 David, who's going to be showing the movie for today. After the movie, we will have an opportunity to have some breakout rooms to share what came up for us during the movie. And then we will have a closing session at the end. So, right now I'll pass it over to David. There we go. Welcome everybody, happy to see you here. Happy we can join in together and have a deep dive into the heart of it all. And we've had kind of a theme this week going on with starting with Ken's Get Real show, Zoom show and live streaming. The theme was desire. And actually Jesus in his song of prayer, he says that your prayer is your desire. So, desire and prayer are synonymous. And that's important to realize because a lot of us were raised, maybe we came through religious traditions where the priest or the minister said, oh no, they're definitely different. Your prayers and your desires are not the same. Might have even said that the desires are of the devil. And you better learn how to pray to God. But Jesus is telling us that your prayer is your desire. And also that we have a very powerful mind so you might say if you think of the altar of your heart or you think of the prayer of your heart, you know that spiritual awakening is part of a spiritual transformation, I'll say, or purification and nothing more. Because if God created you whole and perfect, then it must be that you are still as God created you. And yet if you believe something to the contrary, then you would need a purification. You would need a transformation of consciousness to remember the truth of who you are. So that's a beautiful context. And a lot of times we have grown up in different cultures with different traditions. Some of us came from religious backgrounds. Others of us did not really have a religious background. It could be more of a scientific or agnostic or atheistic background. Maybe some of us came from more of a philosophical household that weren't so theological, but they were very philosophical. So we have different aspects of the human condition that seem to be to us something that could be helpful for us to remember who we really are and to remember who God is. To remember our creator, our source. And we could call these different aspects, you know, philosophy and religion. We could talk about science and we could talk about prayer, which is part of, we'll call it even spirituality. But for most people, the religions of the world, I'll say the formal religions of the world are pretty synonymous with theologies, that Buddhism has a theology, Hinduism has a theology, and Christianity has a theology. Actually, even a course in miracles has a theology. So when you study a course in miracles and you study the metaphysics of a course in miracles, you're actually studying a theology. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because theologies are like trampolines. They're just meant to spring you into an actual experience. The theologies themselves are part of the projection of the ego because God is one, truth is one, spirit is one, and that is the actuality of what is. That's what reality is, reality is one. So when we talk about different theologies that even a course in miracles has a theology, and you must eventually, after you've immersed in it and you've absorbed it, and more than that, you've practiced it, and you've given yourself over to the practice or what Jesus calls the transfer of training in the workbook, which is the transfer of training, mind training, then Jesus is going to say to you, in less than 189 already, he's not even near the end of the workbook, he's gonna say, forget this world, forget this course, and come with holy empty hands unto your God. He's not going to say stick with this theology, he's going to say you're gonna even have to forget the theology of a course in miracles to come into a direct experience of God and a direct experience of Christ. So the theologies of the world are just trampolines, you know, and you're meant to spring off of that trampoline and go sailing and soaring toward the light. And that's why I do see course in miracles students, when I travel around the world, I've been in 44 countries, and sometimes I'll be in a course group and they'll say, I'm glad I finally found the truth as they're holding the book. They tell me they finally found the truth, and I'm saying, oh no, that's not the truth either. The book is not the truth. The truth cannot be described or explained only experienced and it is so joyful and happy and we'll say supremely happy, beyond this world happy, that that's an experience of the light. And believe me, the book is not the light. Sometimes people like to, in a world of theologies and beliefs, they like to be right about something in the world. And so even when they find the course, they go, I found the truth, but it's not the truth. It's just a springboard. It's just a little practicum. This is like a little practicum that you'll go through. And Jesus even says, this course is a beginning and not an end. There's Blanca's little daughter. She's holding it up. That's right, she's holding it up. She's showing that it's just a book. A little, and that little child shall lead them. There she is. That's like our poster child. Anytime you get too possessive about the course and you start to defend it, remember Blanca's little girl holding it up and saying, this isn't the truth. It's just a book too. So, theologies point us toward the truth. If you've studied psychology, you might have even heard of Abraham Maslow's pyramid, his hierarchy, his pyramid. It starts off with your basic needs at the bottom and then you work into higher order needs. And then the very top of the pyramid is self-actualization. And that's what the ancient Greeks said, know thyself. That is the point of A Course in Miracles is know thyself. And there are many pathways in form to reach that self. And one pathway in form is not better than another pathway. It's, we're not even meant to compare or contrast. We're simply asked to take the pathway that's given us as part of our prearranged plan of awakening and apply ourselves. Let's really apply our heart and mind. Let's put our whole heart into the practical application of what is given us as our pathway back to God. Now, many pathways to God include meditation and prayer is so important that Jesus says, prayer is the medium of miracles. So it has to be really important if he's given us A Course in Miracles and now he tells us inside the book that prayer is the medium of miracles, that we can say that that is going to be absolutely essential in our awakening. And if prayer is desire, that means that we have to learn to focus our desire on that which is beyond this world. We can call it God. You can call it spirit or oneness or love, but you have to focus the mind and focus your desires on the light, on the Christ vision. On the oneness and that's why the workbook has lessons like I am determined to see above all else. I am determined to see things differently. He's not talking about seeing with the body size. He's not talking about even the perceptual world. He's saying you really have to focus your prayer on light. You have to pray for light. You have to desire to see. For some of you who started doing the workbook lessons on January 1st, today is day number 44. What's our lesson today? God is the light in which I see. Well, that's pretty synchronized too with what we're talking about today. God is the light in which I see. And that means that the prayer of our heart must be for spiritual vision. And not only that, he's asking us to prioritize among all the things we may think we want in this world, which can be many. He's saying, I want you to prioritize seeing spiritual vision as your top priority. That's a way of putting God first. And it's not too many lessons, several lessons later, where you have the lesson, God's voice speaks to me all through the day. And that's going to be part of our journey to reach God. Because he tells us in that workbook lesson that it's possible to listen to the voice for God all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. Isn't that cool? Isn't that cool? That means you don't have to necessarily have your eyes closed or open. It's possible to listen to the voice for God all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. So this is giving us permission to pray and it's giving us permission to listen to the voice inside. And it's giving us permission to be able to follow that voice in all things. Even though our body seems to be going through its regular motions and activities, we still can be connected with the Holy Spirit. We still can be reminded of what's important, what's helpful. We still can be given instructions even as the body is going through its routines during the day. This is great because it's telling us you don't need a special place to reach God. You don't need a special location. You don't need a special circumstance to reach God. You don't need a special situation. God can be reached directly through the power of the mind and through prayer or through unified desire, we'll say. So it's important to understand the context because what seems to be the perceptual world is a distorted lens. It's a fragmented world because of the fragmented ego lens in the mind that has projected it. And it's extremely filled with images. I don't know if some of you remember back to, there was the days of the cavemen and then we had finally agricultural farming came in and then in world history, we've reached the industrial revolution and then with the advent of computers and marketing and technology, we have had an explosion of images. We thought the industrial revolution brought on a bunch of images with all the, what do they call those little things where you mass production, assembly line. We thought, oh my God, assembly line. Instead of making one car, we make hundreds and thousands of cars now with the digital, with the internet and with our devices. We have an explosion of images. And who are you gonna call? With an explosion of images. No, it's not ghostbusters. You have to call on the Holy Spirit and Jesus and say, holy Jesus, there's trillions of images and every day there's more. It's exploding. We're dealing with an information overload and an explosion of multiplying exponentially images. And yes, that's right. Your goal is still to find God and know who you really are. The goal hasn't changed. But the present moment hasn't really changed. With all these images, it hasn't really changed anything of the present moment. The holy instant is unaffected by all of the ego's shenanigans of exploding images. Bigger, better, faster, more, new, improved. No, no, no. The holy instant has nothing to do with any of that. In fact, the Holy Spirit, you don't even advertise the holy instant. It's just, it just is what it is, but it's so extremely simple and it is reached through prayer. It is reached through meditation. There's some things, and even in the different spiritualities of the world that don't change, prayer and meditation remain the essential pathway to God and everything, even the workbook of A Course in Miracles takes you into prayer and meditation. If you follow the lessons, if you give your heart over to it, if you apply the lessons, you will be taken right into the heart of prayer and right into the heart of meditation, right into the stillness, right into the silence. So that's our theme this week. And then we always put out our movie poll and we ask you, we have a Spanish poll, we have an English poll, and this week, Kenneth combined to make it easy for me who has trouble looking at two polls, he combined them into one poll and the top two vote-getters by far were devotion to God above all else and extending love versus projecting error. That makes it really simple for me. Those are my favorite topics. You've picked my favorite topics. Devotion to God above all else and extending love versus projecting error. That those are sweet. Those are sweet. Even my cat likes those. He's devoted, ISO is devoted to those. So we have a movie that we're going to explore those topics today. Now, everybody knows that if you perceive a world of form, there's what we could call a temptation to believe in what you perceive. In fact, that's how it got there. It seemed to come, a perception only came into existence from the belief in the ego. So in heaven, there's no perception. There's no such thing as images and forms. There's no such thing as time. There's no such thing as measurement or comparison or increments. Those are all just inventions. So it's a fictitious world. It's a completely fictitious world of appearances and images. And you can tell where you are in your spiritual practice by how much you pay attention to these fictitious images. If you are addicted to watching the news, well, that's not good news for your spirit because the spirit's still the spirit, but your awareness of spirit is not going to be very strong to the extent that you're concerned about, I'll call them externals or outcomes. If your mind is focused on stories of the world, then the Holy Spirit and Jesus can still find a way to use those stories to inspire you to go within. The Holy Spirit can still use the symbols of the world just to show you you don't want them. And that's important to note that you don't experience God and continue to have an investment in these images. Some of you remember in the Bible, Jesus said, hold no graven images before the Lord thy God. I think that's one of the commandments, right? Hold no graven images before the Lord thy God. Oh my gosh, we've got an image explosion going here of an explosion of idols and Jesus is still, his message is still the same. Hold no graven images before the Lord thy God. I also like the Sermon on the Mount and I really like Jesus's teachings. And if prayer is that important and he says prayer is the meaning of miracles, maybe we should go back to 2000 years ago and see what did Jesus teach 2000 years ago about prayer? What did he actually have to say about prayer? And Jesus said, when you pray, go into your closet, close the door and pray to God the Father in secret. So there's the instructions. Go to your closet. Even back then 2000 years ago, they had closets, you see. What are you gonna put your clothes, all your stuff? Even back then they were hoarding stuff and Jesus said, go to your closet, close the door and pray to your father in secret. Three parts. Okay, go to your closet. What did he mean? I'll have to explain this. What did he mean, go to your closet? He meant go to your inner chamber. If you have an apartment or a condominium or a house and I said, go to your closet, you're not gonna be going out on your front yard or your back yard and you're not gonna go on your roof. You're gonna go into where? To one of the inner chambers. All houses and condominiums and apartments have closets. Most of them. I've actually had a house I lived in, it was built in 1847 and there were no closets in the bedroom, I thought. This was not built for modern times. I used an armoire instead, I made my own closet. But when Jesus says, go to your closet, he is saying, go to your inner chamber. That's important. If he spoke that 2,000 years ago, it must be as just as true now. Even though the houses are bigger and there's more closets than ever. Still, if he's telling us, go to your closet, he's saying, go to your inner chamber. Second thing, close the door. Close the door. Go to your closet and close the door. When you close the door, what are you doing? You're shutting off something, you're shutting out something. He was basically telling us, go to your inner chamber, go to your closet and shut the door. Close out all your perceptions of the world. Leave your perceptions of the world behind. Because if you bring those thoughts and those images with you into your inner chamber, prayer's not gonna work. That's not the purpose of prayer. The prayer is to go within toward the silence, toward the light. And that's why you have to go to your closet and close the door. Anybody who's ever meditated, your meditation teacher will say, let go of all the churning, raucous, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this world. That's from, I think, the lesson today. Actually, lesson 44. But he basically is saying, leave the world behind. Don't bring it with you. Don't bring it with you. Close the door and then pray to your father in secret. Now, what he really means is don't, you don't have to tell the world about your prayer life because it's for your mind. It's for your innermost core. It's for the chamber of your heart. You don't have to do a PR tour about your prayer life. Jesus actually back in the day 2000 years ago would make fun of the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees who would go to the wailing wall. We still have the wailing wall over there in Israel. And they would paint their faces and they would rock and they would do a big show. It's almost like a possum. How they flip over and they play dead, their feet go into the air when they're threatened. They flop and they put, it's a big show. Possum's put on a pretty good show. Jesus is saying, no, no, no, not with prayer, no show. Go to your closet, close the door and pray to your father in secret. He's saying, it's your heart's desire that we're talking about here. It's in your heart of hearts, what you really want is what he's taking us into. He's not asking you to pray for your family. He's not asking you to pray for your country. This isn't some Marianne Williamson prayer for America. We're talking now, we're going deep, deep, deep here. It goes deeper. It is deeper than world peace. You praying for world peace? Leave the world, Jesus says, outside. Don't you dare bring that world into the inner chamber of your heart because if you bring even a desire for world peace, however you can see that would look, no fighting, no wars, whatever, even that desire, it doesn't belong in the chamber. You close that door. You leave it all behind and come to the Lord thy God with holy empty hands. And that's what he meant by pray to your father in secret. He meant don't make a show of this. Don't make a show. This is not something for show. This is so intimate. It's you and God. When you go into that chamber, it's you and God and that's all it is. And there's nothing else but you and God. And the word of God, the capital W word of God is I am as God created me. That's why it's so sacred because when you go into that secret chamber which is a secret to the world but it's actually not secret at all. When you get into that intimacy with God, you know the only thing that can ever be known. That's right. You can never really know arithmetic or words or languages or learning. You can never know calculus. You can never know science. You can know God and you can know who you are and you can know that in the inner chamber of your heart and mind. But you need to leave it all behind. And some of you like myself are having, at the time I remember years ago, thinking the thought is this practical? And Jesus is saying yes, it's the most practical. It's more important to leave this world behind and go to God than it is anything else. Your prayer life, there will be nothing ever more important than your prayer life. Your income doesn't matter. Family doesn't matter. Friends don't matter. Successes of the world, possessions, no, no. Nada, nada, nada, nada. Jesus is saying it's that inner chamber where you go and know who you are and know God. That's everything. And nothing else even compares. There is no second to that. So today we're going to watch a movie of a man who was a Catholic priest. And because we're, that's our first topic, devotion to God above all else. And this man, he was good at this. He's a good example of putting God first. He's a Catholic priest who lived, he passed away a few years ago in October of 2018 and he lived to be 95. Some of you who are with me last week, we watched Fatima know that Lucia, our little saint Lucia, she lived to be 97 and here's Thomas Keating who is going to live to be 95. He was a priest and so he wore the dress of a priest. He wore the uniform, the black shirt and pants and sometimes the collar, he was a Catholic priest but that was just a starting point for him. He came through Catholicism and he sought God with his heart and when he sought God, he became a friend to the Dalai Lama. He became a friend to many different religions. He still wore his Catholic priest outfit but he had a smile on his face. He had twinkly eyes. He didn't see that God involved competition. There wasn't a competition between religions. Whose religions is the best one? He didn't believe in that. Whose religion is the right one? He didn't believe in that. That's almost like asking whose theology is the right one. Listen, they're trampolines. We shouldn't be comparing trampolines. It's all about love. It's all about peace. It's all about happiness. It's not about getting caught up into who believes the best things and that's where you start to see. He outgrew traditional religion. He grew into a spiritual connection with God in harmony and happiness. He could talk to people that seemed to have different beliefs than him. It didn't matter. He would have a friendly conversation with them. He would have humor. He would have joy. And this is just an example of what happens. If you put devotion to God above all else, what that means is you're putting happiness above all else. You're putting joy, peace of mind, harmony above all else. Your relationship with your brothers and sisters is your relationship to God. So the more harmonious you are with everyone that you perceive or even everyone you think of, that is your reflection of your relationship with God. To know God is to know supreme happiness. To know God is to know a sense of love and inclusiveness of harmony. That's what knowing God is. It's not a theology. Now sometimes when I've traveled the world, people will ask that question, what religion are you teaching? And it finally got to the point where I asked Jesus, I said, what's the best definition of religion? If I'm gonna go talk around the world and I'm gonna encounter people and all these different religions, maybe you should tell me what's the best definition of religion. And Jesus said, religion is inner peace. Oh, I like that. That's a great definition. I smile. That's the best definition I've ever heard. Religion is inner peace. And what's the best definition of spirituality? He said, yeah, same thing, inner peace. That's what spirituality is. Does spirituality have different dimensions? Not really. And neither does religion because inner peace is a state of mind. It's not a belief system. It's an actual presence. It's an actual state of mind. If you want to be religious in the truest sense, as Jesus would say, just find that presence of inner peace that you are, that everyone is, that transcends this world. And the same with spirituality, find it. Now when you define a religion in terms of theology, that's why we have strange contradiction of terms like religious wars. Isn't that a strange combination of words, religious war? Or sometimes they say, oh, it was a holy war. A holy war. Holy Christ, who invented holy wars? It seems like that's the biggest contradiction ever of two words, holy war. And Jesus is saying, yeah, it's much simpler because it's who you are. It doesn't require your belief to be what it is. It actually requires you to lay aside all ego beliefs and accept the one belief that you share with the Holy Spirit, which is forgiveness. The one all-inclusive belief is forgiveness and everything else can go. Shut the door, shut the door on everything else. We're back, he said it 2000 years ago. We really should be paying attention. It's in the Bible. I think it's in Matthew. Go to your closet, shut the door, and pray to your heavenly Father in secret. Well, if that ain't us, the direct instruction on reaching God, and I don't know what is. But you see, it requires our participation. It requires our active willingness to say, yes, okay, Lord, I shall, I will. Yes, I say yes to your plan right there. And that must also mean that you are going to shut the door on ambition. Anybody ever have any ambitions? Ambitions, you know? We have to shut the door. We have to shut the door on ambition. They're waving in from all over the place. They like that one, shut the door on ambition. Because I bet you also had a lot of stress with that ambitious idea, right? Everybody knows there's a lot of stress with ambition. Yeah, education, achieving degrees, skills, abilities, and when's enough? You're on a hamster wheel. You get on the ambition wheel, you start to realize this is stressful, and your feet are going like a little hamster, and you don't even know how to stop. You can't get off of it once you start to become ambitious. Some of you know that was my experience. The first time I was watching the movie Gandhi, and it was pretty far along in the movie where Gandhi, you know, he's traveled around India, and then he goes to South Africa, and he builds an ashram in South Africa, and he's having a nice little walk, a chat with an American journalist. And the American journalist looks at this ashram that Gandhi's building and turns to Gandhi and says, Mr. Gandhi, you are quite an ambitious fellow. And Gandhi responds, I hope not. My jaw dropped when Gandhi said, I hope not. That wasn't a very American answer. That was actually for the whole, it wasn't a very worldly answer, I hope not. You're supposed to think that as a compliment when somebody calls you ambitious, but no, I'm saying now, shut the door on ambition. Give up future ambitions and go into that chamber inside because the rewards will be immense if you do that. Absolutely immense. It will change your whole outlook on yourself and everyone. It will take you toward the forgiven world if you do that. So Father Thomas Keating is, I'll say like a priest who outgrew priesthood. Much like Richard Rohr, he's known as a very famous non-dual priest, which is another way of saying a priest who has outgrown the priesthood. Thomas Merton, another one, a monk who outgrew the monastery. He outgrew the traditions of the Catholic tradition that he was part of. Wherever you start, whatever you believe in, that's just your starting point because remember, it doesn't really matter that much what you believe in. There's no point in accentuating differences when they all were generated by the ego anyway. So why get into comparing and contrasting nothing? And besides, Jesus is saying, go to your closet, shut the door and pray to your father in secret. We don't even need these false beliefs to do what Jesus just asked us to do. In fact, they're just like, they'll just be burdens. If we try to bring them inside the closet, it's just gonna be heartbreak. They don't belong in this closet. They don't belong in the inner chamber of our mind and they aren't there. If you actually go in and shut the door, you're gonna be happy that you follow Jesus' message because you're gonna meet Jesus in there in the inner chamber. You'll encounter Jesus, you'll encounter the light, but you won't encounter him if you carry on this false baggage of beliefs of this world. So Father Thomas Keating, he was a good example of a friendly priest who outgrew the priesthood. He was so open-minded. One time they asked him about, what about young people nowadays that are bombarded by all these images? They don't know what to follow. They don't, maybe they don't like what they've heard about religion. They don't want an authority telling them what to do. They don't want to be stuck in some theology. He said, well, nowadays we, this was maybe back in the, not too long ago, maybe like five, six, seven years ago, he would say, well, you know, we now have spirituality and he smiled and he said, you know, young people can go online now and they can take a course in like 12 different pathways to God. And he smiled and he said, then they can decide which one attracts me. Now that's open-minded. He wasn't trying to steer people into Catholicism. He was saying, why don't you take a course in 12 different ones and see if something resonates with you and go with that. And yet he emphasized contemplative prayer. He emphasized centering prayer. Sometimes people say to me, centering? What does it even mean, centering prayer? Center on your core. Center on your very being. Contemplate God. Contemplate your very being. That's what centering prayer and contemplative prayer is about. Leave the theologies actually at the door. Close the door on theologies. Even Jesus in less than 189, he's asking you to close the door on the course. Forget this world. Forget this course and come with holy empty hands unto your God. If that's not a close the door statement, I don't know what there is. He's basically saying you have to go beyond the practice. You have to go beyond the theology. You have to come into a direct experience. Nothing will satisfy you but the direct experience of God and who you really are. Everything else will be dissatisfying and one experience, one state of mind is the point of everything. So we get to watch Father Thomas Keating in action. That's our movie for today. We're going to watch this movie and I may pause and come in during the movie to give you some commentary and I think the spirit may have some things to say too at the end of the movie before we go into the breakout rooms but today is a very experiential Saturday. This workshop today is an experiential workshop. I mean, we just did two weeks ago. We did Dark City and I know that rocked a few worlds. Then we came in with Fatima and now soft, kind, gentle Father Thomas Keating is going to just take his wide arms out of embrace and say, come here, come here my friend. Friendly, gentle, come inside with me. Come into the prayer of the heart with his friendly little smile and his twinkly eyes. Come inside with me. It's not hard. Come slip inside with me. Just slip gently inside your heart with me. That's what Father Keating is doing for us. And yeah, Thomas Merton was doing the same thing and Richard Rohrer and a lot of these, these are beautiful priests. If you haven't checked them out on YouTube, check some of these guys out, you know. They're not into trying to change the world. They're not really trying to make the world a better place. They just are holding out a very kind and soft and friendly invitation. Come inside, slip inside your heart. Slip inside the silence. Feel the simplicity. Feel how simple it is. Feel how easy it is to slip inside. Jesus says it is quite possible to reach God. In fact, he says, you might say it's the most easy thing in this world is to reach God. So it's natural, he says. It's the most natural thing in this world. In fact, he goes on, I think to say it's the only natural thing in this world. To slip inside your heart into the stillness. That's where we wanna use the word natural. It's the only natural thing in this world to slip inside your inner chamber. You don't have to worry about natural foods or organic foods. You don't have to worry about nature and Lion King and the animal kingdom. You don't have to worry about what's natural in this world. Is that their natural hair color? Is that their natural hair color? Are they really that hair color? Are they dyeing their hair? Jesus is like, please close the door. Close the door on these things. On natural food, natural hair colors. Close the door on these ego jokes and come inside to the one natural state of mind that there is. The one thing in this world, he says, that is most natural is to know God. So enjoy this movie. If you have not met Father Thomas Keating, you are in for a treat. Because he's devoted. And I know we've even got a retreat coming up in March on devotion, devotion to God. And this is a good example. This movie is a good example of living a devoted life. And how do you know it's a devoted life? You don't have to recount what happened in that life in 95 years. Look into his eyes. Look at his gentle smile. Look at the calmness on his forehead. And that's how you know the state of mind that's underneath it. You know, when you look at this guy, Father Thomas, you're gonna know, he's got a prayer life. Definitely, he's got a prayer life. And it seems pretty easy too. It seems like he's not struggling with his prayer life. It's like, as natural as breathing, he's just given his heart over to a contemplative prayer life. And it's so natural for him. So enjoy the movie and I will pop in and visit you during the movie and after the movie. And take a deep breath. This is not going to be some dark city ride. Enjoy the softness of this movie. Enjoy the softness of this priest or priest who transcended priesthood.