 Okay. All right. Welcome. Welcome everyone. We are, we are going, you need to, we are going to have a movie tonight that it kind of spun off of our session this morning when we had our talks about, you know, wishing things could be different than they are. You were wishing the front row configuration would be a little different and then we had a thing about the marriage that ended 30 years ago, marriage ended and why can't I have a, you know, the whole, I was saying the ego is the, is the wish that something could be different than it is. And that's underneath all problems. If we could just accept everything exactly as it is, that's what the healing is. But the wish, the things could just be a little different or maybe a lot different. There's phases that we go through in life. I remember I went through a phase where I was like an activist. I wanted to follow like the Michael Jackson song, heal the world, make it a better place for you and for me and for the whole human race. It seemed pretty good, make the world a better place. But it still implied that we could change the world, make the world better. That's what politics is about, right? Electing officials supposedly to make the world a better place. People are wondering if that's working. Education was supposed to make the world a better place, right? My mother was an educator. I was in university for 10 years, including grad school and then high school, junior high, grade school, kindergarten. That's definitely 20-some years there in education. That was supposed to make things better. Then we have A Course in Miracles comes along and Jesus says, seek not to change the world. Seek rather to change your mind about the world. If this is a perceptual hallucination, then we need to have more of a significant fundamental change other than changing things. I remember there's one time where I did a whole talk. It was like Jesus was coming through me doing stand-up comedy on the topic of world peace. What does it take to have world peace? It was so funny. If there are no bombs, would we have world peace? Then no guns, world peace. No karate allowed. I went through the whole thing and then finally no violence allowed at all. Would we have world peace if people were still frowning at each other? Would we have world peace? People were like, no, no. I said, finally, no frowning allowed. No facial gestures, no nothing. You may be thinking inside, if I could get you, you have to wear a smile on your face, but you're thinking, if I could get you, I really get you, but you have to smile. No, nothing to indicate upset on the face. People went, no, there's still, if there were thoughts and emotions, it would still be there. Then we looked at the whole idea, is there such a thing as world peace? There isn't. It's just another crazy idea that's actually impossible. And so the only way you could have world peace would be is if you have a peaceful mind, peaceful consciousness, peaceful awareness, then you could say you would have world peace, but that requires a fundamental change from within. So from our experiences this morning, we've selected through prayer and guidance, this movie, and this movie is basically going to act out that wish to try to change something to make it right. It's that should word, you know, when somebody says, no, that's right. He should, she should, somebody, a comedian once said, don't shit on yourself. All of us are in a bad habit of shitting on ourselves. We spend years shitting on ourselves, and that should word is saying, no, there's something that's not quite right, and if something were different, then I'd be happy. And we're beginning to open up to a thought system saying, no, it's if your perception was changed, if you had a different purpose for your life, if you had a different purpose in your mind, that would be an actual significant change. And that would change everything, the way you perceive everything would change. So these fit with the deep teachings of the Course. I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me, I ask for and receive as I have asked. That's 100% responsibility for your state of mind. There's nothing outside of you. There's nothing that can victimize you. There's nothing that can be done to you against your will. That's what's so great about a Course in Miracles. It's 100% responsibility for state of mind. There's even another part of the workbook where Jesus says, what happens is what I desire. And what does not occur is what I do not want to happen. Wow. If that is true, there is no victimization. What happens is what I desire, and what does not occur is what I do not want to happen. So that's at one point, and I believe it's lesson 132. No, it's 152. Jesus basically says, you may believe that this is too all-encompassing to be the truth. But he says, truth has no exceptions. So he's telling us that we need a fundamental shift of our way of thinking and perceiving, and that there can be no exceptions to it. So that question that came in today too about, is it possible to have a partial, anything partial, ultimately you may take steps, but ultimately healing itself is not partial. It has to be whole to be what it is. And if you have a death wish in your mind, you would want it to be whole to show you that the death wish is not real. Not sometimes. Not partially unreal, but completely unreal. So this movie is going to be a trip. I think it's going to be a trip. I think I've showed this movie very rarely, but I remember when Kirsten first came over from New Zealand, I think she came to the peace house, and after a while I showed her this movie. And when we were finished, before she went to bed that night, I said, how are you doing? She said, I'm disturbed. This movie disturbed her. And that's good. If it disturbs you, or even seems to disturb you, it means there's something in the mind that needs to get flushed up into awareness. But she said that about a number of movies. I showed her anger management, which is a comedy, and she was disturbed by that one too. She was really upset at the way that Adam Samler's character was treated in that movie. But the second time through she wasn't disturbed. She was, she really could see the value of everything being there for the healing. So I think we'll have a good discussion after this movie. And I may again pause it, but basically it's going to be, we'll mostly play through. Okay, we're ready Pete. It's called the butterfly effect. So I'm going to start to use this movie a little bit for just instructions on how the mind works. Memories that have been judged as so dark and so horrific are pushed out of awareness, pushed down to the subconscious. And you probably know that with people that you know have gone through like sexual abuse or childhood sexual abuse, it tends to seem to affect them the rest of their life, or at least until they're able to start to get in touch with the memories, bring them up into awareness and work on forgiveness, forgiveness of the memories. So in this movie, we're seeing that acted out in kind of graphic ways where we've seen it through the childhood experiences. And now he was told by his therapist to write everything down in as much detail as possible. But he just when he reads the recollections that he's written down, it brings those memories up. And a lot of us can relate to that when we start going back over certain memories, you know, we start to feel the emotions sometimes in great detail as if we're still there, how are those memories. This is showing how the mind works. Imagine that if you could get into the subconscious mind that there is a memory, not of these kind of horrific scenes, but a memory of separating from God, separating from your source. That memory is would be so horrific that these kind of memories would pale in comparison to a memory of separating from your source. And when we go through healing, we have to start to realize that all the stuff that we perceive that's happening in terms of the surface, the ego has made up a world in which there seems to be causes and effects. And these traumatic experiences are because of causes, like this young boy who seems to be pretty wild and pretty ego driven in the sense of there are these memories and he seems to be at the center of a lot of these things. But remember the quote that I started off by saying, I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience and I decide upon the goal I would achieve and everything that seems to happen to me I ask for and receive as I have asked. This is pointing to the idea that we have to go deep enough inside, we have to raise up the shadow, we have to allow the spirit to reinterpret all of the memories in a new light. And so this this movie right away is is reminding the mind of the power of the mind and he we're seeing how he these are memories that he has pushed completely out of awareness in order to function. It's a defense mechanism. This is an extreme example of that repression and denial that we've been talking about. And yet this is the same kind of process that everyone must go through to be healed. You have to there are some horrific memories and horrific emotions that he just couldn't deal with psychologically and they've just been pushed out of awareness. So we're going to begin to see here that he's going to try to come up with some strategies but but the main strategy and this is a strategy that sometimes therapists try to use where they try to redo the memories. But what of course the miracle is saying it's not there's no amount of redoing the memories trying to reconfigure the memories that will solve the problem. We have to get down to the root belief that's underneath all these horrific memories. We have to go through the darkness to find the light because not only has the horrific memory of separation from God been pushed out of awareness but something far deeper than that memory of separation from God is underneath that and that's the love of God and that's why we have to go through the darkness to get back to that love. That's why healing involves so much intensity around emotions that we were talking about earlier. It takes great willingness really courage to start to allow what was pushed out of awareness to come back into awareness so it can be exposed and released. So as we move on to this movie we're going to see his attempt to deal with this trauma and this emotional trauma that he's dealing with and part of the teaching value of this movie is just to see what works and what doesn't work and we're going to see it playing out in very extreme version of what we were talking about earlier this morning of trying to change the world or change the memories in order to find a solution. Okay, very good. Wasn't that wonderful? What a ride. If you listen to what he was doing you know he was trying to redo everything over and over and over and over again because he believed what? What did he believe in order to make this attempt to keep redoing things? That those things really happened. He believed those things really happened. Okay, that's one. That they required change. That he could change the world. Anything else? He could make it better. He could make it better. He believed that. Wow. Wow, that's great. Anything else? He believed he was responsible for everybody's state. He was personally responsible. Personally responsible. He kept trying to change, juggle it around like a kaleidoscope and keep turning it around and around but let's look at it in terms of cause and effect because you know if you study science cause and effect if you look at the way that things seem to operate in this world any discipline in this world it doesn't matter which discipline you study in academia even regular physics for every action there's a reaction everything could you could you make some brownies unless you had beliefs in cause and effect could you do anything without beliefs in cause and effect see that's how sneaky the ego it's made up a world where the causes come before the effects people that would say you crazy if you thought the effects come before the cause they say yeah you got it backwards in fact even in time it seems like events from the past think of Sigmund Freud does anybody ever remember that Freudian Oedipus complex and all these things you did when you were a child is supposed to influence your human development anybody ever take any human development classes what do you think all that's based on what do you think all human development is based on what do you think every discipline in this world is based on it's based on the belief that there are causes and effects could you run a business could you do the books could you do accounting without beliefs in cause and effect and what if the cause doesn't come before the effect this is the butterfly effect but what i'm asking is what if the cause doesn't come before the effect what if they're together what if cause and effect are together there don't exist as separate things what what if we'll say they're simultaneous instead of one before the other what if they're simultaneous two thousand years ago jesus spoke the words i and the father are one what if christ was the effect and god was the cause and cause and effect are actually together and have always been together what if christ could never leave heaven what if the effect could never turn to the cause and say i'm out of here what if it was impossible to split the cause the divine cause and the divine effect see that's what this world is it's the belief that christ can leave the father that the son can leave the father that the that the effect can leave the cause and then as soon as you have that belief that ideas can leave their source that the christ idea can leave the mind of god that means cause and effect are separate and the ego then says okay and then we'll just project them out and we'll split them apart and we'll make up an alternate world of hypotheticals in which all of these hypotheticals the cause comes before the effect an unreal world of false causes and false effects that have no reality whatsoever an entire fabricated cosmos what seems to be billions and trillions of lifetimes all generated from one error the belief that the effect could leave the cause now let's bring it around there was a guy back in the 60s he lived before that but he decided to become more well around the 60s is anybody ever remember the psychologist abraham meslow you ever heard that name abraham meslow he's the guy who invented the pyramid the hierarchy of needs and he said that there are basic needs at the bottom that you have to meet and then you go up and you meet higher needs and higher needs and then needs for you know love and then you you move up and what was at the top of the pyramid is anybody remember self actualization transcendence being values reaching the actual that's like self realization it sounds like yoga nanda only in psychological terms self actualization knowing who you are doesn't that sound like the ancient greeks know thyself the ancient greeks the deep teachings of the ancient greeks were saying that's the pinnacle and what and how did meslow come to his theories what did he do does anybody know what he how he kind of did his research he experimented with dogs didn't he that was pavlov stimulus of that's false cause and effects stimulus in response no that's not a good example it's the wrong guy no abraham meslow what he decided to do he had seen Freud and he knew all about science everything but he had this feeling is what if people inside their deepest core what if they were good what if everyone was good he had that assumption and so he decided in medical science why are we always studying the diseases in psychology why do we study the psychotics why do we study the schizophrenic where are we going if we're trying to study the ill and trying to find solutions by studying the sick people he's the first one that comes along and goes we've got this all back we should be studying the healthiest the happiest the most loving the most joyful people we can get our hands on and of course he started studying anyone talking to anyone who was happy that he could find he was looking at people some of you know there's a president in the united states called franklin delinor roosevelt and he had an amazing wife called elinor roosevelt he studied her he started studying the most amazing people he could find and he said why stop with just the ones that are living he started to dig into the history books and find the most amazing people throughout all of history and study their characteristics and what he discovered was that the happiest most joyful people were spontaneous spontaneous isn't that an amazing researcher instead of studying the sick people i remember when i was reading it i was like my heart was leaping up like this guy's amazing after centuries he's studying the healthy people instead of the sick people doesn't that sound sane to you i thought this guy sounds sane to me and and i wanted to know how he developed his theory so i was fascinated so anyway he found out they were spontaneous he found out they they had this sense of self love and self worth and he also found out that for the self actualizing people they had the sense that means and and were together isn't that an interesting characteristic that he found he found he did a lot of research but he he was he was searching for happiness how why are these people so happy and why are they so spontaneous when the rest of everybody seems to be caught up into planning and striving and going for success and always future oriented and these people are happy he found they were spontaneous and for them the means and ends were not separate what does that mean the happiest painters weren't concerned about the paintings it was the joy of painting they had no future goal the happiest and the most wonderful athletes were in the zone in the joy of the moment playing their tennis or their basketball or whatever they were in the joy in the glee of the game think about children how children are in the glee of the game they're not so interested in keeping score timeline they're not so interested in winning remember we had sayings that they would tell us sometimes it's not whether you win or lose but it's how you play the game ah mezzo found it means and ends were together that gives us a clue that's exactly what a course of miracles is pointing to Jesus is saying that's it the holy instant now you've heard things like well everything that you ever have done in this lifetime have brought you to this moment you ever heard that one yeah it's not true it's not true everything you've ever done is the past and the past can never bring you to this moment what if none of us ever existed till right now none of us existed until right now why because cause and effect are together this is a simultaneous universe and all the seeming lifetimes in past life regressions and reincarnation and everything we ever seem to do and everything we ever will do are hypotheticals and what's the hypothetical as if that's a hypothetical and this whole cosmos is a hypothetical and every single memory in time and space it involves objects and persons and places and separate things are all hypothetical this entire cosmos only seems to exist as if the separation occurred but what if it didn't what if it's actually actually impossible to separate from God what if as Jesus says I am still as God created me what if I am still spirit that's a workbook lesson I am spirit it's a very short workbook lesson from A Course in Miracles and it's reiterated I am as God created me it's reiterated I am the holy Son of God what that's true what if I'm the holy effect of the holy cause and I've never left the holy cause and all of these memories of time and space are a trick if they're interpreted as separate and there's another way of seeing them all united now we've had science for centuries and most of us were raised when we went to school and we read our science books what is the science that we learned Newtonian we were all raised with Newtonian science and what if the underpinnings the foundation the basis of Newtonian science is completely false science that says their cause comes before the effect what if that's false science says that the world exists apart from consciousness what if that's false that's basically what quantum physics is showing us for the last seven decades we need to pay attention the first discoveries of quantum physics seven decades ago was the finding that you can't get the experimenter out of the experiment that the mind of the experimenter determines the experiment that the empirical method the scientific method that we were all taught so precious to ever question the scientific method what if the scientific method was false that there never has been an empirical external world apart from our consciousness that everything we see is a reflection and look at the movie everything that he had unresolved in his mind was just playing out over and over and over every single scenario that he was calling upon with all those memory flashes was just a motion picture of consciousness a consciousness that believed in separation and no matter how many times he tried to rearrange the cosmic wheel even karma has aspects of cause and effect played out over linear time until the great quantum physicist John Lennon of the Beatles came along do you know he did a song called instant karma John Lennon wrote a song channeled a song called instant karma now he's undoing Indian philosophy the Beatles are undoing Indian philosophy instant karma is going to get you going to knock you off your feet better recognize your brother everyone you meet why in the world are we here you don't have to live in pain and fear and why on earth are you there when you're everywhere everywhere John John John John that's the whole point this has been coming through to us through quantum physics through John Lennon it's been coming through the course it's becoming through non-dual teachings that this whole cosmos is a fabrication as we talked earlier it's an invention and why is it an invention because it's based on the belief that cause and effect are separate even this morning when you were talking about 30 years ago married and then this nagging thing that there's something higher that you're called to but you can't quite put your finger on what it is and doing counseling doing relationship counseling and and not having a long term relationship and feeling like there was a sense of failure like something's gone wrong but the underpinnings of the whole cosmos are wrong the whole linear cosmos that's what's wrong it's not that you personally have done something wrong it has to be that that there's another way of looking at the world that's so high that's this higher perspective it's the tippy top of consciousness that's what Jesus calls above the battle ground that that is so high that you just realize wow I never ever ever did anything wrong and I never ever ever did anything right because why I never never ever did anything if it's all this moment there's no doer and if there's no doer there's no guilt because the ego always pins the guilt on the body what the body did wrong what the body should have done in the movie it should have been different it should have been better I should have should have done something and he kept replaying replaying replaying with this memory ability to the head trying to set the world right trying to find happiness in the forms trying to make the world a better place and then suddenly once we see that that's not the answer then suddenly Jesus's words take on new meaning seek not to change the world seek rather to change your mind about the world that's the gateway back to eternity I've heard so many people tell me over the years I just want to go home and they're not talking about a house I want to go home this is not my home I don't feel safe here I don't feel loved here I want to go home I have some kind of deep memory of love and light and it's in there and I've got to find it I have to experience it again I'll do whatever it takes to experience that deep memory that's that's been pushed away that's been buried buried underneath all these other images memories of images so yeah I think this this movie is only disturbing to the ego and it's quite a joyful movie when when you see it from a spiritual perspective like wow okay spirit unveil show me the light unbreak my heart show me my wholeness isn't that spectacular when you think of it you know because then what does that give you permission to do it gives you permission from this day forward to live from the motivation of love not from fear because fear is always what fear of consequences is it there's future consequences I'll have to I'll pay that feeling we have I'm going to pay for this whatever it is oh no oh no nobody's paying not an instant karma nobody pays there's no future cost there's no future price there literally is no future how would you live your life if there was no tomorrow how would you live your life if this was the only instant would you do things that you don't feel inspired about why what would be the point if somebody came up to you and said here's what you should do you could have a good laugh I'm not going to shit on myself anymore I'm not going to shit on myself no way life's too precious that was the big shift in my life was when I started to say I want to live from a motivation of love and inspiration and I'm I'm going to do that I'm not going to play the games of the world for some kind of future reward why do people oftentimes work at jobs that they really don't like or they hate except for a future reward whatever that may be a paycheck and then when you read the course of miracles Jesus will say that in this world people do meaningless things so that they can earn money to spend it on things that they don't want or even need and then they just keep doing it again and again he's describing insanity he's in describing start raving madness the mind that's forgotten that it's it lives in heaven and now believes in lack and separation and is doing things that it doesn't really want to do or doesn't even need to do and then it shouldn't be surprising why there's depression if that belief system is held to be real depression would be an outcome of that why is suicide the number one cause of death on the planet you know there's got to be some sadness and some frustration underneath suicide being the number one cause of death this is not inspiration underneath that or these strange phenomenas we have like in japan where groups of teenagers will go out in a van and and it's commit group suicides and you start to look at well what kind of planet is this when we have teenagers committing group suicides there's something off there's something fishy that's what i always said when i was growing up they would say what what do you think about the world david i said there's something fishy about this place and i don't know what it is yet but i said i'm going to find it whatever the fishiness is something smells and i'm going to get to the bottom of it and with the course of miracles yeah oh yes you can get to the bottom of that one and not only get to the bottom of it escape from it find the sweet smell of heaven the scent of freedom the scent of innocence and joy now there's a scent you can follow the scent of the spirit all of the scent you know that's what this really is and so that's what this whole retreat this week's about is once you begin to get the slightest glimmering that you are not imprisoned you are not a slave except by your own belief except by your own thoughts that's the only thing that can imprison you people can't imprison you society can't imprison you the world can't imprison you because it's not outside it's not going on outside it's just thoughts and beliefs and you can change the way that you think you can actually change the way that you believe you can accept forgiveness as a belief instead of a belief in false cause and effect being separate that's the answer forgiveness is the answer because it shows that they're together that's why Jesus will say forgive your brother for what he did not do you see how different that is from worldly forgiveness forgiving somebody for what they did or what they didn't do that you thought they should should should have done that's not forgiveness jesus wrote a book called song of prayer and he when you when you believe someone's done you wrong and somehow you're going to bless them but they've actually done you wrong jesus has a word he has a phrase for that he calls that forgiveness to destroy he's he's going to call it like it is and he's not is not forgiveness it's you think somebody has actually done you wrong and you've got to forgive them then you you believe in forgiveness to destroy so to me this is great this is where where is all this heading it's coming back to that divine guidance it's coming back calling upon the Holy Spirit what would you have me do what would you have me say where would you have me go you know it's it's opening up to say you know the way out of the maze or in the case of we have a labyrinth here you know the way out of the labyrinth and there's no human being that knows the way out of the labyrinth because the human being is a construct that was made up on false cause effect beliefs how do we know that the human being is a construct because the human being has what a beginning and an end which comes first the beginning which comes second the end what is the the cause of a human being if you go back to conception reproduction conception procreation the cause of procreation and the effect us let's go back to our biology class sperm and the egg come together effect voila human being human doing that will come perhaps in the in the womb just a little bit of breathing and moving a little doing but it will it will go much further so it's you see even if we go back to the basics of procreation it's false cause and effect the cause of birth and then what do they do when someone dies on this planet they look for what the cause of death what killed them if especially someone to blame if blame the environment blame the radiation blame pollution the food and what if they they died with a bullet in their skull we try to find the murder weapon and the murderer you see egg of the christie all the murder mysteries you know it's all based on one thing separate cause and effect again if we're talking about jesus what did jesus say what are what do the red words again have to tell us about cause and effect i am the alpha and the omega the beginning and the end haha the red words have got it again the red words come through with the solution they're there it was eternity speaking that's that's a way using the things of time and space to say i'm both and in eternity there really is no beginning and end but that's what miracles do they they collapse time they bring you back to the present moment they they bring the illusory past in the future back together in in a moment of release and we had a question today about is there anything partial well miracles are like time collapses that bring the seeming alpha and the omega together but ultimately the atonement will show you that that there that cause and effect have never been a part that's what the atonement is that's what we've been talking about here so this is a time of great rejoicing what if we never existed before this moment that's a line from what movie in my movie watchers collection what if we never existed before this moment it's trivia it's movie watchers guide look no wasn't solaris what if we never existed before this moment no i'll give you the next line what if we never existed before this moment what if someone just wanted us to believe that we did dark city dark city where the husband and the wife are at the glass the prison what if we what if we never existed before this moment he says to his wife seemingly like like there's no we have no past what if we don't have any past because she in the in the movie dark city she believes she's committed adultery and she feels so much guilt because she believes she committed adultery and she's there and he's in prison they're behind glass and they're talking to each other and he looks at he leans in and looks at her she's full of guilt for seemingly believing she committed adultery and he leans in and he looks at her and he goes you didn't do it you didn't do it wow that's deep that's deep you didn't do it imagine that with anyone you've ever had a grievance with your worst grievance ever you get to come together face to face you get to lean in and smile at him and go you didn't do it i did it to myself that's our quote we started with i am responsible for what i see i choose the feelings i experience and i decide upon the goal i would achieve and everything that seems to happen to me i ask for and receive as i have asked now that is in a deeper meaning after that movie so i did nothing and that's the point i did a lot of things but i could never i could never define the goal because i was too afraid to almost to move because i knew everything i created these things and that's what the course taught me you create everything and i know remember we can't we'll come back to that because that's what we were talking about this morning like let's say you had a sense that that nothing was ever really done to you but you still felt a fear like a paralysis like it was it was so immense to take a step as almost i didn't trust myself to make the right step so it was no step in a way just things that you know i've raised my family and my career and but the critical thing that i really wanted i was terrified to move on which was the relationship because i didn't trust myself and then earlier today you mentioned this still was like a fear of the holy spirit see this is what happens it's a fear yeah this yeah it's like and i couldn't trust the spirit and i couldn't trust me yeah there's no one who you have self doubt you don't trust the spirit and yet the spirit is the way out of the labyrinth yeah you know that's the only way out so so let's say the spirit is sending you this guidance and sending you this loving instruction and saying here like in the matrix i can help you but you must do exactly as i say this what morpheus tells neil i can help you but you must do exactly as i say stand up and neil goes what now do it slowly they're coming for you he stands up and there are all these agents like the spirits there morpheus is there guiding him but what if we're too afraid of the spirit what if we're too attached to form we're too attached to family we're too attached to jobs we're too attached to possessions we're too attached to the body we're too attached to bank accounts we're too attached to pride what concepts we're too attached to concepts and here comes a loving voice of the holy spirit saying i can help you and i think i wanted the the answer in a form. And yet I knew it wasn't going to be a form. And it's like, oh, God, I don't know what it's going to look like. It'll be pretty scary. Well, I think, of course, the Holy Spirit can use what the ego made. So when we get guidance from the Holy Spirit, it will involve words and forms. Call so and so. Go here, do this. That's what Morpheus did. You know, Morpheus just didn't say, to Neo, but escaping the dream seems to be to move beyond form. It is. That's the direction. But what if you're so addicted to form and so addicted to specifics that the Spirit has to use the form and the specifics to unwind you out of the form of specifics? It would be like having an interview with a fish and telepathically communicating with the fish, get out of the water. And the fish is like, what? What is that? And because it's so a part of its life and environment that it doesn't even know what water is. You know, there is no sense of get out of the water, get out of what? I don't understand the question. You see, the thing about it is, Jesus says, there are many answers you have received but have not heard. If you're too afraid to hear the Holy Spirit, if you think the Holy Spirit will take away the little that your little fingertips are holding on to, if you're too afraid of losing or sacrificing what you think you already have and already are, you're not going to want to hear a voice that whispers, you are more. You are far, far, far more than you can see, the concepts you hold about yourself. You are way beyond those concepts. But the Spirit will still be practical and that's what we call guidance. You know, that's why for me the last 30 years with the Course and all the different people I've worked with and everything, we always work with prayer. We always work with guidance. We pray together. We pray together. Pray, pray, pray because we have to receive the instructions to be done through. You don't go from being a doer to being a spirit. You go from being a doer to being done through by spirit. Remember St. Francis? Lord make me what? An instrument. St. Francis' prayer was like, let me tune in to be done through. Lord make me an instrument. If you don't jump from being a body to being a spirit, that would be being hurled, hurled into reality. You come from a body to a body that is done through. Let the Holy Spirit be the puppet master. Let the Holy Spirit use the body. So we can't skip over that phase and that's been absolutely essential. For me initially with the Course, after I read it for about two and a half or three years and then I started to get direct instructions from Jesus of do this and very, very specific direct instructions, that's when I started to make spiritual progress because I was allowing myself to be done through. I, in the parable of David, David was so shy that the first step was for me to open up to listen to Jesus and then after I began doing that then Jesus said, now I want to speak through you. And that was scary because of the shyness, you know, it was like it's one thing to hear it but then to give your body over to be spoken through that's just another form of surrender. It's like you have to keep surrendering more and more and more to the spirit. Surrendering what? Surrendering control. There was a song, some of you heard of Frank Sinatra? He had a song called My Way with its own. One time I was traveling doing gatherings and I heard he collapsed and fell over face first on the stage while he was singing, guess what song? He had the microphone he was singing, I did it my way. Boom! The ego tripped over its own words. We're asked to do it thy way, not my way, thy. What is your will for me? Thy way. You see there's a big difference between egoic my way and thy way. That's the whole difference. So you're onto it because that's what we were saying this morning. You were saying, yeah I'm a little afraid to hear what the Holy Spirit is going to tell me. What is that guidance? That's it. You got onto it because the ego is not so much afraid of the means that the Holy Spirit will give you. The ego is afraid of the end because if you accept the correction then the ego is out of business. So the ego doesn't want you moving even in that direction. It wants you to stay stuck. Yes, you're here. That's it. That's a great testimony. You're here. You're here. That's a symbol. I have this feeling that all the time it's be ready, be ready. Everything in my life is ready. I'm ready. And that's exactly what she said. Don't be ready. What did she say? Say I am ready. I am. I am. It's like I am now. It's now. Don't keep waiting for this. It will be. I will be ready. I will be ready. I think that's what I must have been saying. I will be ready. Just say I am ready. I am now. And that's you. I have to be now. It is now. Again, the reason why we pass a microphone, well, it's just because we share our insights here with the whole universe and the universe wants to hear the questions. The biggest complaint I get from my audios is I can't hear the question. And I say, well, that's a forgiveness lesson. Yes, I've listened to your audios and I'm forgiving every one of those people who don't use the microphone. So that's why we do in case anybody wants to know. I also want to understand this forgiveness process of course in medical. We says I forgive so and so because he never did it. So in my mind, the memory of the past still flashes. You know, I can't get rid of it. You know, I certainly can't get rid of it. So something which happened, somebody did something to me. It does flash. So when I say I forgive so and so because it never occurred. In my mind, what I'm letting go of is the is the mental attachment or a meaning I gave to that that incident which occurred in past. So the only way I can see I forgive myself and forgive that person. It never occurred is that if I break the mental, umbilical cord with that incident, I have not figured out in my own head stopping the past memory flashing into my head. Like it just, boom, it just flashes. Like even watching this movie, a lot of past memories, similar sort of incidents flashed in my head and I'm giving it to Holy Spirit and I'm saying, great is coming up and here you go. I put it on the altar. That's what I was doing throughout the movie. Something pops up. I'm saying, great. So is that is that's what when we say never occurred? When I was in your house, we visited, we had a lot of interesting discussions, but let's just even leave the course out of it for a minute and let's just talk about non duality. Because we can meet with non duality. Now non duality is is saying that there's not two. That's at VEDA, means not two. Yes. That's what it means. Now if I would say that you always have the power of interpretation. In other words, okay let's say a memory flashes into your mind. You always have the power of interpretation, even of the memory. So what you're really asking for when you say I haven't figured out how. I still see the memory and I still have the feelings of something being done, we'll say done to you in the past or whatever. What you have to have to have that interpretation you're describing is if there's been something in a memory that's been done to you. There is someone who's doing it and there's someone who's being done to. You see there's two. Yes. There always has to be the one who's the perpetrator, the victimizer, the one who's doing it and then there's the victim. There's the one who is who is done to. So in that false interpretation again it's cause and effect apart and it's there are two there and there's always an action being done to somebody and somebody's being done to. And so what forgiveness does is just shows the impossibility of that. Even when people are we'll say they're vegetarians and they say I don't believe in violence and I don't believe in killing. Well the belief is that there is actually killing occurring in form like animals that are being murdered and killed slaughtered and eaten. And so the ones who are doing the killing of the animals are the ones who are the killers and the animals are the victims of the killers. And it doesn't matter even if we looked at human relationships to like even some one person frowning at another person and another person seemingly being very upset at the frown. There's the perpetrator the frowner and then there's the one who's being frowned upon. You see that dualistic interpretation is conflictual and it's egoic. There's a lens that has split the world into good and bad and right and wrong and this person and that person and even a me and a you, even a subject and an object or an observer and observed that's still duality. So the Vedas, the ancient teachings of India are non-dual. They are purely non-dual and what we are doing is we're coming into an experience of that non-dual awareness, that non-dual perception. That's what the Course is doing as well as those other great teachings. So if we come back to the simplicity is you a memory flashes and you have a feeling there's a charge. There's a charge still there. The charge is coming from the interpretation. Yes. The charge can't be coming from the memory itself. It's the interpretation. So if you see that then you're starting to reclaim the power of your mind. You're starting to empower yourself by going hmm there must be another way of looking at this. There's a beautiful line in the Course in Miracles where Jesus says beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. Basically he's saying it's a temptation because only the ego sponsors the interpretation that mistreatment has occurred. But if everything's simultaneous and cause and effect together then nobody's doing anything to anybody. And also we can start to eliminate morality and ethics because there ultimately can not be a right and wrong in form or a right and wrong in behavior because it's all misperception as long as my attention's on the body. God didn't create the body. The ego invented the body to dump its guilt on. And most of us have obviously have grown up with hearing things from parents and teachers and sometimes even from priests and rabbis and whatever. You know one of the things I heard you know was growing up was you should be ashamed of yourself. Really now as a holy child of God I should be ashamed of myself. But these are the words. You should be ashamed of yourself. Another thing that I kept hearing I heard it so often when I was younger that I actually thought that this was my last name. I heard David Don't. I thought my name was David Don't because that's all I heard. David Don't, David Don't. Then I finally get to A Course in Miracles and Jesus's teaching is do only that. Jesus teaches don't negate people by saying don't. Live it. Live the truth. Demonstrate the love and let go of the don't. Don't, don't, don't. You know that every time that there was a don't that was the ego doing the don't. Jesus if you look at his commandments love the Lord thy God with all my heart and soul might and love your neighbor as yourself. There's not a don't in there. It starts off with love. He's teaching and then more than teaching he demonstrates. Yeah this is the way you do it and I've heard parents say well that actually is I don't think that's gonna work in my household but it has to work. I mean it has to be possible that we can purify our hearts and purify our mind and live by love and be a living demonstration of love. That's how the parents you know St. Augustine headed years ago he said love and do what you will. That was a very profound statement from St. Augustine. So you start to see that you always have the power of interpretation that's probably the most simple direct thing you could think of. Whenever that memory flashes and you still have a charge there say ah I still retain the power of interpretation and then you ask for help in reinterpreting. So today that's exactly my my thing is that I tonight I had I must have been interpreted in a different tonight because I can tell you I would not have been able to watch that movie four months ago. I would have walked up in first five minutes literally. I had a similar movie we had a movie nights in our house and I think Mel played some movie and I had great difficulty I walked out of that and I just couldn't. Why? Because I was interpreting the memory flashes in my head the same old way as if something was done to me. Tonight the very fact I'm still sitting here after watching that in my egoic way a very horrible movie and you said you know custom was disturbed I was definitely you know it's a disturbing movie but I'm still here that that in effect proves that my interpretation is changed and I was I was when I was watching that I was just taking it like a happening it's just nothing is in fact happening it's just on that screen as you said this morning some shadows and this thing is going on and I am not identifying with that it's just because identified then I'll be I'll be sharing breaks all the second one she said I am here and you're saying I'm still here that you see that is that exactly yes the point that's the testimony yeah that's the determination underneath that's the I am ready yes you have a desire you have a desire to forgive this is it is there and this is a testimony right now right now this is a testimony to that desire it's really wonderful yeah so so it is then that so forgiveness to me then as you said the prayer that I am I must have caused it or I think what's the prayer the last time you saying I if I have received it then I must have asked for it that means the responsibility lies with me and hence I can then really I'm not I'm just forgiving myself then because in a non-dual sense then at the end of the day I am forgiving my own self is that right yeah the response when you say me though it's not a personal me you're bringing responsibility back to the mind and that's spectacular when yeah when we can start to bring everything back to the mind and say I I claim responsibility for my state of mind I don't claim responsibility for for Sinji for David that'd be a heck of a thing to try to do but if I can claim responsibility for my state of mind I mean haven't we all been inspired by books or movies where the main character or the author rose above the difficulties and the challenges I remember many many years ago when I was in university I think I found this book was Victor Frankl man's search for meaning and about how he would he could choose his state of mind in a concentration camp and I'm thinking oh my gosh I thought he experienced anything like a concentration camp but if he can choose his state of mind if he can choose to be peaceful in a concentration camp then I can choose to be peaceful in whatever university class I'm at that I don't like or relationship that I'm struggling with I can choose it too if he can choose it in a concentration camp that inspires us when we see people medalla delsa medalla inspired me Mahatma Gandhi that inspired me when I watched Gandhi I was like my heart was exploding I was like whoa that's powerful Yogananda you know you could just go on Jesus and that's very very inspiring one thing I just want to finish what you just don't cause an effect the very first thing I learned from the Vedas non-duality is the first thing that DJs cause an effect and they say they are three laws to the logic of spirituality the effect is not separate from cause effect is nothing but cause appearing in different forms and if you remove the cause nothing remains and that's exactly what you just explained that cause and effect are together they cannot be separate like the ego is just a false cause in the mind and once you pluck yes false cause out everything disappears the whole house of cards it just comes down yeah when that ego is plucked out of there thank you thank you that's beautiful wow that's fantastic deep deep stuff talk about food for thought or food for to go digest this say okay Holy Spirit keep it coming in my dreams I'm on a roll tonight I want to keep rolling with this glorious freedom innocence that's also why we started at 6 30 so you're gonna get a good night sleep and be ready for all those things what is it 7 7 40 with Tai Chi or meditation and then 9 o'clock like today and we do our breakout groups same spot same people apparently and then 10 10 o'clock is it 10 30 in here with David and all the messages and know just like we did this morning just all two sessions opportunities to express yeah yeah okay thank you thank you for coming thank you for showing up thank you for being here right they're not going thank you for staying