wedging it into a story and it's like all of time and all of history is a defense against that deep mystical experience. That's why we're asked to forgive everything about the world to empty the mind of everything and even empty our mind of all concepts of time because they're simply defenses against the holy instant as well. There will actually never be a definition that will help you experience heaven. In the end, it's an emptying the mind of all the definitions. If somebody comes to you and says, define God, that's when you should start laughing because that's something that cannot be defined and there's going to be no name or no definition that will serve at some point because you're opening to an experience. One of the greatest defenses against the truth is the belief that there are levels of mind and that there are orders of difficulties and miracles and so I was having lunch with Judy Sketch recently and she was retelling the story of Willis Harmon, very famous transpersonal psychologist who was having lunch with Judy and with Helen Shuckman and time was ticking. Willis was like, I got to go to the airport. I have to fly out and so as it got to the very end of the lunch, Willis finally turned to Helen Shuckman in a very direct way and said, okay, give it to me. I've got to go. So I just give it to me real short, real straight. What is your experience with the Course in Miracles? The transpersonalist was like, just give it to me real straight. I got to go. You got to go catch a plane and then that was the lunch where Helen says, well, I know it's true, I just don't believe it. There it was. That was her whole expression of her interaction with the Course in Miracles. I know it's true, I just don't believe it. And then Judy, after Willis had left, Judy said to Helen, that's not exactly true what you told him. That's not exactly true. You could have said, I know it's true, I just don't want to believe it. Just don't want to believe it. Because we always experience what we want. That's what goes around, comes around, giving and receiving, love, karma, we always get what we want. But if we're not clear what we want, then we get mixed results. And so when we complain about anything in the world, anything at all, it's because there's a split, a split of wanting. It's like wanting two different things. It's like wanting love and wanting fear. And the Bible said, perfect love casts out fear. You can't really wholeheartedly want fear and love. So it does come down to, what do I want? And ultimately that is the saving grace because you will look upon that which you feel within. You will feel within that what you want. So basically, you're always getting what you want. You're always receiving exactly what you're giving. And ultimately, you have to reach a state of mind that has no wanting in it, like the 23rd Psalm by David. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Very true. But as long as you want, and that's what this whole experience of the world is about, then you have to be very, very, very, very clear of what you want. Because if you want multiple things, you will receive multiple experiences, and those will conflict. And that's very confusing. There's no consistency in multiple outcomes. When peace is desired and solely desired and peace is experienced, you receive exactly what you want. When you want something like peace and you throw the end in there, then that's where you experience whatever comes after the end. Many of us have come through different spiritualities and different pathways on this journey. Some of you are aware of the secret. Some of you are aware of the law of attraction. I mean, many people who come into their spiritual journey through the law of attraction and from wanting and manifesting and basically the core under these teachings are you can create your own reality, which is seen as a very new agey kind of thing. The course is not new age. If that is the definition of new age, then the course is not new age by any stretch of the imagination. It's basically saying, no, God creates reality and you can but accept reality exactly as it is. You cannot make it. You cannot create it in a form sense because it's abstract. You can only forgive what you believe and accept reality exactly as it is. That's another way of saying, I am as God created me. You can accept yourself as a perfect creation of God and that's the extent of what you can do, but you cannot make yourself different and you certainly cannot create reality, especially when you see it in terms of form. This is where all the difficulties come in when people talk about you're a co-creator with God. Well, that's true, but it's purely spiritual. There is no physical component to co-creation because there is no physical component to creation, so it's certainly not with co-creation either. So really, if you start to go at this very directly, it's very, very, very straightforward and the difficulties come in in the belief that there are some situations, some circumstances that are more difficult than others. I know years ago in the early 1990s, when I had people showing up and saying, I'm your student, I'm your student, and I would sit down and talk with them. The more I would talk with them, they would say, wow, David, if I had your circumstances, I would be home free. If I had a life like yours and I say, what do you mean? And they'd say, well, you've got a very conducive lifestyle to accepting the truth. So you actually believe that there are some lifestyles in form that are more conducive to waking up than others. They said, yes, that's exactly what we believe. If I didn't have this and this and this and this, then I would be right there with you, right with you. And I would say, well, that's very much sounds like the approach to truth is very circumstance dependent. And Marion Williamson had said earlier that the truth is not circumstance dependent. It is actually an experience that comes when you realize that there are no circumstances that can keep you from the truth. The implication is that there are some situations that are that are more conducive to truth as well. And I've shared many times that it's the whole belief in situational thinking in thinking in linear Newtonian horizontal situational ways is actually the problem and that the solution is a quantum holistic solution of seeing the world entirely different as if you are completely clueless of everything that seems to be part of your world and coming into that cluelessness is the way into forgiveness. It's by relinquishing the beliefs that you know what's happening that allows you to experience the essence of what really is so and what is really true. So this first night and this first morning has been a great opportunity with expression sessions and opening sessions of just kind of laying on the altar. Here's what's going on in my world. And I would like to come into an experience of of the peace and the stillness and the consistency of a healed mind or healed perception. And so in one sense that's what you do. You bring the altar of your life, your perceived biological life in circumstances into an experience of here's what I think, here's what I believe, but Lord show me, show me what is beyond this. Take me higher, take me to a different experience. And that means an experience that's beyond exceptions, beyond clinging to differences, beyond the status quo. Remember the first time that Nikita, she discovered that word status quo, she's like, what's status quo? I hear you talk about status quo. What is status quo? Checking it up, looking it up on the internet, Wikipedia. She's looking all over for it. What's the status quo? I want to escape the status quo. What is it? And the status quo you can say is everything that you believe about anything and everything. The human being is a construct. And that construct is based on beliefs and assumptions. So the first thing you have to do when you think about, well, I believe this, but my partner believes that and my mother and father believe this and my neighbors believe this and this and this. People don't believe. People are beliefs. People don't believe. And people don't think. And animals don't think. Sometimes they say, my cat has a mind of its own and definitely has thoughts of its own and an agenda too to boot. People don't have beliefs. People are representations of beliefs. People don't think. People are thoughts. So if you have a disagreement, you say, I disagree with this person, you have a disagreement in your mind and you're conveniently projecting it out onto this person as if I don't like the way they think or I don't like the way they act. That is not a behavior that is supportive of me. When the very idea of how did they behave that way seemingly independently is what's called projection. Attempt to see something outside of yourself, outside of your mind, outside of your consciousness, conveniently and point the finger. I don't like that. Did you see the way that they frowned at me? Did you see that scowl on their face? Well, how did that scowl get there? You have to have a scowl going on in consciousness before you can perceive a scowl. If you perceive it, you believe it. If you spot it, you got it. Oh, I'm noticing a scowl thought. I really want to release that scowl thought, that frown thought. Everything is a thought. You know, there's crazy dichotomies in the mind as if there's things called thoughts and then there's things called manifested thought. What's the difference between a thought and a manifested thought? If you ever pondered that, what is the difference? If you pondered for a moment, you'll realize there is no difference. But this workbook lesson from the course, say, my thoughts are images I have made. The thought and the image are the same thing. They're thought forms. He goes, all attack thoughts are thought forms. They're always forms and images that are seen as if they're external when they really aren't external to the mind. Why? Because there's nothing external to the mind. There's nothing outside of mind. In the workbook of A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, you are mind, holy mind, purely mind. He's saying, W-H-O-L-L-Y. You are mind, holy, W-H-O-L-L-Y mind, purely mind. There's only mind. Sounds a little bit like Mary Baker Eddie. There's no mind in matter. There's no life, truth, substance, or intelligence in matter. There is no matter apart from mind. Everything is mind. All it takes is that one realization and your problems are over. You will never have a problem when you can see that mind is all-inclusive. But as long as you believe that there can be something called mind and something other than mind, it doesn't matter what that something is. Scientists are still opening to that up when they talk about particles. When they talk about electrons and photons or even when they talk about subatomic particles. Exactly where are those particles? They're in the mind. That's what quantum physics is about. There is no external world apart from consciousness. They couldn't get the observer out of the experiment. Wherever the experimenter thought the particles would appear, that's where they would appear. I love how scientists, quantum physicists are so fascinated by the observer effect. It's all potentiality until it's observed. And as soon as it's observed, it seems to spring into a reality, a concrete reality as soon as it's observed. But we know from the great mystics and saints that there is no observer apart from the observed. And how many dreamers do we have? Do we have six billion, seven billion dreamers? No. Are we going to say the plants stream to the animals? No. Are there multiple dreamers? No. Things get simpler and simpler and simpler because people would come to my groups and they would say, am I dreaming you or are you dreaming me? That's not the kind of question that's going to wake you up. It's which particle is dreaming? This particle or that particle? No, that's not going to go very far. And the most important thing you could say then is, well, okay, suppose there's just one mind dreaming. What is the quality of that dream? Is it a happy dream? Are you singing a happy tune? La, la, la, la, la, la for today. Hey, la, la, la, la, la, la for today. Not tomorrow anyway. That's a pretty happy song. Is that your song? Is that your persistent song? Are you singing a happy song in your mind? Or are you singing a funeral dirge? Are you singing one of these achy breaky heart country songs? Are you, are you singing a sad song? A song of unrequited love? A song of yearning for something that has not arrived yet? And you're hoping it's in the future. You know, what is the song that your mind is singing? That tells you a lot about your consciousness. What's the song? I was just recently sitting, I was sitting in a restaurant, the windows were open, and the birds were like singing. Oh my God, I just sat there and listened to the birds. The birds were singing and singing and chirping and chirping and they were so happy. And it just went on and on and on the whole time I sat there and I thought, wow, they are just so happy. They aren't singing for a reason. Like, they aren't singing for an outcome. It wasn't like the birds were like solemnly going around from branch to branch and they find a worm or a seed. Haha, it's such a thing, you know, like humans do when they get a particular outcome. Sing, sing, sing, sing. No, they were singing the whole time. They were singing. It was their song. They were tweeting and I was just so filled up listening with gratitude to the singing that was going on. St. Francis, we just heard Emily sing the St. Francis prayer. You know, he was always pointing to the birds. Look at the birds. You know, how simple they are. There's a few sips of water and a berry here or there and they just sing, sing, sing all day. And not that they're singing when they get the berry or when they get the water but that the berry and the water just show up, the little sips. You know, that's a natural condition. It's a natural state of mind. So, I often talk too about no people pleasing no private thoughts. I remember as I got more and more intoxicated with the experience of love that I would at times go to visit my grandmother and she lived to be 99s. A lot of my visits over her last decade of her life would be to go to visit her and she was diagnosed with dementia and like sometimes with older people, sometimes they will repeat the same stories that will just repeat almost like a broken record. And so, that was a good example for me of going and accepting the atonement because oftentimes we would be there and I'd be there and she would be telling a story, retelling a story from the, from let's say the 1920s or before and the story would just repeat and repeat and repeat and and then finally, after I'd heard the story for the umpteenth time or whatever, I just asked Jesus, I said, what do I do about this? And he said, here I'll take over. Let me handle the conversation here. So, I'm there in prayer and Jesus is going to handle this. And he basically came through me and said to her grandma, I said, you keep saying the same story over and over. She said, am I? And then the next thing that came out was what's the purpose of the story? She was like, what's the purpose? Huh, that's a good question. What is the purpose of the story? And then Jesus said, well, yeah, you remember how you love the Bible and Jesus and you notice Jesus told stories too in the Bible, but every story that Jesus told, every story, every parable he stole always had a purpose, always had a purpose. She said, that's right. She loved Jesus. We're going to slice right through Alzheimer's, slice through everything just with the love of Jesus. She said, you're absolutely right. So I said that story that you just told me. I said, what was the purpose? And she was like, hmm, that's a good one. What is the purpose of that story? Here we are. You see slicing through everything and zooming into connect in the heart and the love. And she basically said, hmm, she said, I don't know. She said, I don't know. I don't know if it even had a purpose. I said, well, let's explore it. Let's explore everything. And so finally we got into the point where she agreed that she didn't know that the story that she just told me had a purpose. She wanted it to have a purpose. Like Jesus, she loved the story to have a purpose, but she didn't know what the purpose was. And she finally just said, I think I just like it. Isn't that candid? 90-some years old. I think I like it. I think that's why I retell it. Over and over. I think I like it. I know it's only rock and roll, but I like it. I like it. Yes, I do. She liked the story. And so she repeated the story over and over and over and over. But at that point we did agree that we wanted to have an inspired relationship, an inspired connection, and we both agreed that we wouldn't tell stories unless we had a purpose. And it was adorable. Now imagine if we take that little story, we apply it to our lives. Imagine if we wouldn't really speak at all unless we were clear of our purpose for speaking. Unless there was a real inspired purpose. In fact, that reminds me of what my parents had told me when I was very young. If you don't have something good to say about somebody, don't say anything at all. Isn't that amazing how that stuff gets better and better now? It's like, oh wow, that's a good one. If you don't have something good, if you don't have something inspiring to say, then don't say anything at all. What's the purpose behind it? If we start to get so clear in our mind about atonement, about innocence, about forgiveness, we get so dedicated to that purpose. And I mean so dedicated that we're not going to waste a word that's out of a line with that purpose. And doesn't that sound familiar to what Jesus is calling us to with The Course in Miracles? Is the Holy Spirit has only one purpose for the body to let the voice for God speak through it. The only purpose we have. Are we to be of the bodies to be good fathers and mothers? No, no. Good athletes? No. Good at all these different skills and abilities? No, no, no, no, no, no. There's only one function that the body has in alignment with the Holy Spirit. Is it to be a good skier? No. Basketball bird? Singer? No. Dancer? No. One responsibility. One purpose. Let the Holy Spirit speak through it. I would say also laugh through it, smile through it, hug through it, express through it. You know, not just verbally, but I mean express through it. And that's the only responsibility that we have to tap into. In fact, he says if you really let that be the only purpose that the body is used for, then as soon will come a time when you won't have any need for a body at all. You'll be able to let go of the device when the device has served its purpose. That's about singing a happy tune, shining, sharing, laughing, loving through the body so that at some point there's no need for a body at all. It's the same thing about the Holy Spirit's use of time. The Holy Spirit uses time to teach you that there is no time. It's not like you make it back to eternity and how much time do you have left? What are you talking about? There is no sense of that. So it's almost like that song, Bill Weather's song, you just keep on using me until you use me up. That's what it's for. So to me, that makes things very, very simple. I just want to move in the direction where I am used by the Holy Spirit for what the Holy Spirit wants to use me for. The merge will occur when the purpose becomes unified. But if I hold things apart from that purpose and I say, well, I'm a human being and I want some things, Spirit, I want this, this, this, this, or I seem to be some things, but I want to be a good this, a good that. You will never be good at anything, including being a person. You will never reach a state of mind where you think you've arrived at being a good person. A good person is another construct and the Spirit is beyond the personal. So a good person in the end is an oxymoron to be a good person. You should never aim to be even like a saint because ultimately that's just a stepping stone symbol as well. But as long as there's a sense of personhood, a sense of individuality, a sense of uniqueness, the best you can hope for is to find your special function, which is just to be in alignment with God and then it looks however it looks. Whatever that appearance is when you're in alignment, when your mind is in alignment with God, that's your special function. The form just looks as it looks, but it's the alignment that makes it your special function to God. So yeah, I think this is a good backdrop, a good way to start to open up to what is it that I'd like to explore. Whatever I'm aiming for in terms of the world, in terms of the goal and the world, that's still going to be on the timeline and ultimately the Spirit wants to collapse the perception of a timeline and show you the world in a simultaneous way, not a linear way. That linear way is a false identity and that will never ultimately lead to a fulfilling experience. The cross, everybody talks about Jesus in the cross, the cross to me is simply the vertical axis and the horizontal axis and that glorious point at the middle of the cross is the experience of atonement. That's what we're going for, we're going for the centers. Some people like to call Buddha in the middle way. If you're going for the middle way, go for the point where the vertical, the purpose seems to interact with the horizontal, but you're singing a song because of the vertical. You're really not paying attention and interpreting anything in terms of the horizontal. That's the joy of awakening, not being able to interpret the form, not even trying to. Somebody says something, a question about the world, why is this happening? Why is that happening? All these things about form, you can confidently say I don't know and be happy with I don't know. Not be judging yourself, that you should know something, that you really know business, that you can't ever know. So does anybody have any area or theme that seems to be a stuck point or a point of contraction, a point of heaviness, something that's still dogging you, that's still there. They would like to explore that. Yeah, the horizontal is what the parents seem to be. It's where they intersect, it's important, where that alignment is. As you might say, that's your present moment. Ultimately, it's not between the past and the future. Ultimately, the present is before Abraham was, I am. It's a state of pristine state of mind that's prior to time, but that alignment in terms of the cross is more being, you might say done through, being in perfect alignment with the purpose. And we can get into specifics too like Jesus does in the Course because basically I've already just discussed the one use that the Holy Spirit has for the body and that's as a communication device. But the ego has many other uses for the body, all that induce guilt and keep the mind asleep and dreaming. And the three categories that he gives are pride, pleasure, and attack, the reason the Course isn't about creating your own reality is because number one, the sleeping mind doesn't know what reality is and number two, it doesn't know what's best for it. In fact, Jesus says your mind is so confused that you cannot, in your state of mind, of sleeping and dreaming, you cannot tell the difference between pain and joy. That's pretty confused. And then, yes, some people will tell me, oh, no, no, Jesus has wrong about that one. I definitely can tell the difference between pain and joy. And I said, well, if you, if you really could tell the difference between pain and joy, then joy would be the only experience you would have. You would never experience pain, ever, if you could tell the difference. You see it's the confusion that makes it seem to be a hodgepodge of experiences. So pride, pleasure, and attack. Pride would be pride in anything, thinking, you know, anything about anything in the world. That ultimately is where pride comes in. Pleasure, well, if, if the mind can see that pleasure and pain were the same, pleasure suddenly would not be so attractive. Suddenly, you know, it wouldn't be something that was sought after, if you could see that it was just pain disguised. And attack, that's very subtle. You know, as long as there's the belief that attack has any kind of value whatsoever, then the guilt will, will remain in play. That's what's so funny about watching political commercials. Somehow there's this belief that attack is valuable. And the more that, the more and the greater the attack, the better. You know, it's, it's, it's the exact opposite of, of the teachings. Somehow that there's some kind of value in attack. I had students years ago and, and we, we would read a line from the course and, and we would be going along and then sometimes there'd be a line and then there'd be this big ruckus, like we were going along in the course and then we would read anger is never justified, or we would read the line, no one can be angry at a fact. Then it would be a big ruckus. And I'd say, what's ruckus about here? And they would say, what's he been talking about? What does he mean? What does he mean by that? No one can be angry at a fact. They said, give us an example. Give us an example of a fact. Come on. If he's saying no one could be angry at a fact, then give us an example of a fact. I said, God is a fact. And Christ is a fact. And no one can be angry at a fact. If you knew the fact of God, you could not be angry. If you knew the fact of Christ, you could not be angry. Anger always arises from a concept. You can have a concept of God and get angry. And you can have a concept of Christ, being a man, being 2000 years ago, on and on and on, that you still can get angry if you have a concept. But the actual experience of God, the actual experience of Christ is the actual experience of love. And no one can be angry at love. The actual experience of it. There is no anger in that. And that's what we're doing. We're emptying the mind of all the concepts of everything that's been thought of or believed in. Because that's where the upset occurs. Okay, that was the before. We looked at the before. Situation and rescuing patterns. And I'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit to family patterns and to release people teasing and come to a place of detachment. Yeah. Well, I think Jesus is a great way shower in the sense that whenever we think about caring for a loved one or feeling responsible for a loved one, then I think about Jesus and that extraordinary expression and demonstration arise. Take up your bed and walk. Go wash and then they can see. It basically of coming into a pristine state of mind of perfect, perfect innocence, perfect empowerment. I heard that you just got to watch that movie Risen last night. The presence, the happiness, the love, the friendliness, and then the shock of the Roman guard of seeing Jesus. First seeing an image on the cross, a bloodied, you know, gnarled body that has been crucified and then seeing the same form again. It's like, wait, whoa, that talk about flipping things around. You know, living comes before dying, doesn't come after. Imagine in all of human history that just contradicted the laws of the world in that one instant when he saw, came into that room and there was Jesus and Mary, Magdalene, the apostles. It just completely overthrew all the assumptions and overthrew all the beliefs. And ultimately that's what the mind is being called to is that state of mind. So suddenly some of these teachings from the Bible, who is my father, mother, sister, brother? He that does the will of our father in heaven is father, mother, sister, brother. The relationship that we have, the connection that we have is in spirit. Who we are, our I amness has a divine parent. Our I amness comes from the Creator. Our birth, so to speak, is an eternal birth and it comes from a divine Creator. If you want to break it down into real basics, it's cause and effect. God is the cause, Christ is the effect. There's nothing more true than to be able to say and mean I am an idea in the mind of God. That's the same thing as saying I am as God created me. I am an idea in the mind of God. I am a Christ idea in the mind of God. That's the fact. And everything else that's attempted in this world, and I mean playing mothers and daughters and fathers and sons and uncles and aunts and great aunts and nieces and nephews, all of that's part of a denial of I amness. You can't be a physical being and be a spiritual being. If you believe you're physical, then you're denying the spiritual. All these kind of attempts, you know, oh I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. Oh no, I'm a human being having experience. No, you're neither. You can't mix. In this world you can't mix oil and water and in reality you can't mix spirit and material. I seem to remember that from the Bible and I think St. Francis came along and reiterated that. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. I now am born again. You know, some of you remember Jesus, the story of Jesus and Nicodemus, you know, hanging along and how is it? How can I be born again except to a mother's womb and everything? And Jesus is like, you're not getting it. Nicodemus, you're not getting what I'm saying. Spiritual reality is real and the flesh isn't. And you'll never understand the spiritual reality. He was never trying to bring a kingdom of heaven to earth. He was never trying to pick special apostles and build a Jesus Christ ruling party. Oh, we'll take over for the Romans. We'll have a new political party. We'll call them the JC, you know, JC party. No, he was not trying to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. He was saying, come follow me inward. The kingdom of heaven is within. So at some point in my life as I kept following the course and following it, I thought, wow, I actually have a divine parent and I will not use the story of time to deny that divinity. It's the associations in the mind to tell you you were born of biological parents. I always said, imagine the bar scenes where people go, what's your name? What sign are you? It's where are you from? Well, what's the answer to where are you from? If Jesus was in a bar scene, he'd tell it to, I come from the heavenly father. But where are you from? I am eternal. I am from eternity. You know, who are your parents? God. But there's, you have two, no, just one. Is God masculine or feminine? God. Is God male or female? God, you know, tell it straight because that was the presence that came through. It was an identification with the spiritual reality that Christ is an effect and God is the cause, that Christ is an idea in the mind of God and that everything is thought of in terms of time and space, you know, even the Sistine Chapel, you know, the very famous touching of the fingers, you know, bodies. As if God has a body and the body of God is touching the body of humanity. Come on, we can do better than that, than having figures of bodies touching, fingers touching. There's a little bit more there to God, to the creator than that. Now, how does that relate to time and space? Well, this world is the belief that the effect can leave the cause. When Jesus clearly thought, I and the Father are one, He was basically teaching that effect and cause are together. But everything we know about linear time, everything we know about Newtonian physics, everything we know about every discipline that you study in school and university, everything about this world implies that the cause is different than the effect. Everything. Doesn't matter whether you study real estate or you study engineering or whatever. Every single discipline has false cause-effect relationships and that's back to the horizontal. Now, what do we know about cause and effect except that they're separate or taught? That they're separate and that one comes before the other. The cause comes before the effect. And what spiritual awakening is about is starting to see the complete fallacy. And I mean complete. You have to use this in your mind that everything you believe about time and space that involves a cause followed by an effect is false. Everything without exception. That means you've got to unlearn all your Newtonian physics, the physics that all of us were taught in high school. It's all false. There's no reality to any of it because it's all based on empiricism. It's all based on studying the unreal effects of the world and trying to draw, through experiments, trying to draw knowledge that's filling up our history books, filling up our chemistry books, filling up all of our books with nothing. How does that relate to parents? Well, there's a responsibility that's tied in. In other words, if I could give words to it, you gave birth to me. Therefore, I owe you and there's guilt with that. How good is a good enough daughter? How good is a good enough son? We talk about the dutiful son, the dutiful daughter, when ultimately I'm saying that all effort and energy and care that you can put into understanding what I'm talking about is well spent effort. I mean, if people had any idea how important it was to be innocent, because how can you praise God with words when God is beyond words? The best way to praise the Creator is to be like the Creator created you. To be as God created you is the most glorious thing. Giving, loving, friendly, extending, expressing. Well, that's singing praises to God. When you are as God created you, you are giving the highest compliment because God doesn't have an ego to say, thank you. You did very well on that exam. I'm glad you passed the real estate exam and now you're number two producer in your area, you know, as if God cares about anything. God is not interested. God's interested in loving and extensions of love. So ultimately, for me, it was very important to start to realize, wow, I have a divine Creator and suddenly mom and dad weren't special anymore. Wasn't they weren't more special or less special? It wasn't that they were excluded in any way, but it was like suddenly they were just reflections and expressions of my thoughts. And that's what healed. When I was able to reset place of pristine innocence, then my biologic father was able to come in the movie and say to me, Dave, I wasn't a very good father. And I could say nonsense. You did the best that you could based on what you believe I did the best I could. We're not going to play this game of guilt and these roles and these associations anymore. And wow, we were just soaringly happy at that point. I took him out of the father role. I took David out of the son role. We suddenly were equals in a beautiful divine plan of awakening. And that changed the context of everything. Also this idea of sickness, when you start to realize that sickness isn't of the body, it's just distorted, cracked perception is the sickness. So if I'm seeing anybody through that distorted perception, then its physician heal thyself. It's like come back to my own mind and say I need help to see this differently. But you see how that takes it out of this dependent kind of role. Because I feel like for a lot of people they feel like it's their ingrained lifelong duty to be a caretaker and yet they really aren't taking care of the soul. They aren't minding the mind and they aren't doing the mind training and the mind washing to clear it of all grievances. They would rather slip into this role of a personal caretaker and that's still fraught with all types of guilt and it does pop up. Caring for an elderly parent. Caring for children in this world. We hear all kinds of crazy stories of seeming abandonment, neglect, of parents killing, crying, screaming babies, of doing cover-ups and all kinds of things. Because there's some kind of tension in the mind that's tied into this false cause and effect belief and it just keeps playing out over and over and over through history. Until we finally say no the buck stops here. I'm going to accept myself as God created me. I remember that applied too with like nieces and nephews as I lived very simply and everything. More and more they started to reflect just the state of mind of happiness and joy and connection that we experienced without all the external props, money, possessions, gifts. We've forgotten that the miracle is the gift and then we get into material gift giving. Did you give enough? Did you give what you gave last year? Did you give more? The gift giving gets out on the timeline and there's all kinds of guilt associated with even gifts because they aren't real gifts. They're just facades. They're impersonations of gifts. And ultimately I think if you're happy and joyful and loving and friendly you are offering the greatest you are emanating and radiating the greatest gift to everyone and everything. So that's a transfer of training thing to be able to start to really practice that. To really, really practice that. The first reminder is if you are perceiving any types of pain or suffering then right away what we learned from the workbook of A Course in Miracles is pain is always a false perception. So as a miracle worker you need help if you're perceiving any degree, any direction, any any kind of pain or suffering at all. The best way I can, your question is leading into a much deeper topic. Basically with Newtonian science you know we've all been bamboozled. We all have had false beliefs about human beings. We actually have believed from the ego belief system that human beings have five senses we'll say or more maybe six you know there's other things more subtle realm but five basic senses. What have we learned from science is that what do we know about how the eyes work? Light comes in through the retina, the image is inverted, there's brain signals and so on and so forth. What do we know about hearing with the body? Sound waves come in, they come in and they come into the eardrum and so on and so forth. We learn the same about smelling of fragrance and the senses that come through the nose and so forth. Taste, smell, touch and everything. We've been taught that there's an external world and the body is sensing that external world. Some people have even said that the human condition is is like six and a half seven billion little cameras that are all over. There's like little cameras that are are sensing the world just like if you take your your iPhone and you open it up to the camera and everything and you take a photo that this is like the receiver. This is the light and the sounds. If you do a video where the light and the images are going in here and they're captured by the iPhone and this is the way the human body has seemed to be. It couldn't be further from the truth. It's a total deception in the sense that suppose this iPhone wasn't a camera but it was actually a projector this was a projector that everything that comes out of that lens all the people and sights and sounds are being projected from inside that lens like we have a movie theater projector. You see the difference between a projector and a camera. A camera is like a receiver. It records what's going in. The phone records it. Our body has seen that way. No these are not receivers of light and sounds and images going into the brain. That's all part of the trick. Just the same trick that would tell us we have biological parents. It's the same kind of thing. These are more like projectors. Everything in consciousness is being projected. So you have to experience it's all consciousness and yet it's being experienced as if it's outside. So this is important when you start to realize that like you were just saying the question was if you're perceiving someone in pain if you're perceiving someone in pain it's not like there's an actual person out there that's in pain it's you're projecting the experience of pain into that person or into that body or into that limb. If you see a horse that's fallen that's fallen over and that's bleeding or whatever that's a projection of pain. So if you're perceiving pain is what your question is what do you do? Well I'm saying if if you're perceiving pain then at some level in your consciousness you're you have a feeling of pain. Maybe you were not even aware of it but it's in there and your thoughts are of pain and your beliefs are of pain and you are desiring pain. It all starts with the wanting that I talked about earlier the desire in the mind and the desire and the beliefs and the thoughts and the emotions and the very perceptions all go in that direction. It's all coming from consciousness it's emanating from consciousness. So what am I'm saying is that we've had it all backwards we all have believed that there's an external world that's doing stuff to us. For example I've overstimulated I've had too much stimulation I need some quiet meditation alone. Wait a minute you projected that way you projected that stimulation and you only projected by thinking it believing it and wanting it. So pain is a false perception and you have to understand the building blocks of how it's coming from consciousness in order to say oh my gosh if I'm perceiving pain I need forgiveness I need a correction in my mind that's not clear right-minded thinking that is not right-minded perception and it's not right-minded thinking you see how everything comes back to the mind everything without exception comes back and all of our beliefs are the beliefs that in external causes you make me mad you you made me sad you hurt my feelings when you said this you you did this to me all of our thoughts and beliefs that are part of the ego are all part of a victim mentality as if the world and the five senses are doing things wrong are are doing things that aren't true of course they are because if they're believed in then they're experienced as such so you see how this is going to be a course in mind training it's going to be training the mind to turn have the big turnaround with anything you know like when somebody says to me I don't want to make you nervous I just always have a like the smile in my as if you know I'm going to tell you something and you may be very sad after I tell you this before I even hear what it is I'm like fat chance you know this is going to be very disturbing so sit down fat chance I'll stand you know it's you know there's nothing positive nobody can make you feel anyway how you feel is a choice and I mean how you feel in any sense of that word everything that's why Einstein was calling it a spooky action at a distance because if there is no such thing as distance then everything is one as a scientist you're out of business as a human being you're out of business if everything is one as a mother you're out of business as a father you're out of business as a brother as a sister as a dog you're out of existence you don't have any business going there if it's all one I'll go for that so this is extremely practical but it will dissolve the world as you seem to know it you will never look upon the world in the same way ever nothing will ever appear in the same way there is one part of the course where Jesus describes our function he says the function of God's teachers is awareness of dreaming he comes right out and says that wow because I mean I used to be fascinated years ago when parapsychology came around and all these different things that they were seemingly discovering in parapsychology and I think one of the most fascinating ideas from parapsychology was lucid dreaming dreaming but being aware that you're dreaming I thought that's empowering awareness of dreaming that's what forgiveness is that's probably one of the shortest everybody knows who studies the Course for years you forgive your brother for what he did not do and all these different ones but I think one of the most impactful lines from Jesus is that awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers that literally sets you free talk about empowerment I was just in Vancouver and I what was the name of the place empower empower health was the name of the business where I was so I decided to start the gathering by looking at those two words empower what does empower mean and what is health but inner peace so we totally reoriented it away from modalities and techniques and all these different time space things into empowerment in the mind knowing yourself as a divine mind and health having nothing really to do with the body but to do with the state of mind of know thyself recognize your divinity recognize your spiritual reality now that's empowering that's health but it was a total flipping of what seemed to be the practice you know which is all still trying to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth so it's extremely simple but once you grasp the real essence of what this is you're on your way and once you make no exceptions not with mom or dad not with the children not with the government not with anything you know a lot of times people in the course of miracles sometimes are tempted into politics and all I can say is you can't actually be involved in politics without being involved in duality what what is the definition of politics what would politics be if there were no parties what would politics be if there were no sides what would politics be if there was no winning and losing if you took the duality out of politics all you'd have left is the unifile feel of forgiveness peace joy love I love you political ads imagine political ads I love bring the candidates up for a big group hug like to teach the world to sing imperfect harmony now that's a political ad that's actual practicality because it's unified it's completely unified even with a course of miracles that the history of a course of miracles as long as you're perceiving a course of miracles as a book in an historical way you are misperceiving a course of miracles a course of miracles even says in lesson 189 forget this world forget this course and come with holy empty hands unto your god are you willing to do that are you willing to give up your history and your concepts with the course of miracles are you willing to let go of all those things the experience transcends the groups the experience transcends the communities the experience transcends theologies the experience transcends belief systems you don't have to be in favor of or against a belief system how relaxing is that then you get into religion as inner peace is what it actually is not a theology at all it could never have been a theology there is no universal theology it's like a celebration a fiesta happiness fire off the firecrackers send up the rockets that's my experience i was over to europe one time every time i go to europe it's always something that happens one time i went over to europe and i'm giving talks all around europe and they tell me it's a big deal going on i said what's the big deal the euro cup you know like they have the world cup of soccer you know they had it recently in brazil the euro cup is going on so i'm going i'm going around to these different countries who's playing are all the people in the pubs all the people in the restaurants are all because they're teams they're individual teams from germany from spain from italy they're playing in the euro cup so anyway i'm like okay so i go i give my talk and finally i'm on my last stop my last tour and i'm on my last talk and i reached the last word of my last talk my final word and i happened to be when that happened i happened to be in spain and when the last word came out the whole country erupted it was people painted in red and yellow and racing out through the streets celebrating and i i was like yeah yeah so this is exactly what i'm talking about it's like a giant eruption around me of joy but for me it wasn't about spain winning the euro cup it was a reflection of course that would happen of my last talk one time i was over there in europe i was going around and there were supposed to be a new pope a new pope they're waiting for the smoke to come out of the pipe you know and i'm going around giving my talks my talks on joy and innocence and da da da da finally finally before i left europe we have a new pope and he is pope francis the current pope you know it was like and everyone was yay he's a simple guy he's for the common person he wants to end corruption in the Vatican he wants he's for the simple joy it's like francis they took on the name of st francis you know but that was that one time i went to europe and there was a big discussion the physicists have just discovered the god particle they've been looking for the god particle in all the equations the god particle the god particle and and so as soon as i found out about that i said well what is the god particle well they said well this particle is everywhere in the cosmos and so that's why they're calling it the god particle i said well that's cool what what does this particle do it slows down energy to give the appearance of separation and solidity it's the particle that that makes physical seem physical i said well that's the ego particle that's not the god particle just discovered the ego particle but what you do is you have everything has a practical application everything has a point everything has a reason and that reason is to let go of everything you believe in the world and empty the mind of concepts empty the mind of of having a self-concept accept the christ self that you are and be free of everything else so that's the point that's the point of spirituality even the practice which is very practical that's what spirituality is about focus and intention of practice but in the end the practice has to be dissolved away as well into an experience the whole point of a practice is to give away to an experience we have to have such a radical shift in our perception that we do have to kind of go at the speed of the holy spirit so to speak we have to let the holy spirit dissolve our former assumptions and former beliefs and former perceptions because we're not going to go from a linear kind of Newtonian way of perceiving into a quantum way of perceiving without some mind training you know when I started talking about the beginning I said everything's an idea at one point I think Einstein had said something like I'd like to think that the moon is still there even when I'm not looking at it but yet quantum physics is showing that that it's the observer and its consciousness that everything comes back if if you don't conceive of something you won't perceive it you talk about Columbus you know when the Native Americans coming over something you saw what the bleep you know and they they never had a concept of a ship so they just saw these strange white clouds the Native Americans coming because they'd never seen sales before all it was was strange white clouds they were relating to it by something that they believed in clouds sky with clouds you know strange looking white clouds you know we can't we can't perceive a world unless we believe in it and we need to shift our beliefs towards forgiveness and therefore we will see a different world if we if we hold in consciousness a different perspective then we will see a different world that's what you could call for the forgiven world the happy dream but you have to be really fully devoted to that purpose to a new purpose for the world the world was made in hatred now we need to see it in a new way we need to replace that hatred in our mind with a different belief a forgiveness belief in order to see a different world if you spot it you got it if you perceive a happy dream if you perceive a different world it's because you want a happy world you remember the stories of Pygmalion uh or some of you might have seen the movie Leverent David Bowie passed away recently but he did that movie Leverent with a little girl and it you know seemed to be tormented by this character and blocked at every turn and and limited until she came to the realization you have no power over me and that's where the freedom Wizard of Oz Dorothy seems to be at the mercy of flying monkeys and of a wicked witch until Blenda the Good Witch comes like the Holy Spirit character and says you always had the power to go home there it is again it's an empowerment message that coming through our movies saying we have the power in consciousness to see the world differently and to wake up from this dream entirely and come back to our our heavenly source of abstract love and light and so I think you have to be willing to really go for it you know for me it was important I didn't seek to okay I'm gonna let go of my family and I'm gonna let go of my job and career and let's go of my possessions and da da da da it really doesn't work if you try to be the the leader and the teacher of your own plan of salvation if you try to personally be the one that's in charge of the unraveling and the unwinding it's very frustrating because there really is no human being that can do that only the the spirit the intuition within can unwind the mind but if you try to take charge and do it you're going to run into all kinds of obstacles because of the one who's doing the leading is not the one that's capable what does the Course in Miracles say about that Jesus says you cannot wake yourself but you can't allow yourself to be awakened for him to even say that it must mean something important why would he emphasize you cannot wake yourself so for me it's very similar to the commandment love the Lord thy God with all the heart soul and might you know and love thy neighbor as thyself if if forgiveness is your goal then you will allow Jesus to arrange time and space for you to achieve the goal now that's a big one because who of us were born and raised in a family where they say to us at the dinner table when we're five years old you know don't be too concerned about what you eat or finishing your meal you're going to be taught how to arrange time and space and so don't get caught of it or when we're in high school don't be concerned with the grades the grades mean nothing getting into college nothing doesn't mean anything you're a miracle worker and you are going to be taught how to arrange time and space with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and that means everything that you seem to need will come in kind of in a holographic in a quantum way will be right there for you whatever supports your awakening will be there for you to experience getting married having a husband having a wife not so important you're a miracle worker you will be taught how to arrange time and space getting a good job no no your vocation is a miracle worker don't be concerned about that job and getting meaningless jobs earning meaningless strips of green paper strips and metal discs and accumulating digital amounts in your bank account so you can go out and buy more meaningless things that you don't even need or want and you get stressed out over and as soon as you collect them then you're stressed about losing them some of the most stressful people I've met in the world are the ones that own a lot and are busy trying to protect what they own they're not even trying to accumulate anymore they're just trying to keep it from losing it what about the health of the body no no don't even give a thought because the body is just a reflection of the world and the mind everything of the world is a reflection of what's going on in your mind so no you can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts so let's just focus on being a miracle worker and purifying your thoughts what about the sun the radiation no no that's all in your mind radiation is just a thought in your mind tsunamis no thoughts tornadoes thoughts floods thoughts you can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts you have to forgive you have to release those attack thoughts to achieve this peace of mind experience that's the only way to go will I be taken care of well if you if you attune into your miraculous thoughts yes if you don't then you've got quite a quagmire going there it's an iffy proposition you know you may or may not you may be you may get sick and die and and dwindle away if you keep following that ego belief system because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy you will experience exactly what you are believing and what you're thinking we're looking over couldn't see ships which I think it was just some imagination to say that because you know if you think of it it's like comparing one perception as lesser and one is greater one civilization is lesser and one is greater that's one aspect that I don't and it teaches a type of history that I feel is true for everything that people use that example I understand why it's used but it's I think it also teaches a false perception I think it's it's always important with with examples it's like what is the purpose truly if the purpose involves comparison of any way it doesn't have a value in the sense that what we're really looking at is is just the dynamic of back to again that there's not an external world and external cultures and external people but basically that everything perceived as a projection of the mind and that it is possible to lay aside the all meanings you know that's what of course a miracles workbook is designed to do nothing I see means anything number one I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me number two so I think that example only has value if you really kind of use it to zoom in on lesson number two from the course I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me meaning is generated from the mind from consciousness not ultimate meaning because everything that's seen in this world is part of a veil covering over the light of truth and therefore we we need to come to a contrast not between this group and that group or this person and that person but the contrast between perception and abstract light which is beyond the veil of perception so anything only has value in terms of a teaching device for seeing that that there's really not meaning in the form but that's not where the content is the content is the abstraction in the mind I don't understand that's why the example it's just my experience with me which I you know I've lived the culture for quite a few years and actually they have a different way of seeing so I you know I thought that this is somebody's construct to sort of use that as an example of primitive society or something yeah I think that it's something that's been taught to us another false teaching I think so I you know it was just a little thing and I have appreciated the non-divority you know everything I was just writing along with everything you know until that example that example again yeah it's good I think it's that's a movie what to believe but it is pretty much a a movie about the purposes to go into a quantum way of looking that's the whole context of the movie so I think then in that context it's used helpfully I know for myself I will use many many parables of like the aborigine and telepathy and use Marla Morgan's book Mutant Message Down Under for going back and basically the so-called primitive native indigenous cultures are way more advanced than the western civilized cultures which is flipped I do teach that everything in this world is is backwards and upside down so you can't judge your advances of your retreats and what some of these indigenous ancient cultures basically instead of being the underdeveloped ones are actually the more developed ones because of their non-judgment because their intuitive powers their telepathic powers they don't have cell phones they don't need cell phones they actually use the power of the mind consciousness so I like to use a lot like you're talking about in flipping them around for example with Columbia one time I went down there and I was with a group of women who had a course in miracles group at a coffee farm and they would all come to the coffee farm and have their course books and have their regular course meetings and then they told me when they met with me that one of the biggest issues that came up one time was that there was a man who lived on the coffee farm who was born on the coffee farm and raised on the coffee farm had never been to a village had never been to a city had never been outside of the coffee farm and they said he was one of the happiest most loving people that they'd ever experienced he was just this radiant being of love and connection and yet his entire experience in the world was inside the coffee farm he had actually never left he was a worker on the coffee farm he lived there his whole life so this group of course in miracles of students you know asked themselves and they did raise the question to their group does this man need a course in miracles and everyone in the group responded by the resounding no you keep the book away from him this was the experience now that's kind of an extreme example but I come across many examples as I travel the world in 40 some countries and the reason they all went no was was was like he is our teacher he doesn't know anything about the world so to speak you know what they would never ask him for experiences because he he wasn't well read he was illiterate he was just happy just plain happy very very simple very loving and and he was an example for them one time when I was in Argentina I went down there in the I think around 2003 for the first time and when I was down there the economy had crashed the peso had been devalued professionals lost their careers their jobs and so we had professional people doctors lawyers teachers professors driving taxicabs because that's the only jobs they could get I was I would listen to what all was going on and at one point too when I was down there in Argentina I went to so many course groups and took so many taxi rides around this city of 15 and a half million people and one of the taxi drivers as we were going to this course group he was telling me he was telling me this story about how this other taxi had had damaged his car and how it's his livelihood and everything but after he met with some different people they said well you have to the only way to get your car fixed if you don't have the money is you have to take the guy to court and the taxi driver was telling me in the story where he just paused at some point and he thought why would I take this guy to court because I could only lose by contesting I would only lose by contesting and so here's the taxi cab driver driving me to the course of miracles group and I'm just sitting there in the front seat just talking with him laughing and everything and he's telling me this whole story his name was Juan so finally when he pulls up I said Juan you are the speaker at the course of miracles group tonight he said I'll pay you just leave your car come in with me and you tell your experiences of forgiveness your experiences of what you've gone through to the whole group you have been sent you are the speaker tonight and he's like okay happy to you know you'll pay me for yeah and so he came in and he gave the talk at the course group you know it's it's a state of mind it's truly an experience and you're right it doesn't involve comparison anything that compares one person to another one group of people to another tries to get this who's ahead who's behind who's advanced I love showing um Star Trek movies and Star Trek episodes all the time because there's universal principles underneath that are taught I mean Gene Roddenberry I just he had an amazing way of bringing in a lot of quantum and all kinds of things but also some very good stories and one of the ones that I really like was a was an actual full length Star Trek uh movie where uh Picard and the next generation group they land on this what they called a um an undeveloped they didn't have they said oh this he's a primitive group of people on a primitive planet they're living they were doing agriculture and and surviving and basically you know the reason that they went there was to kind of protect them in a kind of a protective way but the more they got to know the people uh some surprising things started to happen and at one point one of the women basically told captain Picard uh why would we why would we want warp drive they had actually had warp drive technologies and had voluntarily let go of it because they said where is there to go you know the whole Star Trek is ongoing where no man has gone before and everything here's one woman's thing why would we use that where is there to go and then at some point she slows down time and takes him into an experience of the holy instant of immense love that's beyond perception as you slow down time you know time is just as neutral as anything else it can be sped up or slowed down but she's got the power the devotion the capability and he's just feels this immense love and and basically the whole teaching there is showing you don't have a clue what is really going on technology advanced technology is nothing it's all about what the greeks call know thyself coming to the realization of the spirit so i agree many of the indigenous ones basically you know lived a very simple devotional life because they saw what was valuable and what was important and they even developed their rituals and their practices all around that that experience yeah through that that connection that's what i witnessed that they were getting inside of that you know just an example like well i've been by doing the course but i did spend 20 years involved in the spirituality so this is just an example of this like my brother had counts here so i asked him that to do a prayer i'm the only one in my family have those experiences with Canadian spirituality so anyway i made the arrangement to have a sweat or we see her but this medicine i hadn't met my brother and he when i met up with him he said your brother is not he is not open to this way so the only way that this will work is if we got the doctors involved so i was like surprised by this so but when i got to the hospital i was met by my brother's wife he said we do not want like in my mind and my heart it was prayer but they were a fundamental Christian who did not hold it so this is this is what i mean like he you know yes he leads the simple life but it's a prayerful life but he also being he gains insight so i guess through the same type of process that you were describing for yourself yeah love waits on welcome healing waits on welcome you know no one is healed without their own consent no one gets sick without their own consent no one dies without their own consent it's it's very much an empowerment approach of looking within and discovering you know the power within that comes from source and there's so many amazing traditions so it's to be good to be open-minded to be just aware to let those symbols and witnesses come wherever they they can be received