 Greetings everyone. Today I'd like to share a topic called First Generation Course in Miracles Students. What do I mean by that? Well, the course came to us in a period of seven years from 1965 to 1972 and then was published around 1975 in a complete set. Three books, a textbook, a workbook, and a manual for teachers. So the students who've been working with this course in miracles have basically been working with the book and the materials since about 1975. And here we are in 2017. So this group of students as well as this group of teachers have been working with the material for over four decades. And these first generation students are working with a material that is a very direct pathway to enlightenment, to self-realization or self-actualization. And we could say that includes God realization as you know yourself as God created you. So with first generation students we can review these decades and review the practice, the study and practice of this book and all attempts at practical application of these amazing, deep, profound teachings in the field of self-realization, in the experience of self-realization. So first of all we could say that the early students of the course have had to study and learn the metaphysics of the course in miracles. And the ego's resistance to grasping these metaphysics is enormous. So there can be all kinds of distortions that are introduced by the ego. Examples of these distortions. One would be that there is this belief that God created the world or God created the cosmos as a teaching learning device that something that is of pure oneness, which is our source is pure oneness, could somehow create that which is perceptual, that which is incremental like time and space. And the time-space continuum. And so we could say that that's a distortion. In the trinity we have the Father, Son, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. It is a metaphor of that which remembers God, but also is capable of overlooking illusions and being a bridge from perception back to knowledge, from time-space, temporal continuum back to absolute pure light and love, abstract love and oneness, unconditional love. So the Holy Spirit is the one who uses words and words were made by the ego as symbols of the symbols twice removed from reality. But the Holy Spirit uses words to point back to a leaping off point of transcending those words, transcending all of perception. This is the mission of the Holy Spirit. Another distortion that can come in is when things from, of course, the miracles are taken in a very literal way, it really misses the point that all of these concepts and symbols in A Course in Miracles are just stepping stones, are just temporary devices that the Holy Spirit can use to instruct the mind that is sleeping, to help the mind that is sleeping and it's waking up to its divinity. So perception is capable of serving a purpose that will unify fragmented perception and bring a holistic perception of the world. A unified perception, sometimes it's called, in other traditions, unified awareness. And this unified awareness is the gateway to the remembrance of God, to the remembrance of eternity, the happy dream that's a phrase that Jesus uses in A Course in Miracles. Before you wake up from nightmares, you will have a happy dream. And this is a dream of non-judgment, that's what makes it happy. So we open to practicing the Course at distinction also that A Course in Miracles uses is the distinction between the wrong mind, which is the ego and its purposes of separation and guilt, pain, suffering, death, and a right-minded perception. The right mind is the home of the Holy Spirit and the home of the Comforter that brings you home, that takes you higher and higher. So we want to look at these distinctions and we want to see that we have an amazing tool, if given over to the Holy Spirit, but that the ego will attempt to distort the teachings of A Course in Miracles to preserve its seeming existence, its sense of existence. Although the Holy Spirit shows us that an error doesn't have reality, and when all the darkness is brought to the light, when all errors have been raised to the light of truth, of oneness, then error disappears and in truth never was. So with first-generation students, we see a very sincere attempt to study and grasp the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles, and then through applying the workbook lessons on a very daily basis with great willingness to transfer the training, make no exceptions to these beautiful, pure ideas, that through this application, the experience of the unified awareness of the forgiven world or the happy dream comes into awareness. I would say that the teachings are very, very important, and yet the most important thing in working with A Course in Miracles is the transfer of training that I just mentioned, really making no exceptions when practicing these workbook lessons. So students often struggle in this transfer of training, and yet the instructions at the beginning of the workbook are saying that these teachings need to be applied to everyone and everything in the world in order to come to an experience that transcends the linear perception of the world. And though at times we could say that dedication is weak and resistance is high, it just takes faith to keep going, keep practicing, keep applying to come into this experience. That's the one thing to remember, keep it up. Keep up to practice. Blessings.