 So the metaphor is, it's quite early in the text when he talks about the ego's uses of the body, the Holy Spirit's uses of the body. I guess I mean, what I'm questioning is when you put in the context of seeing everything that happened to me brought me to where I am now. You know, that past, when you're looking at the past from that perspective, how does the Holy Spirit use that? What's the Holy Spirit's use for that? Well, it's symbolic. In other words, words are the past. These teaching sessions are the Holy Spirit's use of the past. As I bring up events, you know, as I bring up events of like Keith talking about his time in Lansing and in college and so on and so forth to point to something beyond it, that's like the Holy Spirit's use of the past. And we've talked about this before. It's from the deceived mind we can't talk about. We're talking about the past right now. We think this is the present. I don't get that, but that's because I'm deceived. It's the reference point. Picture it this way as a symbol. Here's the cosmos, time-space cosmos. If you perceive yourself as within the time-space cosmos, we'll say in a galaxy, in a solar system, on a planet, call it Earth. In a continent, call it North America. In a state, Michigan, in a city limits of Traverse City, in a home, in an upper room of a home, in a bedroom, sitting on a couch, in a six-foot-two body. Okay? That reference point, we'll say you're observing the cosmos, the time-space cosmos from, it seems to be from behind two eyes and between two ears. It seems to be a lot of times that the sense of self is perceived to be, you know, in the head even. If you had to even zoom it in to a body part. That is a, you're perceiving the cosmos from the reference point, from that specific reference point within the cosmos. It's possible to perceive the cosmos, you could call it like from a pinnacle or a point, that's not within it. Above it, for instance. Back from it. Even the words above and back, you could say the dreamer of the dream is the mind that is watching the images including these images and those images and all the images of the cosmos. All the images that seem to take place in history. The images of Abraham Lincoln's and Gandhi's and Julius Caesar's and Jesus Christ and Confucius and all this and that. All the images that seem to be coming in the future. The dreamer is watching that all simultaneously? Well, it doesn't matter what specific part of the cosmos is being seen, it's known that they're all, there's an awareness that they're all the same. If you had like a giant structure that had all these different facets, little bits and facets on it as you turned it around, it didn't matter what particular facet seems to be in front at any given moment, so to speak. It's all, they're all seen as the same. So how do you get to that awareness or to that point from being in, feeling like you're inside, getting outside of it? Well, realize that first of all you don't value judgment, you don't value ordering of thoughts. Everything we go into is starting to talk about preferences, we talk about ordering of thoughts, we talk about judgments. This is not valuable. Judgment is a device for maintaining the experience of being within the cosmos. Giving up, or the relinquishment of judgment, coming to the point of seeing that not only don't I have to give it up, but I never had it. Just realizing, I can't judge, yay, I'm capable of judging. Isn't that wonderful? Well, that's the release point. Not that you're giving up something that's real, not that you're giving up something that you had and are now losing, but that you never had it. You are incapable of judging. And that's the point of perceiving it not as within the cosmos, but you could call it the dreamer of the dream perspective. And is there a way to see that? I mean, to me it seems, you know, I seem to enjoy ice cream, chocolate, hot fudge on it. Is that a judgment? How can I see that? Are you saying that I don't enjoy that? I mean, I'm really having a hard time because I don't want it to be an idea. I don't want to say, well, I'm going to try and play mind games. I want to understand how that's achieved, if it can be achieved or what it is that you do or don't do. How you adjust your mindset, whatever. It's questioning the perception, you know, the eye that perceives that it enjoys what did you say? Ice cream. Ice cream with fudge on it is a construct. So you're saying if I just start to question even that idea, it will fall apart on its own. Or it will undo itself. I just start to be more aware of all the little judgments that I make. It will do it itself. That is symbolic of unwinding yourself or of coming to clarity or discernment between what is real and what is unreal. This came up on the recent journal where there was a question that it was saying, but I like nature. Just like you're saying with the ice cream with the fudge, I like nature. And I feel wrong because I like nature. It's like you follow the metaphysics of this and it's kind of like just question that eye that seems to like nature. Just question that eye that seems to like the ice cream with the fudge. Follow it in. I mean for me it was like I began questioning my roles and I began questioning what I was doing, why I was doing it. Well, I'm doing this because it's my job. Well, why do I have this job? Well, I took the job because I need money. Well, why do I need money? Well, I need money so I can have these things. Why do I need these things? Well, if you trace it back down, if you keep tracing it down, you can start to see I believe in this body identity. Right, and I feel like I've done all that with the job and the roles and the relationships to other bodies. I started to question that because I can see when it comes down to that that there's no purpose, then I don't want to have it do with it. When it gets down to I can get as far as the body, and then if I don't have an experience of not being a body, I don't see how I can get beyond that. Unless by questioning the experience will come. That's what I guess that's the question is, do the questions bring on the experience? Well, the questions are still coming from the ego, but when you start questioning your beliefs and your thinking, those are very meaningful questions in the seeming process of awakening. And yeah, you are asking, you are desiring the experience, an experience that will take the place of you as Keith. And by your desire that experience will be brought to you. It will seem to come first through miracles. It's like a mini version. We could say the experience that I am the Holy Son of God, not Keith and not confined to this world in any way, you could talk about the Holy Instant as the experience of that. So you'll seem to have miracles that will precede that. Those are just those, you had one the other day, so to speak, when you came in and you said, I was just resting up here in the session room, and just for an instant, it was this beautiful feeling of detachment, total release, not worried about anything, not concerned, you know, a miracle. That's a miracle, you know. It felt great. It came to you by your desiring that. It came to you because you desired it. It's not like, you know, you have to collectively go around and collect miracles and put them under your belt, or hold on, it's just your desire for it that brings it to you. Just like your desire for the Holy Instant will bring it nearer to your awareness. And that's why when we say there's nothing you can do, moving your eyes over a book isn't going to bring you the Holy Instant. It may be symbolic if you're really desiring it, and you're really reading it with attention, and you're really opening your mind to go beyond the words, to really look at what the meaning of some of the ideas are and everything. And that's just a reflection of a person reading a book and doing that. It's just out on the screen. That's just a symbol. But the desire is in the core of your being. And that's what the questions are too. They're a symbol of that desire. They might get past everything else. So the questions aren't causative either. Now asking the question isn't causative. It's the desire that would have you ask the question. Let's bring in time for a second. If I believe, if I'm believing with the ego that the past is who I was, and that I'm guilty in the past, and I think the present seems too miniscule, it seems to get covered over so easy, and that there's no real power, there's no opportunity for change in the present. The past is like solid granite. The present is like this little teeny blip that's easily covered over, and that the future is just a repetition of the past. Guilt, guilt. Fear, fear. If I really believed that, why would I question it all? You know, that belief in linear time, that belief in the reality of linear time inhibits questioning. If I don't believe there's a hope of ever getting out of the pattern, if I believe I'm locked in, if everything is set and determined, that I'm just condemned to a life of sin and guilt and misery and upset, if I believe that, then why would I even raise a question? Mind is closed. It's already concluded. Life is hell. That's the bumper sticker, life's a bitch, and then you die. I mean, if that's my conclusion, then why question? Now, the questioning comes in when there's a sense that there's more than meets the eye, there's something more than all of this. Mind is not so convinced, completely convinced that it knows everything, that it knows everything that there is to know. So then the questioning begins, and the questioning begins more and more and more of questioning inwardly, questioning the mind and the beliefs and thoughts and everything. And then one has to come to a point, though, to the edge of the cliff where one leaps off the cliff into certainty. There is no questioning in certainty. Christ is not a questioner, so questions aren't, like, inherently valuable because Christ asks no questions. I assume that we'll, that I will know when I'm at that cliff, because I don't feel like right now I'm at the cliff and I could just jump from this point that I'm at. You don't feel it and you don't believe it.