 The codependency comes in because at a very deep level, the deceived mind is looking for completion in that other person, and it can't succeed. The whole thing is set up from the word go. It can't succeed in that extent because it can seem to succeed for certain periods of time. That's what's so sneaky about it, where you seem to have it all, you know, according to the world standards. You seem to have a good career, you seem to have a loving spouse, and everything that you think you've ever wanted and everything, and all of a sudden you have hit these periods where you feel like life is meaningless, and the wheel is falling off, and wait a minute, I just had, I just had it all. You get everything, you know, you have nothing. And it's like there's that mirage again, you have a mirage of having everything. But in a way it's like the ego is staying in there, you know, it's a cruel, vicious world. Never mind that it's just a world, and I just see, I just perceive exactly what I think I want to find, whatever I selectively choose in the world, which is the fact of it. So the ego says it's a cruel, vicious world out there. People are out there to get you. You have the government, and the IRS, and you've got people that are always treating you better, work or are here or there, and if you can find a haven, if you can just find that one person, if it's just one person or a couple people, that you can always talk to, and it won't beat you up, and it won't attack you and everything, then build your home, build your security on that relationship with that other person. And so it's like we have our basket and our emotional eggs, and we start saying, this is it, this is the haven that we'll do it, and we go click, click, we start putting our investments and everything on the life we're going to live together and how it's going to be. We keep loading them in and building this up and everything. And then invariably, they seem to leave, they seem to die, they seem to get sick, they seem to be going through trauma, and we're so emotionally invested and co-dependent with them that we seem to go down the cesspool with them. And it's because, in the ultimate sense, it's been set up from the beginning that they've been set up as a God substitute. And there is no body, ever, that will serve as a God substitute. It's set up for the basket to drop. The ego is set to hang up. Now, the Holy Spirit says, okay, this is where you think you are, and they seem to be set up destructively, but I can bring a touch of heaven to them. I can bring a purpose, so that you can bring up that purpose that we've been talking about to that relationship. You can literally turn the relationship over to the Holy Spirit to say, I don't know where this is going to go, but I know I want this to be for the greater good, I want this to be for me waking up. And I have used this relationship, I have investments, I really have had this, I wanted this person to come out this way to make something more of themselves. I wanted to fix them, I thought I could change them, da-da-da-da-da. I'm going to give all that to you, Holy Spirit. I want you to help me unlearn the strings that I've attached to this relationship. The way I've wanted to use them to meet my needs, and to build me up. Because I felt unworthy, I've used them as a crutch. It's like idol worship, or even with people with heroes and stars. I'll attach my identity to this person or this ball player when I was a kid, I grew up with all these heroes and idols, you know, and it's like, they make me feel better. Just knowing that I was attaching myself to this other idol or whatever. It's like a quick fix, it doesn't last. The idol of the hero seems to be letting it down, but it's just our own perception. It's next up. So, in my life, I did mention the last time I was involved with a woman for three years in a relationship, and it was just the most pain, it was the most emotional roller coaster ride that I've ever been on. But it was very good for my growth and for teaching me where I had to invest in. And it really can seem like a very fast ride, and it can seem like a real accelerated undoing of the false belief when you hang into a relationship. And you give it over to the Holy Spirit. Because a lot of that repressed false ideas and beliefs that the mind hasn't wanted to look at start to come up. Yeah, that's what, I mean, I guess part of it is like, that's the purpose of me. You know, that's the thing that was interesting that I'm breathing down. It's like, you know, you put up against the thing that irritates you the most. You know, when you both are put up against each other, the irritating each other is as much. And, you know, just all this stuff behind that. I mean, is that basically what, you know, our special relationships, our closeness, you know, with spouses or family or whatever is? I mean, that's really all that they really are. Accelerates that whole bringing to the light of the beliefs that we don't even know we have. You know, and certainly, you know, don't want to look at. Right, yeah. But that's what their special makes you possibly take more of a look at it. I think so. Because if it wasn't, it could be someone that you just flow them off, you know? Yeah. They have a real charge. Yeah. Because it's something where you have a tremendous amount of care and so on, then you're willing to sort of hang in there more and take a look more at it. Yeah. And like you're reading Return to Love, you know, Mary Ann has a great way of putting it. She says, we're all coming here to learn how to love. And that's an interesting thing to think about it because, once again, the mind and the seed mind thinks it knows what tables and chairs are and also it thinks it knows what love is. You know, it's red books and it seems movies and it's had experiences and it's a very humbling fact when you come to say that there are different kinds of love. I mean, that's in the special relationship to it. But there seems to be in this world a brother and sister love and a love for the parents and a romantic love and a da da da da. There seems to be pretty good scales of love. Puppy love, the love for your pet and on and on and on. And basically the teaching of the Course is love is one and love can only look on itself and that you don't know in a deceased state of mind you don't know what love is. So to use Mary Ann's phrase, learning how to love or to use Jesus' phrase, learning how to become aware of the obstacles to love's presence that I constructed in my mind, that's the process of doing it. To the ego it's like, why do I, the ego would say why do I have these people in my life? Why do I keep attracting these people in my life? You know, it just pains to me. And to the Holy Spirit, you know, it's like, hey, golden opportunity here to really look at something that you can't stand to look at within your own mind so you're projecting it out and you're seeing it in the other person. I can kind of give you the metaphysics of what goes on behind that and that is that, I mean, some people would talk about where you'll see something and you'll see this person that is absolutely, we'll say sloppy. Just sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, just things uncaring, just lay things around, it's completely sloppy. And then people would say, now that's a mirror, right? And I'm seeing in them what's in me. I'm not sloppy. This is not worth forgetting what Jesus says. I'm neat and orderly and this person's sloppy and it's driving me nuts. And really what it is is the idea or the concept of sloppiness is, is once again a meaning that even just images on the screen and the mind interprets the behavior as sloppy. In other words, sloppy is a concept that's in the mind. It's like neat. So the mind has determined what the form looks like to be labeled sloppy. Right. Or what the form has to look like to be labeled orderly and neat and organized. Right. But it's something the mind decides it's on. Right. It's an arbitrary decision. It's an ego judgment. And of course, when we have sloppy and neat and everything, divine order is of course obscured. How can there be fusion or divine order when things could be better? In other words, it's not so much sloppy, but sloppy is not good. There's that connotation to it. Neat would be better. So in that sense, this is just bringing up an opportunity to look at my investment, perhaps, that in the order of things as opposed to the Christ, that when I'm upset as you because you're sloppy or whatever it's just like, I would rather hang on to the ordering in mind, say, I think the world should be and everything, than to see the Christ in you. It doesn't mean you don't communicate about it. There certainly is certain efficacy and efficiency to some organization. But it's like, you know, it's like, don't let the form obscure the context. When Helen dictated the course, Jesus dictated the course. She was very much into writing and things need to be a certain way and so on and so forth. Like you've mentioned, and she went nuts about, she was looking for consistency and form. And Jesus was always trying to comment the content. And I think part of the reason that he didn't put so much an emphasis on consistency here and there was that he was like, go for the content. Go for the change of your perception in your mind. Don't try to demand that it be consistent in form. Because she was looking for punctuation errors, as we've mentioned, and, you know, grammatical stuff. And really, that was more for unconscious resistance. To his love, being projected out in the form of, you could do this better. So anytime I perceive something and I notice a rise inside of me, it may not mean that what I'm seeing out there is in behavior or form, is my behavior or form. But it does mean that what I see out there in behavior and form I have some judgment about. And I have some concept or belief in my mind about that. And that's the gift. You know, that's the wonderful thing about noticing it. It's like, oh, you know, it's like, that's another one for me to look at. What you're saying then is the whole point is to be moving to judgment. So that when I visit a friend of mine, for example, who has their house totally destroyed, you really have to just stick your way through. I have to reach a place where it doesn't bother me when I visit. And it's perfectly fine that I have to step through clothes and books and paper. And that will make it. That's why you're valuing being with that person more than being in an orderly environment. Otherwise, you wouldn't go see her. I really love the person. I have a lot of problems with the behavior. There are some, like my brother and my mother have similar kinds of behavior that are real difficult to accept. Well, I don't accept it. And I've always had a problem with this concept of, well, what you see in somebody else is what you are, the way you are. My brother is going to go to the mountains in Denver somewhere and he's going to build a ski lodge. And, you know, my brother doesn't have $5 in his pocket, but he's a dreamer. And there's no way, I mean, that any of that will ever happen. And he's now on his third divorce and he's got two children. You know, it just goes on and on. I mean, the way his life is, it's all fragmented and troubled and all this stuff. And it's just really hard to stand by and wish this person had more order in their life and you wish that you could see them being in a better place, you know, and more at peace and have things work for them. And he's forever getting himself into another bad marriage and another bad situation. You know, it's just very tough to stand by me alone. That's the key word wish, too. Because that's it. The ego is a wish. The ego is nothing more than a wish. I mean, I feel sorry for him, too. I feel sorry for God. You know, can he get a... I mean, why couldn't his third marriage work now? You know, what? Here's these two little dear children. And why can't they... His is finally... Something worked for them, you know. And that's blowing apart. That's your brother out there. And then you think, now, wait a minute. Now, what is my lesson in this? If I'm trying to heal my mind, how do I bring that back? Or what interpretation am I making? And really, beneath it all, is the wish that things would be different than they are. Yes, exactly. And the deeper you go into this, it's like it comes up in so many different forms, whether it's relationships or, you know, things around some homes or houses or everything. And the mind has this very deep-rooted wish that things would be different than they are. The judgment that things are not the way they should be. That things are acute. Expectation is the word we use a lot. Expectation, sure. And my sister is at a place in her marriage where I cannot believe this. And there you just look like they're going to stay together. So the eschew out there. And it's like, my goodness, you know, I can expect my brother to do this. But for my sister, who's a real down-to-earth responsible, sensible person, and she hasn't been able to have a child. And it's just kind of made her crazy. And she... So her husband hasn't been sent to tissues. And, you know, now she wants to leave him and just change her whole...