 The temptation with any kind of spirituality is that the ego wants to hijack it. So you have something even as profound as a Course in Miracles. And then the ego wants it for its own. Like one time I went down to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I did like 19 consecutive gatherings on 19 consecutive days. But one of the days I went, and there was probably between 50 and 60 course groups at that time in 2003 in Buenos Aires already. And I went to this group and the facilitators of the groups had their Course in Miracles facilitators meeting. So it wasn't just a regular course meeting, it was a facilitators meeting. So I went to the facilitators meeting and they argued for an hour and a half. About newsletters, did you collect the money for the newsletters? Who didn't pay? How dare them? They didn't pay. And it was like an hour and a half of bickering. And I thought, this is the facilitator meeting. These are the ones that have been at it. The ego wants to hijack everything. Even something of profound wisdom. It wants to commercialize it. It wants to hijack it. It wants to control it. It wants to package it and use it for its own purposes. And when that happens, the dedication falls away. It goes sour. Something, the mind starts to go sour when it's like hijacked. So for me, it was to keep the purity and really realize that this was just a book designed to put me in touch with the spirit within. That's all it was to put me in touch with the internal teacher. I wasn't going to become like Jesus had warned about the scribes and the Pharisees becoming so much into the study of it or putting so much emphasis even on the words of it. And then the copyright controversy came out and tried to own the words and shut down websites and seven lawsuits around the course of miracles. And it was like, oh, wow, the ego doesn't like the message of where this is pointing. It's really afraid. Lawsuits, control, structure. One time I went to a course group and they had developed bylaws for the course group. And I was like, what do we do? Bylaws. And it was like 20 rules that they had to follow. I mean, it's one thing to start to ritualize it where you've got to do everything like robots in the group. And then they had voted on them and everything. And a couple of people wanted to hear what I had to say and the rest said, no, let's vote on it. This guy is just new to the group and he's a newbie and we don't want to hear what he has to say and so on and so forth. The ego wants to hijack the course. It wants to hijack this very sacred purpose of forgiveness and awakening. So for me, dedication comes, there's a purity that comes with it of really taking it back for your own mind. That's what the Holy Spirit told me at the early years. I kept hearing that over and over. It's your lesson. Your lesson. No, your lesson. It's all your lesson. It's all for you. It's all for you. Everywhere I would go, everyone I would meet, it's all for you. It's all for you. I'd say, what do you mean it's all for me? Everyone has a gift for you. Everyone has a gift for you. I will give a gift to you through everyone that you meet if you will be willing to see the gift. Don't ever think, oh, I didn't like this or I don't like this about them or they had negative energy or they slowed me down, everyone has a gift to offer. So for me, that was the dedication, was practicing the mind training and keeping the focus on that and not on the form of things because early on, I mean, I was kind of like saying to Jesus, I was saying, where is this heading though? I want to know where this is all heading and it was like peace of mind and I said, well, how is this going to play out for me? He says, no, no, I'm not going to give you big long future plans and snapshots of the future. I'm not like some kind of the unwarwick psychic hotline of how is this going to look in five years or 10 years? Don't try to use me that way. This is for enlightenment. This is for forgiveness. This is for waking up from the dream and then it was like, I will tell you moment by moment and if there are plans to be made, I will tell you of them if they're helpful but you're just going to get a moment by moment. You're not getting a five-year plan. You're not getting a year plan. You're not going to get a six-month plan. I'm not going to give you a plan. I'm just going to tell you moment by moment to follow. So I said, okay, well what about a career? No. You will not have a career. What about a spiritual career? No, you will not have a spiritual career. Do you want to wake up? You've done this before. You've had a spiritual career before. You've done this in other lifetimes but you can get hijacked if you try to turn this into a career. If you try to mix commerce with Christ, it's not a good mix. It's like oil and water. You put them in the blender and it's not going to come out. So that was really important too in the devotion because I said, well thanks, give it to me straight. If it's not going to be a career then I'm not going to try to make a career out of it. I'm not going to think of it in linear terms. I'm just going to let it be whatever it's going to be. I'm going to let it look however it looks but I'm not going to have any expectations of making a career out of this. If you're following me, it's not going to happen. So I said, okay. So then one time in the early years, some of you know John Monday and he had this magazine back then. Now it's a Miracles magazine but back then it was called On Course back in the early 1990s. He asked me to write an article one time. He said, I want you to write an article for On Course Magazine. And I said, okay. So I wrote it out and then he said and I want you to send in a photograph and people who knew me, they said you don't have many photographs around. You know, I said somebody could take a snapshot of me when I'm getting into a car or do something in the evening. Send it in. So they sent it in and when they published it in the On Course Magazine it was total figure ground. You couldn't see any facial expressions. It was just black and white figure ground the way it came out. And again, I took that as another message from the spirit. It's the content. It's the attitude. It's the devotion to the mind training. At that point it was like, no, you're not going there. You're not going to have your picture in a magazine. No, no, no. I said no. I meant no. And so it was good. That was all really good for me. Because the ego, you know, at that point of the mind training was still kind of, oh, I could have a little, the fame thrown in here or something, no. It's like, do you want to be famous or do you want to wake up? Besides, there are no, you can't have a famous spirit. The spirit is one. You can never have a famous spirit. It's only bodies. It's only images. It's only ego that is concerned with the fame. So, and the thing about wealth and possessions and this and that, it was like, you know, I remember in the Bible it said, it's easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. So again, it was like saying, there's nothing wrong with money. It's not to judge the money or the accumulation of money this and this, but it's the identification. It's like love does not possess. Don't, it was all about possession. Don't, don't possess. I would read about the saints and the mystics and poverty, chastity and obedience. And I would say, what does poverty really mean? And Jesus said, you know, poverty is ego thinking. It has nothing to do with, with the forms. Don't try to define your abundance and your, you know, deprivation in terms of form. Just know that ego thinking is poverty. And when, but when you take a vow of poverty is take a vow of, of disidentification with attachment. Disidentification to the possessions. And then chastity, what is chastity? Am I supposed to be celibate? Is that what you're calling me to, a life of celibacy? And then I went to the dictionary and I looked up chastity and it, and I read the beginning words of chastity in the dictionary. Purity of thought. Purity of thought. Oh, what, that's what that vow is about. Purification, of course it would have to be if you're coming home to know God and know your mind in its pristine, clean stillness. Of course it would involve purification. And obedience. Wow, the ego doesn't like obedience, you know. But that's, that gets to the authority problem. You know, if you believe you're an autonomous being who has a separate will, apart from God, that you've been able to make up a world unlike God's spirit and you've been able to take on this sense of an autonomous character in the dream, then you would need obedience to get back into alignment with that inner voice to get back on the strings, to get the puppet back on the strings to be a servant like St. Francis talked about, make me an instrument so that I may truly know myself as God created me. So all of a sudden, you know, they gave me these high interpretations of a lot of things and, you know, it wasn't like they were all wrong or they were completely missing the mark, but they were just, I just needed to really know the high direction because I couldn't really dedicate to myself to something just out of like a blind faith, just because it was in a book or just because so and so said it was so, I was supposed to believe them. I needed to really, really feel an alignment and a connection with what I was going to devote my life to. And then when I did, then that made the devotion, it just seemed to grow stronger and stronger and I never looked back. You know, I never would give into comparison of coulda, woulda, shoulda, or people would say, oh, but you've given up so much. You know, it's nonsense. I feel like I've given up nothing. I don't, you know, sacrifice is not a part of authentic awakening to God. We're not really asked to give up something of value. We're just simply asked to be shown the valuelessness of these ego pursuits that they just lead us nowhere. They're like dead ends. And then we just end up, you know, wondering how did I get off on this road? And I just, you know, I just didn't give my mind over to those things.