 Is there been anything bubbling up or anything specific, any specific questions you can think of that you have, or Beverly has suggested a few topics for this morning? You know, we can just talk about familiarity and just go over that briefly. It's that thing of, in the mind, there was an old song with Jack Jones, and if you heard of him as a singer did years ago, I've grown accustomed to her face. You know, the whole song is about growing accustomed to the familiar, or kind of like, it seems like, like you were saying, when you came up here and needed to, you know, this new house and this new place and this kind of a new setting, there's a little fluttering sometimes that goes on when you walk into a new setting or with new people, because it's not familiar. It's like the mind seems to have surrounded itself with familiar faces, familiar surroundings, familiar environment, and it seems to offer some security and familiarity. And once you start getting into the course, and the mind starts to shift and shift towards the present, and to let go of the past, it's a whole different feeling, whereas once the past and familiar settings and surroundings seem to provide comfort, safety, security, now they no longer seem to do that. In other words, you start to find out that you kind of constructed a haven around yourself, and it's kind of a false sense of security. Or I know Anita and I were talking that one time when you were saying when Mark died, it was kind of like you were gliding along and it was like, you know, you had the perfect life. I mean, it seemed like there was nothing wrong with it. It really seemed like the perfect life, and then it's like in an instant it just seemed to start to fall apart and shatter. And a good thing to question for all of us is when those time periods come up, when things seem to fall apart and shatter, did we really have the perfect life or did we kind of fall asleep into what seemed like the perfect life? Or I guess another way I always think of it is like Jesus in the Bible, he used the parable of, you know, you can build your house on the rock or you can build your house on the sand. And he told the parable is what happens when the winds and the rains come and blow, if the house is built on the sand, it just goes away, and if the house is built on the rock, then the house stands. And to me, that's a metaphor for the house on sand is the illusion of safety, the illusion of security. It's really the ego kind of saying, oh, do this and this and this in the world and you'll be happy and safe and secure, and then something comes up and it feels like your whole house gets washed away. To me, it's changing our minds and really listening to the Holy Spirit and coming to clarity. That's analogous to building our house on the rock. No matter how hard the winds blow, was it the bad wolf, the old nursery rhyme where this, I'll huff and I'll puff, big bad wolf, I'll blow your house down and the different pigs who built constructed the house out of different things. It's like we want to come to such a strong understanding of the spirit and of mind that nothing can shake our peace. So the issue of familiarity, I know, is a sneaky one because as I've worked with people over the years, it's like with anything, you know, just like with church. You can go to a church sometime and you can feel something moving and then you kind of get accustomed to it and before you know it, it's a routine. It's like you get lulled into a routine and there's not that joy or that practice of really watching. It's kind of like everyone's going this way and you're going this way and it seems to be the sense of all moving in one direction, but again, it's real sneaky. And I know for me it's come up in the sense that when we've gone deeper and deeper into things, it times the way to dismiss the course or dismiss the light and the power of the mind change is to label and dismiss. In other words, well, I know so and so and they do things this way or they have these techniques they use or this or that. And the purpose of the course is to go deep, deep beyond all the techniques and everything and to not stereotype things, to not make more boxes. You know, Anita was talking yesterday about I don't want to do that with the course. I don't want to feel dependent on the course or I don't want to feel dependent on a group. I mean, that's another way that it happens where this familiarity can creep in. You know, you start something, it seems like there's a lot of radical ideas and so you kind of cling to a group or whatever. You don't want to slide into all those tracks of making even groups special or making the course special or any of those sneaky traps where the ego tries to sneak its foot in on the journey and just transfer, oh, this is just another group, another this or that. You want to just try to keep it at a mind level and bring it back to what's my lesson in this. I think a big part of taking for granted is familiarity is taken because David seems to be available. I don't want to take for granted anything about what's available. I don't want to be lulled into thinking, oh, you know, I don't have to pay that much attention because he'll keep saying it and he's going to be around and I'm going to be around him and I'll hear another time if I don't get it now. Or, you know, he's always going to be around so, you know, it doesn't matter if I talk to him now or if I talk to him tomorrow or the next day, you know. I mean, the assumption there is that it's always going to be available to me in this way. And I can see where that's an ego trap because I, what happens in that is there's a, there can be a sense of complacency that moves in and also a sense of, oh, that's just what David says. I, you know, I know him. I know what he says. That's just what he says. Like, when the Spirit speaks, the Spirit speaks and I wouldn't say to the Holy Spirit, you know, oh, that's just what we think or that's just the way you talk about it or feel like I'm real clear and even talking about things in there, you know, that I start thinking I know what's available. I think I know that it's always going to be available and I don't know even what those things are. Available always. Well, it is available always, but... I'm not going to miss any chance to see that. Right. There's nothing that can be missed. But I guess my, that I want to take, I want to take the opportunity as a hand. I want to hear the Holy Spirit the way he want to think that there's another way or a better way or a different way for me. If there was a better way or a different way or another way, then that would be what was in front of me. Well, the Holy Spirit can speak to you in any voice, probably not just his voice, but he almost has to pay attention to everybody, but we all have to pay attention. It's about paying attention and again, for me it's about clarity in that when I've taught classes and different things, we go into it very deeply in the times, it's staying at the tension. In other words, the temptation a lot of times is like my friend Dorothy and Roscoe, she would work in the kitchen and, you know, she would see the workshop going on, she would listen to the speaker in the kitchen as she was making salads and everything, she would listen to the workshop and then everybody would be asking questions and all excited and taking notes and, you know, really cresting for the ideas. And then they would say, okay, that's the end of the workshop and then they would go into the dining room. And she would hear all the gossip and judgments and, oh, this is too salty, this is not salty enough and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. She was just observed. She said, very interesting, workshop, dining room. Then they'd go back into the workshop and they'd have their questions and this and this and this and then they'd go back into the dining room. It clicked back into the familiarity in the dining room, so to speak. I mean, that's just a metaphor, but you can see what we're talking about. And you may see that even with course groups where you come, you chit chat, da-da-da-da-da-da. Time for the meeting to start. Okay. Here we go. Then, you know, questions come this and this and this and then the meeting ends and it's like, you know, the whole point of familiarity, I think, and we're not trying to say it's anything to do with David or anything like that, but it takes a lot of effort to stay attentive and it's just easy. I mean, the ego would have the mind compartmentalized and say, I'll be, when I go to an AA meeting, I can be in a fellowship and then when I'm not there, when I'm doing something else or when I'm not at the course group meeting, to really start to stay attentive all the time is the thing that gets past this familiarity thing. Because it's so easy to kind of slide back into the old compartmental way of thinking, well, and compartmentalize the course, you know, put it into a group meeting or a seminar or a workshop or something like that and then just say, okay, now I need a break, I'm going to go do this because it's fun or whatever, but to say, you know, to bring the thoughts, that's what the whole workbook's about, is just to hold on to the thoughts throughout the day and to help the mind let go of this compartmental thinking. A practical way of talking about it is kind of like your significant other relationships or with kids or whatever, where this is that I know part of the mind. I know my husband, I know my wife, I know my kids, I know them well. I've been with them a long time. I know all their habits, I know all their quirks. I know what to expect. I know what to expect from them. They surprise me occasionally, but not very often, you know, and it's all the past, again. I mean, that's the thing, all that I know and that familiarity is the past and frankly, when you start to go deep with the course, a lot of times the mind, it's just uncomfortable for the mind to think that there's something beyond all this. It thinks it's got this whole thing figured out fairly well and now these ideas start coming through and start turning everything upside down. And a lot of times an ego defense for that is, whoa, you know, so and so is nuts. Sometimes I was losing their mind. You've talked about how sometimes when you go to AA meetings, they just say, but, you know, he's nuts or for this or that. I mean, it can be a defense, but for our purposes, what we're doing is we're just kind of looking at how really the familiarity is the ego defense and the need to be attentive is really what we're coming at. Does that kind of address it or is there any other aspects of familiarity that is a part in the teacher's manual section? How should the teacher of God spend his day? And there's a sentence in the sentence is routines as such are dangerous because they easily becomes God, become God's in their own right, threatening the very goals for which they were set up. And that line to me tells me again that, oh, how that's what the ego always wants to do with everything. That's part of its familiarity defense. And the ego will attempt to do it with the course even, you know, getting erotic about, you know, not missing a lesson or if he says do it five times, repeat something five times a day, getting in a panic attack if you forgot one or you did one too many or something like that. Or even with meditation, I mean, Bud was bringing up some quotes from a book that Hugh Prader wrote about Joel Goldsmith and it was really wonderful.