 before, of course, the miracles came into my life. I remember being at the University of Cincinnati for ten years and going over to Burnett Woods and walking through there and pondering, what's it all about? What's it all about? How fee, just pondering, pondering. Instead of, do you know the way to San Jose? It's like, do you know the way to the Kingdom of Heaven? I've been away too long. It's like, it's really praying, praying and opening and opening and talking to God, talking to the Spirit. But really, I had to start to ask some pretty interesting questions. Like, I was in the University for ten years, so I started to look at what is my motive for being a full-time student? What is this for? Am I trying to escape something? Do I believe that much in education? But I would spend all that money. What's the point of the degrees? Really, and I would kind of say, well, actually I think the degrees can be kind of helpful in this world for getting better jobs, you know. Instead of just flipping burgers at McDonald's or something, Jesus can get a little bit better job to pull in some of the big bucks. And then Jesus was like, hey, very good, then what's the purpose of pulling in the big bucks? What exactly are you after there with the big bucks? And I was like, well, then I had to really get honest with that and take it down a little further. And I was like, well, actually, actually I want a relationship. And when you're really poor, it's just, and this planet is not actually the most ideal, it's not the most ideal position to be in, you know. You out in the first date, who's paying? Oh boy, might not be a second date on that one. So I gave Jesus my criteria and everything, so it's like, all right. So you're spending all this time in the university to get these degrees so you can get a better job and a career so you can get a relationship. That's interesting. You know, when you're trying to explain the motives to Jesus, and he's like, you really believe you would starve unless you had stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really believe a sharpened needle pushed through your veins would ward off disease. All right, all right, all right. I believe in that. You know, being liked, knowing the right people, an endless list of nothingness. Take you inward and say, what do you believe? And start to realize that the things you believe are sustaining you, you're putting a lot of care and effort and energy into. And he's just saying, well, you're just looking for salvation in the wrong place. You know, you're you're misinvesting the power of your mind. And it's not going to bring you what you think it's going to bring you. It's just like a figment of your imagination. And you may have a lot of evidence in this dream world that it will bring you something. You say, well, it's working over there for Fred, and it's working for Sally. I think it could work for me. And he's like, it may look like from the outside it's working for Fred and Sally, but it ain't working for Fred and Sally either. It's not working for this country or that country, and it's just not working. So it's a convincing. You know, we really have to be convinced. We have to learn from consequences. And because there's pleasure and pain for the ego, and they seem very different too, just like the past and future seem different, pleasure and pain seem different. So it's it's pretty tricky when you try to maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain. And they're the same. It's insane. It's really insane. So it's part of the learning. It's part of unlearning these tricks, letting go of these retranslation tricks. So, you know, you start to just get honest with yourself, like, what is this really bringing me? Sometimes we do things repeatedly over and over and over for years. And then at some point, we pause to reflect like, well, what was that really all about? It could be with children. It could be with houses, cars. Some of us have had a lot of different cars. And at some point, we start to go, hmm, what was that all about? It seemed cool at the time. There's a lot of work for these metal things with this rubber on, you know, it's that kind of stuff. God, there's a lot of work. But, you know, and changing the oil and new tires and da, da, da, da, da, da. But, you know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You know, the more, I guess, if you're identified with the body and you like mobility of the body, then, and maybe just like clothes, you know, a little bit of style and, you know, you go through whatever the Corvette or the Cougar. I, these are the kind of lessons I had. I mean, I remember the first car that I seemed to have was given to me by the family. It was a, it was a blue station wagon. You know, when you're a teenager and you get a blue station wagon, you just, you drive it. But actually, you know, your face is kind of, you know, your, what in house? Luckily not. I looked at those with wood panels and I'd go, oh, God, please. Thank you. But then you go around. But actually, it was interesting because I remember that the make was a mercury and it was interesting. The model was a voyager. My first car was a voyager. I had some voyages come in. Boys first like, oh, you've got some voyages come in here. So, but anyway, finally, after I put up with that for a couple years, you got to take your sister to the mall. You know, you can't, you just feel like, oh man, you're part of this crazy family and you're in this blue station wagon. But finally, you do finally get to that point where you save all your money, you know, with your job and everything. So then, when I could seemingly decide, I've got a Cougar XR7. You know, the turn signal. Boy, the bomb was the station wagon. That was the cool. I used to take it out to the bank, to the mall and people would then get compliments in the parking lot and say, man, that is a cool car. It was a strong reflection of the self-concept, you know, building a self-concept. And then I remember one day I was coming up from toward the University of Cincinnati. I had a couple of classmates in the car and I was waiting for another car which had stopped to turn and I looked in my rear-view mirror and this car was coming behind me at a very high raised speed and it wasn't slowing down so my eyes, balls, got really big. I hit my foot on the brake already but I pressed down and braced and wham! My Cougar XR7 got hit with those cute turn signals right there in the back where the turn signals were. It just was rammed probably about 30 to 35 miles an hour. I mean, it was, it was total. It bent the frame and I tried to prepare it. There was no hope. And then I, the insurance, I couldn't believe how, what a small, it was an older model that I fixed up so, but the poultry little check that came from the insurance that all I could afford was an AMC gremlin. I went, which I felt really for worse. That's all I could, it was close to the pacer. It was an AMC gremlin and it was a yellow, it was a yellow AMC gremlin and it hit these black stripes, you know, like those, you know, like those lambchop kind of cybers. It hit these like lambchop black stripes. But I was into, I was into the course. This was in the beginning of the course and I remember going in and talking to my counselor. I was just in grief over this whole thing. And, and, and then one day I was working with the course and Jesus, the light bulb went off, that how I was so invested, my self-concept was so invested in that Cougar XR7 that this was actually a blessing. You know, you can't judge your advances from your treats. This was actually in advance of me learning to live with a gremlin. Even the sound of it, it's like, station wagon was just warming me up for the gremlin. And then, which I felt was thrust upon me and I had to deal with it. So, so actually you can see how from a course perspective, that was a step up in spirituality. But when I tried to explain this to my counselor, the last name was actually church and church, he just looked at me with this incredulous look like, you're crazy. I was trying to explain how wonderful it was that I ended up with the gremlin. He was just shaking his head going, no, you should be sad. I shouldn't really be in grief. And then it dawned on me that, oh, he doesn't see it. So it was another great advance that sometimes when we have these great spiritual insights, we can't speak them and convey them to anybody else. You know, it was just for me, which was a huge insight. It was just for me. Don't try to explain this to anybody, just be grateful. Feel blessed. So anyway, that's just how life goes. It seems like sometimes things are being taken away from you, but it's just the ego believe it had some things that it never really had. You can never really have things. We've got that, at least a more song. Only an instant does this world endure. And it's like even the joys it says are gone before they can be possessed or even grasped. That everything we think is valuable in this world is just so fleeting and so transitory. And we never can possess it because we weren't created to possess. We were created to extend and shine and radiate and share, but we weren't created to possess. Possess people, possess houses, cars, possessed bodies. We really were not created to possess. And so the ego is based on possession. And that's where all the sadness comes in. When we are identified with the ego and we think we're losing things. Losing the bodies growing old. Bodies are just images. They don't really grow old. It's just like when you project time onto an image, then you can make the illusion of aging, but it's not a reality. Spirit doesn't grow old. So it's good when she starts to get a hold of these dynamics, she starts to realize, huh, I've got nothing to worry about. You can't really get sick. You can't really grow old. You can't really die. It's absolutely impossible. And the more you start to just open yourself to that, then it's really cool. You can actually relax and have some fun, you know, without taking things so seriously. See?