 listening and following really trying to understand how to be guided like when you're navigating in the illusion and you come up against a fork in the road and you're not sure if you should go right or left or if it really matters which way you go. Yeah the topic of guidance. Guidance and discernment really I talk a lot about discernment because you know when you seem to have a lot of branches of the road you know it seems to be important to really be tuned in and discerning and there's a section in the Course in Miracles called the real alternative where Jesus makes some very blunt and kind of profound statements and one of the statements is that all of the roadways of the world leads to death and so it starts to put it a whole different twist and perspective on this idea of choosing which way to go here and there and I think for most human beings there does come those points along the journey where there seems to be a bit of disillusionment like it's like you still want to throw the towel in like oh no not another dead end. A lot of the roads that we seem to take as we travel along this journey they seem to be kind of they mean they seem to start pretty good but then the more you follow them out it's like my left hold in the bag again you know it's like another trick it just didn't bring fulfillment there seems to be so many roadways where there's distractions or he says in the Course on some roads you travel along Gaily for a while you know before the sadness or the bitterness the harshness comes in so to me it's like working with the Course what it does is it starts to expose ego self-concept goals and I think when you're talking about guidance and decision-making and and wanting to be clear on you know which which branch to take on it in a practical level as you're flowing through a daily life the best teaching I found it in the world and everything I've come across and really in the Course is back as you work towards the end of the text called the rules for decision which is almost like a practical mind-training course in decision-making and guidance where basically you're told to start off with making a decision of the kind of day that you want to experience you know really honing in on that really focusing on that whatever however it comes you a peaceful day a free day a loving day a free-flowing day and then coming in with number two which is you know if I make no decisions by myself this is the day that will be given me and then when you get into the rest of the rules for decisions those are more when you've you've you've come off the beam you've come off of you've actually forgotten one and two and you've been distracted into something else and then you have to try to get back to the original alignment and that's where three four five six and seven come in you know it's actually he says more difficult to come back after you've gotten off but that's part of the mind training you know to to really have the determination to come back so I had a conversation with Jesus one time when I was going through rules for decision because I was like you can we get a little bit clearer on this some of these rules and I'm particularly interested in this in this getting off the beam what's going on here how am I allowing myself to get distracted and away from my purpose of my alignment and I remember reading in that section where he was saying well when you are doing this you're basically asking a question by yourself and I was like okay asking a question by myself can you can you give me a little more concrete answer than that it seems a little alright and basically saying you forgot what to decide you forgot to stay with your original decision for the kind of day that you wanted and asking a question by yourself is an example of not letting not deciding with the Holy Spirit in other words autonomously asking a question that really doesn't have anything to do with the purpose or being on the beam it's like a distracting question I'm sorry I said to Jesus oh say okay still though it doesn't you're giving something a little bit more than asking a question by yourself now I wish I could be more specific about that you know what are you talking about and he said okay well an example of a question that you're asking by yourself takes you off the beam he said I'll give you the I'll give you the content of it you asked this question many times a day in different forms but I'll give you the basic content of your distracting question so that would be good if I could just get the content of it maybe I could start to recognize some of the tricks and the forms and I said okay give me give it to me what is it what am I asking when I get off the beam and he said well the question you're asking by yourself is of these illusions which do I prefer oh so that starts to help a bit turns up you actually start to go hmm you start to see that well there's a preference structure there it's an ego preference structure and underneath this ego preference structure there is an identity there you know I like whatever Earl gray tea you know I like my hot dogs with mustard on or I like vegetarian food with Indian spices or I like bright warm sunny days more than cool misty rainy days you know sexual preferences climate preferences food preferences you know across the gamut you start to see that there's this ego identity that has all these preferences and these preference systems in there and how easy it is to get distracted away from really wanting a truly peaceful loving joyful day by getting off on a wild goose chase chasing down some preference system thinking that if I get what I prefer then I'll have a happy day and he was like saying this is exactly how your mind's working you know you're you get off into these distractions it could be the simplest seeming tiniest things like I know for years ago I remember getting up and and I would be living in a hermitage and meditating and making some organic gardens and occasionally I would rototill or cut the grass or something but it would be like one day getting up to do some rototilling to you know get the garden ready and then the rototiller doesn't start and then you change the spark plugs and you do all the things that you learn from your past learning to get the thing to start in it the darn thing you know it's not starting and as you go through the day I'm doing my course lessons and everything the thing is still not starting not starting you try a few more things the gasoline starts leaking out here and then at some point as the frustrations and irritation start to a bill as you're getting annoyed as the afternoon is passing the day is passing you can't get the rototiller started then you know it's like Jesus comes into your mind and says so you believe that in order to have a happy day the rototiller must start yes then you have to start to look at why it's so important to have a machine start really really why is it is it a matter of happiness or or not you know to have a machine starting and then when you start to trace it in a bit you follow the roots in a bit you can start to see that that there's a self-concept operating down there under the surface and there's rules and beliefs about what must occur in a day you know to be happy and Jesus is saying not so you know choose with me align with the spirit and and see how things will get taken care of and how you will release these expectations and these false self-concept beliefs and these ego goals that you have set up to as part of a belief system that the only way you can have a peaceful loving happy day is to achieve these outcomes in form and could be you know being a good mom or a good dad you know remembering to pick your child up at school you know you start to get lose your peace oh my god I forgot I was supposed to be there at four o'clock or you have so many things to do on your to-do list and you start to miss a few of them and it starts to impinge on your self ideas of your self-worth of being a good employee a good manager a good mother a good father a good sibling you know a good citizen you know you get you got the to-do list you're going around trying to get all your things done you you run a red lighter you run a stop sign but you don't even know you're running a stop sign until the flashing lights and siren behind you what rolled on the window what what I got too many things to do for this sir you just ran a stop sign I did I mean you know it's then you feel a little bit of irritation coming up like I don't have time to deal with the ticket or to talk to this officer or whatever I got too much to do you see the time pressure then coming in why is important to get the whole to-do list done there has to be an identity underneath that pushing that driving that it's not the spirit the spirit's not in there telling you get this whole to-do list done or you won't make it back to heaven you know that's just not the way the Holy Spirit works it's the undoing of these concepts and these beliefs that are driving the mind and once we start to loosen from these and we let them we let the Holy Spirit work through us then we go from being the doer to being done through and then we relax more the stress level goes down our trust level goes up and we can hear more clearly that discernment go left go right not that not that left like in the matrix there's a door on your left your other left you know it's a humorous kind of GPS that just keeps nudging us you know towards what would be most helpful even when we go off and we make the so-called wrong turn the GPS just says in 200 yards turn left doesn't say you dummy you just missed the turn boning in just refining refining yeah