 If it is one of those bodies, then it thinks that it can be attacked. And has attacked. And has attacked. Whether it's violent way or just screaming and yelling at someone or frowning even. As long as the mind believes in the reality of the body, then it believes attack is real. It believes guilt is real. And it believes that it's thrown away to the kingdom of heaven for good. So what we're going to try to do is work it back to the point of saying that the attack isn't real. So the body is just to act out the wrong minded thoughts. So anytime you talk about reality of the body, you're automatically talking about this identification then with the body. Special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from heaven. It does not appear to be a weapon. But if you consider how you value it and why, you will realize what it must be. The special love relationship is the ego's most boasted gift and one which has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. That's something that should give you a little bit of a hint. This is not men's words. So when he's talking about most boasted gift, we talked to it. In fact, I was using the word insidious. Yes, it's insidious, it's elusive, it's obscure, it's like a mirage of something that seems really good and really attractive. And the more you look at its foundation, the more you see, hmm, this is no good. Ego's gifts always boil down pain. I mean that's the common denominator of all the ego's gifts, quote, unquote. Yeah, that idea of ego's gifts I never heard put that way quite like you did before, which is we wouldn't hold on to this at all if the ego didn't hold on to us with some sort of gift. It's seductive. It's a seductive gift. Yeah, very seductive. Yeah. I'll keep the pain to take this gift. It's normal things worth it. And this waking up would be easy as a snap. It wouldn't seem so rare. I go, great Jesus, how many waking beings do you have? Can you count them on one hand or whatever? It seems to be this thing in this world like a really difficult achievement. Like it's nothing to be a billionaire. That would be a piece of cake compared to waking up from the dream. And yeah, it's at least a seductive gift. It's what makes it seem so elusive and difficult. The dynamics of the ego are clearest here. We're counting on the attraction of this offering. The fantasies that center around it are often quite covert, usually judged to be acceptable and even natural. And that's again, I was pointing to the idea the other day that a lot of times things that are judged to be very natural in this world are actually disguised forms of attack. They don't seem to be attack at all. So the mind says, what's the harm? What's the big deal, you know? It continues on with the fantasies. In fact, you brought that at one point when you were discussing counseling a friend earlier in the morning when you were talking about a lot of fantasies in male-female relationships even. They're just to be quite normal. It's like, well, everybody seems to have a fantasy life. Whether it's sexual fantasies, whether it's fantasies about far-off plans, fantasies about being on Maui or day-dreaming kind of fantasies or whatever. Those seem to be a normal part of life that's part of the human condition. And again, Jesus is saying, well, those thoughts are not part of your right mind. When you're thinking of the past or thinking of the future, he says at one point in the workbook, your mind is literally blank. Well, that's a different definition. It seems like if you go through a day, your mind is filled with real thoughts. Jesus is saying, think again, your mind is really blank because it's filled with ego thoughts. And that's the same as being filled with nothingness. Another example that came to my mind is that psychology book that I was telling you I was looking at and how it was describing normal developmental psychology is that when a baby is born, there is a natural, they call it attachment, that takes place between the mother and the infant. And that that is, if it doesn't happen, it's considered to be very abnormal and then the child is considered to be at high risk. If the bonding does not take place, it's called bonding or attachment. And as I was reading it, I mean, I learned all that stuff. I taught it. I used to teach it. But reading it, I'm just seeing, oh, this is so funny how it's so backwards, that this is just considered to be natural and normal. And if you don't get this attachment that's just, you know, painful in the end, it always is that that's considered to be abnormal. And unhealthy. Yeah, the child goes, and then they described even how the child goes through pain when it's attached to the mother and the mother leaves the room, the child is in pain. You know, and so they would do studies about, you know, attachment, the attachment of the babies. And some babies would cry when the mother would leave and other babies would just ignore the mother and other babies would, you know, be like nervous or, you know, just all this craziness. Ego enjoys studying itself. And a lot of the books that are written at the end are from the Ego perspective. Like anybody could study, you know, human development, you know, even with babies, the sucking reflex, what do they call it? The Binsky reflex. When a doctor comes to you this morning, he says, no, reflexes are not in the body. Stereo reflex. Yeah, there you go. You study these things, and it's like, accept it. There are whole professions that are built on. And it really is just the ego studying itself. Like some of the pain and deprivation of whatever that's observed. Again, it's just like, it's just restating the problem. It's not getting at where the pain comes from. It's not really getting at the mind or going into the mind and looking at the ego. It's just describing the problem. All the stages of pain that people see to go through, through adolescence, through middle age, menopause, all the things that are described, it's just really describing the problem. The problem in quotes. Because it's the problem as it's seen on the screen, not the problem as it is in the mind. It's restating something, but really it's not getting at the problem at all, which is the belief in separation. Quite dynamics in that sentence. The quote dynamics of the ego are clear here. The ego really has no dynamics. Dynamics implies power. And it's a delusional system. So how can a delusional system really have dynamics, really have power? It's all illusion. So as I'm thinking about the hysteria of a mother who can be in the hospital and baby's getting switched, if this is all inclusive, what difference would it make, what baby you got, if this is holy relationships? What difference does surrogate motherhood make? They even talked about that in this book. They said that the attachment is so strong that even mothers who they found that the baby's had been switched, they were not willing to give up the baby that they were attached to, even though they knew this other baby was really theirs. All of it's just totally nuts. But they were saying that's how strong the attachment is that you wouldn't even want to give up this baby that's not even yours. There's a big one too. A lot of times kids will find out at some point in their life, do you mean I'm not really your child? Where is my mother's father? Then it's this big hunt. There's been a lot of movies and books about that and everything, but it's this identity confusion. There's a real deep identity confusion that gets projected out to natural versus adopted and all these things. And guess what? We all have an identity confusion. It's not just... And just for a moment, from the human realm to the biological world, the natural world, the house they're cooking, all the different people that have studied the mating habits of all these creatures and everything and the bonding times and all the different rites of passage and different things that go on, whatever alligators or who name it, it's all made up. Even these people will say there's some things that are instinctual, that are not learned from a mother bird to the baby bird, but they're instinctual and there's some things that are learned. And what we're learning from the course is well, there's only mind and Jesus is teaching there aren't really any instincts in the body. That's just a projection. So everything's learned. But again, you pull it back and you can say what does this mean for the learning of a mother hen? It's not about that. I'm pulling it back to my mind and starting to see, I've learned this whole world. I've learned, I've very much said the other day from Adam and Eve, what if we've learned everything wrong? The course is saying that the entire world that's been learned is an illusion. Everything. Not part of it. Not 80% or 90% or 95%, but the whole thing is learned. And the good news is it can be unlearned. No one considers it bizarre to love and hate together. And even those who believe that hate is sin, merely feel guilty. Do not correct it. This is the quote, natural condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural ones. Everybody getting that feeling as you go along this path? And you hear the words like I don't know that this is possible what you're talking about. It sounds like a fairy tale on whatever on and on and on, but those that start to see that it is possible seem to be the unnatural ones in this world. Go on. Go out and get a job and be like everybody else. You ask too many questions. You know? And that's the community that's been in the real experience. And even the thing of not even ever even questioning of love and hate could go together. You know what I mean? The lines about well there's a thin line between love and hate. You know? We just accept that. I mean really I guess it's true. I meet people that I love the most. It seems to be the most intense hatred I feel is for those people at times. How can that be? How can it be? That's just the way life is. You gotta take the good with the bad. For the bad with the good. How many times have I heard that? That doesn't make sense. And what goes up must come down. It goes down, don't worry. It'll come up again to go down. That's life. Comes around, goes around.