 Any topics of thickness or depth or I know we're talking about level, level of the mind, we can talk about that. Level confusion. Level confusion and or anything that you feel like you're going through you want to talk about we can do that. You want to talk about level confusion? We didn't talk about that and David also was saying he thought that we would talk about the ego and clarify some of that. What the ego is? What we think it is and what it really is. I was concerned with the reality aspect of the plan. Everybody's got the same 24 hours, everybody's got the same day. You have a good day and a bad day. You have a great day. And trying to, through the course, it's saying that this reality check, of course, our perception of reality is only one we perceive. It can be. And it is an illusion. And that's why everybody can have these different good days, bad days, great days and so forth. But it's my understanding that God and the Holy Spirit is fully aware of this illusion. Now, we not as a majority of folks out here might not believe that we have the separation. But God is fully aware that we're under this illusion. And at least this is what he's beginning of this, I think. I understand your illusion of this thing. And this is the reason this is one purpose of the book, is to work you back in or this atonement or getting back into this one. And that's tough. I'm having a real, maybe difficult time with my own personal illusion. But I'm having to deal with everybody else's at the same time. I don't know really how to come to get any real congruency with this thing. He's saying, what's real? What's real? You know, your day with this is real for you is mindless to me. It's all the same day. And working this in toward a, where we have a common basis, a common reality. A perception of reality. A common perception of reality. And that's a good point, because the reason we seem to have problems is because our perceptions are twisted and distorted. We were talking about looking through a lens. And if you're looking through a very dark lens, like it says in 1 Corinthians, you know, looking through a darkened glass, that you can't see clearly. And the course is saying that the only way we'll ever have consistent peace is when we have a healed perception or a true perception. But to go back to one of your earlier statements about God knowing about this. The Course basically says that God is infinite in spirit and everything. And God only, love only looks on itself. In other words, love, something that's infinite and eternal doesn't look on something that is finite and temporary. Now what the Course is saying is a sense that there's some passages where it kind of gives a sense that, like where it says, my child fleeced and I must awaken him, you know. So in a sense, it's kind of like the analogy that's been put forth of like a child, you're a parent and you have a child. And your child's been coughing and turning, seeming to have a nightmare. And as a parent, you don't know what the content of that nightmare is, you know. All you know is that your son seems to be coughing and turning. And that's the kind of a metaphor for God the Father. In the sense that he gave answer, he gave the Holy Spirit to the son to solve that. Now the Holy Spirit's the one who's aware of the illusion. In other words, he knows of our illusion being God's answer, like a messenger. But he doesn't believe that they're real. In other words, he's very clear that they're just illusions because he's kind of like anchored in heaven and he knows the true essence and the true reality of the son. So really, the Holy Spirit's got one of these functions. It's kind of, it's like a dual function because he's kind of got one foot in heaven and one foot in the illusion to help the son awaken. And in a sense, the Holy Spirit is in the mind and he's trying to work with the mind on giving up the false beliefs and the ideas. And that's the only way protection can be healed by giving up the false beliefs. That's just tough stuff to do with that. And you work on that at a constant. And I think in their case, when Nancy made a statement one time, you're driving down the road and maybe for a matter of seconds, you know, for just a second, you have a crystal clear, things become clear for you. Everything is right in the world. But then again, you call right, you know, everything is right. There's some sort of clarity about things. You might have some real insight in what's going on. Also when it just appears right away because all of a sudden it jumps, all of a sudden it goes, everything's kind of pushed in the way. And I'm trying to expand that crystal second. You know, I'm trying to expand that. And I didn't, I really don't know how to go about doing that very well as yet. I don't feel like I'm doing it. We'll talk about that tonight, because, you know, another thing that Dave's talking about, the ego, the ego is nothing more than the puff of madness, you know. The whole ego system is like a thought system. And the way it's described in the court is that every thought system, or the ego thought system is very logical. That's why it seems so sneaky, because one premise follows on another. But if anybody's studying any logic, the whole thought system is only as good as your first premise. You know, if you've got a false premise, then the whole thing is false. And that's what makes the ego so sneaky, is that it's the basic underlying premise of a thought system, is that it's possible, and you have separated from your creator, if it is a false premise. So now all these beliefs are stacked on on top. The belief in time is a very, very deeply rooted belief. It's almost like if you can imagine a stack of like an inverted pyramid with the ego down at the bottom, at the apex, then right here is this belief in time, because it's the belief in heaven is just eternal. There is no time or increments of time. It's just God is, heaven is. It's a state of course called knowledge. It's just eternal oneness. And time is the belief in a sense of, a lot of times we get into spiritual paths and we talk about, well, I'm on the path home to God, and maybe in seven more lifetimes, or maybe seven or a hundred lifetimes, you know, I'm going to make it back. And what the Course is saying is that, you know, God is not like pulling out this carrot or saying, you know, okay, almost, oh, see more millennium there, you know. Because God is not involved with time, you know. It's like that's part of our invention, that there's actually time apart from heaven. So that's a very deeply rooted belief. You know, it's like you were saying, you seem to all have 24 hours a day, and the Course breaks it down a little bit, even further than hours a day. It basically says, you believe in linear time, in which there's the past, there's the present, and there's the future. And basically, the Course is saying that the ego believes in linear time, and the ego's version of time is this. You're guilty in the past. Kind of like, it says, look at your life. Look at all the things that you messed up with, you know. The things that you did that you shouldn't have done, the things that you should have done that you didn't do. You're guilty in the past. The ego says, well, the present is determined by your past. That's a common belief in this world, that your past determines your present. And basically, so it says, the past extends into the present. And then your future is just an extension of that too. You're guilty in the past, you're guilty in the present, and you're going to be guilty in the future. And it's just like, that's how you throw it, right? That's pretty depressing, you know. You really get the ego's use of time. It's very depressing. And the Holy Spirit basically says, the past is gone. Remember we talked about when that belief would first seem to be believed in, that the answer was given immediately, that when God answered your world of separation and fragmentation and sickness and death, it was answered immediately, and it's over. The whole of all the pain and the suffering and the sickness is over. And we were discussing tonight at dinner about this whole thing of destiny, you know, like there's a plan, that basically the Course says that the plan of correction of atonement was established simultaneously because God's plan is a part of time. You know, God didn't go, okay, first 100 billion years, you'll do this, and the second 100 billion, it's like God gave immediate answers. So it was a simultaneous. But to the mind that the belief is in time, the belief in time, then there seems to take a lot of years. You know, there seems to be a time way between this correction and it was given simultaneously. So the ego, the Holy Spirit's use of time is basically saying you are completely healed and free and atone for in the present, and the past is gone. And at any instance, any single instance, if you completely let go of the ego-belief system in your mind, you will remember God. With this good news, in the sense that Pat and I were talking, it seems to be like in the mind it can be a depressing thought, think how long it's going to take me to give up all this judgment, you know, and all these false ideas of belief. And what the Course is basically saying is, the good news is it's already happened. But you just still think, you still believe that it's still unfolding to everything. No matter of accepting what has already occurred. Yeah. And the mind is terrified of accepting what has already occurred because the ego, every time you might have the experience of sinking down into your mind in meditation and getting a little bit of, ooh, what's happening here, the mind is very much afraid of stillness and the mind is very much afraid of this inner life. Because the ego is telling the mind that if you go back to this life, it's going to get you, you know, you're going to be hurled into oblivion because God is angry with you. So as long as the mind believes in the ego and listens to that voice, it's afraid of going within. That's why it seems easier to get distracted on addictions and things in the world which seems like cover over the pain but never really get at the core of the week underneath. If we have this good, this evil, this up and this down, these do-it-and-means, you know, and they're saying that there's only, there is only good, but there is no evil or this illusion or this evil that we're seeing or this company that we project. It's not that we're creating. There's no outside metaphysical force about it. That is the question I always had about this devil thing. I once heard Gandhi give a quote and they asked Gandhi about the devil. And Gandhi said the only devil are the ones running around in our own heart. There's something to that. And what the course is saying as well is that the devil is a sense of the belief and the devil can seem very powerful and active and destructive in your life when you give power to this belief. But the good news is when you withdraw your mind power from this belief when you start to tease out the ego belief system and sort out what it really is and you say, no way, this has brought me nothing but pain and misery. I don't want this anymore and you withdraw your mind power from it. It's kind of like a wicked witch of the West, and the Wizard of Oz when he threw water on her and she just melted away. The ego literally is not overcome by fighting against this and it's not overcome by literally defeating it. But it's like pulling the plug on it. And you can't pull the plug on until you know what it is. And I think that's part of today's question is, how can we more accurately identify what the ego is? Well, listen, what pulled the plug? Oh, you see the plug. You can't leave all that out and all these other words. These won't change the direction of your life. Jesus literally transcended the ego and incensed as a way-shower. And that's a little bit different in the course than the traditional times approaches to Jesus. A lot of times it's kind of as if he was deified. And what Jesus does in speaking in the court basically says, you can think of me kind of like your elder brother. You know, I am what you are in potential. You know, kind of like what I've done, everyone's going to do. And I just happened to be the first one that transcended it. Now what you're saying is, of course, if you're going to have a model or you're going to have a way-shower to transcend the ego, it's kind of helpful to have someone who has overcome the world so to speak, you know, be a good dear. It's the only way. Jesus, I am the way the truth is that no man comes to the Father but through me. That was the thing when I was in Christianity early on, you know, I used to hear that saying, you know, and I used to think, there's people living over in India and China, you know, that never heard of Jesus. And I could not believe that those people were not going to make it just because they never heard of Jesus or whatever. And you know what? The court, when it comes along, it's like I had a real mind system. Pat and I were talking about this, because Pat had a similar experience at the point in his life. It's like, if you think of Jesus as someone who transcended the ego, and it's literally that universal will or the universal mind and spirit speaking through him, when instead of hearing two voices, the ego is in the Holy Spirit. Now we just hear the voice for God. That literally, when that voice for God was speaking through him, it was I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. And it's like, ah! But what I was doing was I was projecting that voice onto that person. And once you start to personify it, you know, that's where you get into, well, how am I the only way? No, Buddha. No.