 False empathy is wrong-mindedness or an attempt to yield into temptation, and it's kind of an interesting topic with the Course in Miracles because it's contrasted with true empathy, which is something that Jesus says of all the ideas that he's teaching, it could be perhaps the most difficult to grasp because in the human condition, wearing the mask of being a human being, it's seemingly natural and normal to empathize, put yourself in someone else's shoes, oh that's terrible, oh you poor baby, oh I can't believe that happened to you, the commiserating with what we could say is error, erroneous thinking, and trying to actually give the error away, you know, or join in error. So I would say that false empathy in the most basic core definition is trying to join in error, and true empathy is to align with the truth, and practicing true empathy is quite a trip in this world, so to speak, as you go through it, because there's so many temptations, it's like some of you can remember there was that that tuna commercial, Charlie, and Charlie's tuna down in the ocean, and there's all these hooks that are coming down, and I think of that's how the ego set up this world as a world of temptation with all these little guild hooks, saying take a bite, take a bite, doesn't matter whether you're talking to your mother, your wife, your child, your neighbor, or someone you meet on the street, or in a restaurant, in a bar, wherever, it's like the hooks are just coming down, and they've got bait on them, they're saying take a bite. Isn't it a shame? Isn't it too bad? All the doubts, and the naysayers, and everything, the hooks are just coming, like your Charlie, and your little fins everywhere you turn, there's a bunch of hooks, and to stay in a place of mind where you don't bite the bait, you don't give your mind's power over to any of those thoughts, you don't try to join. We had a great session recently, and we were talking about last night, I believe it was, I'm not a body, and my mind cannot attack, so I cannot be sick. It's great. Then the next day, Lonnie's saying, whoa, I'm really facing all those thoughts about bodies, and symptoms, and all the conditioning, we'll say a lifetime of conditioning, or many lifetimes of conditioning around what sickness is, and what to do with it, and all of a sudden this, we were getting down to some core, core healing ideas, and it just flushed up a lot of stuff. There's those hooks again, hooks in the mind. So, to be invulnerable, to be joyful, to be happy, to be free, to be peaceful, all the things that we've heard about for centuries, that are the highest qualities to aspire to, Janice Joplin, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Wow, what a state of mind. Nothing left to lose, wouldn't that be fun? Could you imagine how much fun, if you had nothing left to lose? If you had, we'll say lost the idea of loss, where you just thought this joyful fulfillment, and there's no lost possible, then that would be freedom. I mean true freedom, not freedom of the body. I live in a free country unlike those imprisoned countries. I live in a free society. We've heard those words, but free country is an oxymoron, it's a contradiction in terms. Free human being is a contradiction of terms. Free society is a contradiction of terms. Freedom of speech. Freedom of speech. We've got freedom of speech in our constitution, but what does that even mean? Freedom of speech. Has anybody ever experienced freedom of speech? There's a lot of hell that comes with expressing. Look at Abraham Lincoln, look at Martin Luther King, look at Gandhi, look at all the way down anyone you want throughout the centuries. Freedom of speech. There's hell to pay for freedom of speech. Everyone who's spoken up and just told, Jesus got three years in there, he goes like, kill that guy. We've had enough of that freedom of speech right there. Let's put an end to that. So what we're talking about is coming to true empathy, coming to complete alignment where there's no sway, there's no compromise, there's no give. It's really what Jesus taught us. He said the true freedom is really in hearing one voice. You can't have a split mind and be listening to two thought systems, ego and Holy Spirit that are completely irreconcilable because they're telling you different things. No man can serve two masters and you can't be happy and free if you're listening to two different thought systems. You have to relinquish one, you have to relinquish the fear and embrace the love. And to me, that's really, oh talk about it, that's divine logic. It got me. I'm like, okay, I'm all for true empathy. And also you do have that sense of nothing left to lose because when you get into the joy of the Spirit, you get into the identification with the Spirit. And the things that seemed important before, like we were hearing here, like pride, Lila was talking about the undoing of pride, undoing of self-concept, all those roles and concepts that we believed to be who we are. Those were all ego ideals that we were trying to live up to, to pride to be good boys, good girls, good men, good women, good professionals, good family members, good society members, good, good, good concepts. And we never could reach that standard. It was like we were chasing a ghost and spinning the wheels and going nowhere. And then at some point, all of us start to get on this call to go inward and just start to, like Buddha said, like Jesus said, empty the mind. Happiness, peace, love, joy, freedom is emptiness of these egoic concepts. So I know that in the Course, that's really late in the chapters, you know, self versus self-concept. But I really feel all those other chapters were just leading up to the leaping off point of, are you ready to let go of all self-concept identities in this world and experience yourself as the true self, the Christ self that you are. And I followed all the divine logic and divine metaphysics, but I couldn't just leave it as an intellectual thing. For me, I really had to believe I was being called out of the world, out of the thinking of the world.