 You just follow your heart, so however it plays out, it plays out, but then in the end, you feel this connectedness, this feeling like nobody is leaving anybody. It's not a given fact of life that you have to leave or that you have to separate in some way. It's beautiful. There's a part where Jesus teaches that he says you have many, many strange beliefs, but perhaps the strangest of all your beliefs is the belief that you have to lose the ones that you love. And when you think about it, in this world, that seems to be a basic belief that you only have a limited time with the ones you love and that that time ends and then you lose them in the end. And it really, when you think about it, is pretty strange belief. That's where we're feeling all our love and connection, the belief that it has to end is a good one to question. So it's like what we get when we go deeper into spirituality and have the experiences, the continuity of life, but it's within our hearts. It's not a continuity that we find in time. And so it's good as we go along to stop looking for it in time, to stop trying to depend on time to bring us the continuity. Because it's like this world seems to be a world of beginnings and endings, of breaks, of departures. And if you really keep your faith in that, that's when it can get kind of disheartening, depressing, sad, lonely, and so forth. If you keep your faith in the world, in the images of the world, you can't help but come to that kind of feeling. But it's not the end. It's not the goal. And you can find that in the Emangio lot, about page 7, something like that. There is no end to relationships. It's impossible to have an end to a relationship. It will continue sooner or later, when you are ready for it. Yeah. It helped me one time when I was going through a breakup many years ago, and I just read one sentence, and it was basically that you will appear to separate. I mean, just that word appear, and then followed by the message that all relationships are maximal, that each one has taught and learned the most that they can in any relationship. And it's like healing words coming through, because I think the heartbreak and the sadness is always what could have been, or this idea that I didn't complete what I needed to complete. And this is saying, oh, it's maximal, even when people appear to separate the most that you can teach and learn, the closest you can come to forgiveness you did with this experience, and it's maximal. And, of course, it continues on, and you have other opportunities. It's not like, oh, it's over, and that's it. It's always like you have more opportunities. So even when people will say, oh, I didn't get to say goodbye to my father or my mother before they passed away, or I didn't really get to say what was on my heart, or express the love that I had for my parents, or something before they passed away, the opportunities just keep coming and coming and coming. And also, there's an idea that somehow that communication is limited to the body, as if like, oh, I blew my chance. Their body is gone now, so I blew my chance, and it's like there's all kinds of research, everything from near-death experiences to out-of-body experiences to all around the world now. There's lots and lots of literature on people that seemingly are in comas, are brain dead, have no activity going on, and they seem to be completely out of it from what the world would say. And if communication was based on the body, and on brain activity, and on words and so forth, then it would seem like that is a break, a coma is a definite break in communication. And yet, over and over, you'll hear stories of patients that come out of comas, and they'll say, why did you tell that story about me? And during operations, they'll come back after they come out of anesthesia and say to the doctor, why were you joking about this during my operation? So clearly the evidence is starting to flood in over and over that communication is not limited to the body. And a lot of the sadness and hurt and loss is based on the belief that it is limited to the body. I mean, it's one thing to feel somebody's touch or hug or caress, that's one form of communication. It's another form of communication to sit there and have a cup of tea and coffee and have just a very intimate talk. Talk about your deepest thoughts and feelings, and it seems like if that body is not there, then you can't do that. I always tell people, well, you might as well keep on talking to them because they're still there. You just can't see them, but they're still there. When they talk about communicating with the dead, it really is, it's really that you're communicating with yourself all the time. Everything you think and say and do is really teaching yourself and the whole universe. It's almost like having your own radio station and you're broadcasting and you're sending out these sounds and messages on the airwaves of who you believe you are. So if you believe you're limited, if you believe you're separate, if you believe you're different, you're somehow isolated and closed off and everything, your thoughts are broadcasting that belief to yourself and to the whole universe. And then when you learn to change your tune and you start to replace those thoughts with loving thoughts, with thoughts of your true nature, then it's like you're broadcasting with a new frequency. You've changed your channel to a higher channel, a channel that's more approximate to the truth of who you are, and that is teaching you and everyone who you are. So this is why now when they're coming in quantum physics, they're saying that there really is no matter in matter, that basically all of time and space is just energy and it's vibrating either very slowly, we would say that what seems to be flesh or the earth or something that's very hard like wood, this seems to be vibrating, energy vibrating at a very slow rate, and then as you go higher and higher into the vibrations and into the ethers, you start to approach more of a purified state of energy or light which is who we are. That's what we were created, we were created by loving God and the likeness and image of God. God certainly isn't a piece of wood or a little slab of flesh or a rock. God is far beyond those tiny little manifestations. God is this beautiful pure abstract light of wisdom and love that just radiates forever and ever and ever in eternity and who we are is an expression of that light. So when we forget who we are, we seem to identify with what we could call more dense vibrations of energy and the more we release these beliefs, these limiting beliefs and these thoughts we hold about ourselves, when we approach that much more abstract experience. We truly are an idea in the mind of God. You know, sometimes people say, I like the feeling that I'm a child of God, but I don't even know what that means, you know, are we all children of God? It's like, well, that's a nice metaphor, but God didn't create the body. God is perfection and what God creates is perfect. Just like we get apples from apple trees in this world and bananas from banana trees and oranges from orange trees, you get the same fruit from the parent. And so if the parent is spirit, the fruit of the parent is spirit. It would be strange to have a creative parent that was pure spirit that started popping out these avocados. You know, where do these avocados come from? Where do these little slabs of flesh come from? But except that they are the projection of the belief in separation. If we believe we could separate from that love in life. It's a crazy idea, but if we actually believe we could separate and you could use the same dynamics of in heaven, we just extend and radiate love forever and ever. But if you took a crazy idea that you were separate from God and you projected it like a little dark speck, you projected it, then this world, these bodies are projections of separation. And it does even look like separation. I mean, you look out of your body's eyes and you look around the tent and you say, oh look, little separate bodies all sitting around in chairs. It looks pretty convincing. It really looks like everybody is separate. They've got their own space, their own histories, their own goals and agendas, their own personalities, they seem to be unique, their own little fingerprints, each one on the hands. If they were like little toys, they would look pretty convincing. As convincing for the idea of separation, they're also unique. You know, even the ones that look alike, the more you get to know them, hmm, no, they are not the same. But this is why we need to forgive because we are perceiving a realm of separation and we need to have a unified perception. We need to come to a different way of looking at the world like Jesus did. When he was on the cross and could say things like forgive them for they know not what they do, that's not the typical words you would expect from somebody who's just been strung up on a cross. It has blood coming from their arms and their legs. That's not what you would expect. But if he was in a state where he could see the unification, the unified field of everyone, Jesus could see beyond the separation, he could see the unity, he could see the unified field of perception where everything was completely unified. Like a dance, like you can see the whole dance or the big picture that people talk about. I want to see the big picture. And therefore it would be easy to say from that perspective, forgive them for they know not what they do. It's just like, don't put belief, don't put faith in these actions and these behaviors. God is still love. God hasn't changed. God is not changing no matter what the appearances are. So how beautiful that we have an opportunity that that is our life's purpose is to see the world in a different way, to see the way that Christ saw. And the beautiful thing about Jesus is that he really didn't try to beat people over the head with it either. I've seen lots of portraits and pictures and paintings of Jesus and the ones that really stand out for me are the ones where he's standing there and he's got his arms out like open, outstretched. You know, come unto me. It's like he's not trying to grab anybody and twist their arm behind their back. He's not forcing anybody to come. He's just got the arms outstretched and they're open and they're very welcoming. It's just like saying, come, come and rest. Rest in me. Rest in my love. So that's really the invitation that what seems to be time and what seems to be separation is just playing out like a movie. And we could say that this, we could call history, a very long movie. It's just a very, very long movie. And so the life of a human being is such a very tiny little blip in that movie. It's almost like if you were flying in a plane over the whole movie, you could easily miss your entire lifespan if you really weren't paying close attention, or just kind of be like a little flicker, you know, like when you're flying in a plane and you're coming into Sweden and Malmo or Copenhagen and you're flying over the water and there's these little flickers of light that are reflecting from the sun. And that's about what a human life is. It seems pretty long while you're living it, but it actually is more like just a little flicker that's flickering on the water, just a reflection. And so what is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of that flicker? Except to forgive, except to awaken to your true nature, your true reality, the way God created you. You know, that's a vast purpose. And yet how easy it is in this world to lose sight of the flicker, to lose sight of the purpose. Look at all the things that you can get distracted on, worried about, concerned about. Things like money. You could see from the movie last night that these people were really concerned about the money. They had a budding relationship starting, but most of their conversations were about television ratings, selling trinkets, kinds of crazy trinkets they were selling on those shows. But most of their time and their energy was focused on the selling of these trinkets, the ratings, getting higher ratings, getting an 8% increase. You know, is it selling things was life or death? And then in the middle of that they were trying to fall in love, which is not easy to do when your life is so distracted on trinkets. You have to begin to release your mind a bit from the trinkets to do that. And you could see how the holy man was just symbolizing a state of detachment, a state of non-judgment, of allowance, when they would come to him and they would say to him, after they gained a bit of respect for him, at the beginning they were trying to just, he was trying to get rid of him, you know, get him out of here, let him go on. I told you you shouldn't have waved, that whole grievance came up over and over about waving, waving, waving. You started this whole thing by waving to a stranger. And yet by the end they were saying, Ricky was saying to him, you know, what do you think? And basically G was saying, what do you want? I'll do it, I'll do it for you. What do you want? You know, how beautiful, so much allowance. Imagine the kind of relationships you'd have in this world if you were partnering up with someone or a group of people that you just poured your heart out and you were asking for help and advice and instead of telling you what to do, you simply said or your partner simply said, what do you want? They just focused you back onto what is the desire of your heart. You know, it was like G was saying to him, I love you. I love you. I totally unconditionally love you. Now what do you want? I'll love you after your decision. I love you before your decision. You know, that's really a beautiful expression of love with so much strength and confidence that you can just allow someone to make a decision and then love them right beyond whatever that decision is. And we do get a lot of practice. You know, we get practice, you know, growing up with children. We get practice with our friends, with our family, with our coworkers, with our boss, you know. And it seems like we get lots of opportunities to get so in touch with what we want that we actually come to a state of mind where we realize that we are very powerful in God's, created in God's likeness and image, and what we want is what we get. We always get what we want. As you sow, so shall you reap. Giving and receiving are the same. What goes around comes around. The law of karma. I mean, it doesn't matter what culture, whether you read the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita or philosophy or whatever, there's a basic law of the universe which is that giving and receiving are the same. That's also why we have sayings like, be careful what you pray for. You just might get it. Oh, it's more than just might. It is. You will get it. And if you will get it, if you pray, if you ask and you shall be given, if you knock and the door shall be opened, you really have to get clear on what you're asking for. Because if you're asking a miss, if you're really asking for something that we'll call egoic or something that is a private wish or desire, you will get it and it won't be satisfying. And then you'll wish again, like a wishing well. Or like having a laden with the genie. How many was it? Ten wishes? You get more than ten in this universe. You keep wishing and wishing and wishing and you keep receiving and receiving until you purge, until you purify your heart and get to the point where you're asking is in alignment with the Spirit. And then you can become so in alignment with the Spirit that suddenly asking sounds absurd. Like, what if you had everything? What would you ask for? What if you had the Kingdom of Heaven in your hand, so to speak? You really knew what the Kingdom of Heaven was and suddenly you wouldn't be asking for things to be a certain way, for things to be different. Imagine how funny that prayer sounds to God. Please, God, let things be different than they are. And yet, when we grow up, how much of our prayers, how many of our prayers are that prayer? Can I have more of this? Can I have more of that? Can I not go to this? Can I, you know, asking for circumstances to be different? Yes. You say that you always get what you want. I have a friend that would not agree with you because she's coming to our Costa Americas group in Los Shafi and she is 45 years old now. She has always wanted a man, a husband, and a child and she has not got it. And she's praying and she's praying, and we say to her that we love to God, but you say that yes, even if it's very private for us and even if it's our ego that wishes it, so what would you say to her? The one who's single and alone when she's ready to be... You want a child and a husband? Yes, yes. Well, it's kind of like on the surface of form we could say that whatever seems to be going on in specifics and forms is just the answer or bringing us the answer to the prayer of our heart in a specific form. So we never really ask in our hearts for things. We're really asking for an experience for a state of mind. And if you have to talk more with her you would have to say, well, what is your experience? And she said, well, I'm lonely. Why do I want a husband and a child is I want something to fill my life up. I want a feeling of joining, of connection. I want to share my life with someone and I want to share the joys of being a parent and so on and so forth. But I'm lonely. And so if you really got her to get to the point of starting to admit that there's a lack going on and it could take the form of loneliness or feeling isolated or feeling empty, unfulfilled, whatever words she would come up with and you would talk with her and she would express her things, feeling empty and a bit alone and a bit unfulfilled. But okay, the world, the way your life looks is a reflection of those feelings. You're feeling empty or isolated or alone and the way your life looks, it's not the way that it looks isn't making you feel that way. You're feeling that way because of your consciousness because of where you're at and you're feeling that way because of your prayers. If you're feeling lonely or empty or isolated, you're praying for loneliness, emptiness and isolation because you're always getting what you're praying for. So the form is simply outpicturing it's bringing witness to an inner state of mind. We always look inside first and then we look outside and we see out there what we saw in there. So that's how you would talk with her and approach it with her and you would start saying, you don't really want to be lonely, do you? You would start working more and cultivating the experience within the feelings, looking at the beliefs, looking at the thoughts that are running through the mind on a daily basis and say, good news is you're not a victim. You're not powerless based on those thoughts. You are not powerless based on those beliefs. You can change them. You can change them as quickly as you'd like. You have no time limits on it. You can change. Then, of course, demonstration is the best. All of us have known people we've met who we've met some very, very happy, joyful people. Some of them are what the world would call single and some of them are what the world would call married. Some of them have children. Some don't have children. Happiness, joy, love, they're not circumstance dependent. If they were circumstance dependent then everyone would go for the same thing. Well, you've got to be married and have children to be happy. Then it really puts the pressure on the dating game. You know, if it was so. Or you must be single and you must not have children to be happy. Some people have told me they believe that. If only I was single and didn't have children then we see it's not dependent on the circumstances. And people all know this, so you could talk to her about that. But she can recognize this. It's just that feeling of being alone. Sometimes people can say, even when I'm in a crowd of people, I feel alone. And sometimes when they're on a walk in the forest and they're all by themselves they feel such joy and connection like they feel connected to the whole universe and everyone. So it's the same with the feeling of connectedness versus aloneness. It's not really circumstance dependent. Even though the ego or the error would teach us that, oh yes, you are feeling the way you are because of some circumstance. So it's very practical. You can have a good heart-to-heart talk with her. So it comes down to your core belief about this. Yeah, your core belief. Quite vicious. Yeah. Yeah, I had students back in the 1990s and I would just go every day. We'd have these sessions and be so happy and some of them would say, David, you know, yes, yes, we see you're very happy but your circumstances, you know, I said if you were married and if you had children and if you had a mortgage and if you had a boss like I've got and this and this and this, let's just see how happy you would be. And I'd say, well, it would be really strange that God would set up a world where some people could have fortunate circumstances and other people could have unfortunate circumstances. You know, wouldn't it be much more reasonable to think that whatever world you're perceiving is there by your own selection that you've selected your life as you know it. You've built it. It's like a little child with the building blocks, you know, making a castle, making a little fort or something, you know, building it and then looking at what has been built and it's like there's really no point in lamenting circumstances because they're thereby decision they've been chosen and of course you can choose again. You know, it's not like you're locked in to those circumstances. You can even choose to seem to change those circumstances although I would say that that's not even a real change. It's like I always say like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You know, the ship is going down. You've seen the movie Titanic. The engineer who built the ship knew exactly how many compartments were in it and asked very commonly asked questions when it was at the big party underneath from the deck. The ship's been hit. We've hit an iceberg. It's taking on water. How many compartments of the ship are filled up? They told him how many were sunk. He knew he knew his engineering. He knew he didn't have to wait for time. He said, we're sunk. The ship will sink. There's no doubt about it because so many compartments had already filled up with water and he knew exactly how many it would take to sink the ship. And it's the same way. You don't really have to try to figure out the world. How am I going to get out of this situation and then when I get out of that then I've got to deal with this one and then if I escape this one then I'll have to face that one. It can get pretty depressing and I don't think how am I going to unwind myself out of these circumstances that I've put myself into. But then if you say, no I don't really have to figure it out. In one sense, you know, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, are saying, oh, this world was over long ago, he says. So you don't have to be concerned about how to revive it or revive your life. It's history. Your life, even if you think it's ahead of you, it's all history. It's all over and gone and it's been gone for a long time. The Holy Spirit healed this thing long ago. Then he comes in with a section on the real alternative and he says, all of the roadways of the world lead to death. It doesn't sound very positive, actually. All of the roadways of the world lead to death. You can choose, you can continue to choose as many as you would like. You're given to you straight. They all lead to death. So there is another way. The Kingdom of Heaven is within and there is a real alternative. It's not really a dark pessimistic thing because you have an alternative that's always there waiting for you. But it is helpful to know that no matter how much you try to improve the circumstances of your life, that in the end it's more of a surrendering. It's more of a yielding over. Thank God I was wrong about this. Take this from me. Take the whole thing. I'm not going to try to prop it up or fix it up or improve it anymore. Please take the whole thing and then let me receive your grace as a certain replacement for this thing that I seem to make. That's a very relieving, comforting idea because then you don't really have to do the task of trying to work out your salvation or figure out how to extract yourself from a certain set of circumstances. You actually just have to be willing to be guided and led moment by moment and share confidence that the guide within you knows the way and all you have to do is listen and follow and you will be led surely back to a state of peace. And that's wonderful. You can just say thank God that it's that way. Instead of being concerned about the question what should I do, it does help you cultivate and go deeper and deeper inward. So instead of really asking yourself what shall I do, you can say what is it that I want? I mean really go back much deeper like Shakespeare said, to be or not to be. That is the question. It wasn't about doing this or doing that. There was no pressure put on what do I have to do. It's very heavy. No one likes to feel if they have to do something. But to start in a realistic way to go inward and say what do I want? What do I really want? First you start to acknowledge the power of your wanting. Instead of feeling like a victim of the world oh, this is my life story and this happened to me when I was 7 and this happened to me when I was 12 and if you're just a victim of circumstances, that's not true. And if everything that you experience is there through what you want, it couldn't even seem to be in your experience unless you wanted it, then the first thing to do is to acknowledge the power of your wanting. Instead of playing little, instead of playing weak it's important to say okay, I must have a pretty powerful mind going on here and these thoughts that I've just called are all this crazy static that's in my mind and I'm just trying to go away, get away. I better first acknowledge that even with this chatter that I have a very powerful mind so whatever is chattering that little chatter box in there I better investigate what's going on with this chatter box because if I have a powerful mind I will experience. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts that's the way Jesus puts it in Course of Miracles. And then once you start to acknowledge the power of your wanting, the power of your prayer then you can start to go deeper inward with what is it really that I want? What is my priority here? And I would say as you go deeper inward with that you start to realize that you want to use the power of your wanting and direct it towards peace of mind. What trinkets of the world could you possibly want if you had the option of choosing peace of mind? Everlasting peace I mean what I had a guy in Florida one time who says if I open my mind to God can I still have my Maserati? Well you just have to really get clear of what matters most to you. What you really really want and then once you get into the power of your wanting then you start to discern to use your discernment determination and I think everyone of course is more and more to that place of seeing that oh I want a state of mind I really want the peace of God in the workbook of A Course in Miracles Jesus says I want the peace of God to say the words is nothing but to mean the words so that's where you really have to be in touch with what you want because there's no spiritual cliches or phrases that magically you just say the words and ah it is there we're like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz they told her all you have to do is click your heels together little red ruby slippers three times one two three and say the words there's no place like home there's no place like home to go home in one sense Glenda the Good Witch is telling the Holy Spirit speaking and saying you always had the power to go home and that's true it's just that it's beyond a catchphrase or knowing the right mantra or saying the right words like one of those old stories about witches abracadabra and you've got to say just the right words to have it unlock the spell this is really saying you have to go in your heart and you really have to be sincere about this wanting what is it that I really really want and then all things open up from that you don't need intelligence you don't need lots of money you don't need lots of skills and abilities all the things the world would say are essential but you do need willingness you just need willingness and willingness goes a long way I know in my life I didn't have a lot of money I didn't think I had a lot of skills or anything I know I was very, very willing to be shown to let the doors be opened show me the way with real honesty and sincerity you know and wow if you come to God with willingness and sincerity then watch out I would say you'll knock your socks off really David it's little and you don't know how can you increase willingness how can you find I mean you can have a little willingness and you're very attracted by ideas of the cause for example so you can start and then you stop maybe so the willingness is not there really so how can we work for for ourselves and even for others and increase willingness it's just like something of this world if you were going to learn it if you were learning anything of this world you practice it and it's the same with willingness or it's like with the muscles you when you exercise muscles and you exercise then you seem to be developing a strength over time by through the practice of the exercise and it's very much that way with willingness that you have a little willingness and then it seems like you're called upon again and again in circumstance in opportunity after opportunity to have this willingness you know he says in the course no matter what the circumstance no matter how many times it seems to repeat or no matter how challenging it can seem to be my brother choose again so it's a little different than the things of this world we're used to to practicing we're used to doing things like exercise or reading something over and over memorize it for an exam or something like this but we just weren't raised with this idea of opening to guidance from God and practicing this little willingness over and over we through the ego generated a world of seeming authority figures from teachers and parents and so-called experts that tell us what to do and very much have been in the role of blindly just following I was told what to do so I must do it instead of questioning and saying why like that story of the little child the emperor has no clothes on the emperor has no clothes everybody can see that the emperor has no clothes and everybody goes along with the charade never acknowledges that the emperor has no clothes until the little child comes along and goes hey he's not wearing any clothes there's a certain sincerity to be able to just let's call it spade to spade let's call it like it is and not just blindly heed and follow those that are supposed to be in charge we certainly have a lot of us have gone through that with religion where we've just listened to figures priests and ministers and could be a pope it could be a rabbi some kind of figure that is supposed to know the religion and know God and we feel like we don't know God so we better follow somebody who does and then there's of course a lot of disillusionment of that because a lot of times we uncover all kinds of hypocrisies and things that don't seem to be have integrity or have congruity we follow the flesh and then we get the results of following the flesh and yet the willingness I think what I would say is like with a course in miracles if you're willing for miracles then you start to experience them and they feel good they feel very good and so when you have that experience of being willing to listen and follow and then you have a very joyful wonderful experience something inside you goes hmm interesting maybe I should try that again and so you do and that's why it seems to be a course in miracles it just like with learning in this world you have to have successes to build your confidence just like a child always was falling off a bike when they were trying to learn to pedal the bike it could be very discouraging and very depressing and they may just say that's it I don't want to ride a bike the experiences of falling off the bike but as soon as they have that experience of actually pedaling the bike and feeling a sense of balance and equilibrium and then hearing usually their friend or their parent are going you're doing it, you're doing it you can do it they still may fall off like in the movie as it is in heaven Daniel he falls off but Lena and she's encouraging and how far he has to have success at riding that bike before he's willing to go further with it so that's how miracles work and that's how willingness works you increase the willingness by your practice of it and then the more successes you have the more you gain confidence and you need that confidence because what the miracle is showing you is going opposite of everything you've ever learned in this world and that's why miracles have to be heavily reinforced because the old way of perceiving the separation way was heavily reinforced so you need to kind of turn the tide Jesus does even all of this talk about little willingness he does say at the end of the book you know it takes great willingness to see that all events and outcomes and circumstances are helpful that's another version of all things work together for good for those that love the Lord all things work together for good there are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment that's the mind training that we're working on you can imagine just being in that state where it's like la la la la la no matter what's happening, earthquakes typhoons all things work together for good you know it's not really people will say David that's so Pollyanna Pollyanna she just it's all the good it's all the positive it's kind of got a negative pejorative context in this world but it's actually beautiful to be in that state what would you say about Burma and what has had the earthquake in China all things work together for good yeah they do all things I was just talking to some friends about that because I was visiting in Berlin and they were saying interesting things going on with China with the Dalai Lama and all this conflict around Tibet and then the Olympics coming and all the controversies and peace marches Tibet and saying they were going to communicate with the Dalai Lama with its envoy but then how much it is just for show versus actual heartfelt communication and then lots of things going on like during the winter intense snowstorms people trains and transportation systems shut down and it's been quite a series of events that have been going on and in one way what's going on with China is just paralleling what goes on with everyone every individual that we really need to open our communication channels up in honesty and sincerity and when we don't when our heart is closed then it seems like there's all these obstacles and blocks in the world but they really aren't in the world what's going on with China is kind of a symbol about how it's so important to open up guidance and to be guided and to flow with that guidance as opposed to staying with the hard line or staying with the old ways every it really comes down to mind or consciousness even when you see pictures or stories of monks that are becoming more proactive for like freedom fighters again for the month you have to go back to what's my purpose am I to find peace of mind or am I to try to free a country this is the same thing Gandhi went through he kept trying to free India from the British and the deeper he went the more one guy said Mr. Gandhi are you a saint trying to become a politician and Gandhi answered no it's the opposite I'm a politician trying to become a saint Gandhi was well aware that as much as he was going for a political solution that he grew up in India the tradition of the great saints and mystics and Gandhi hated to be called Mahatma because it was great soul and he in the context of Ramana Maharshi and Yogananda and many great great Bira Kannanda and Krishna and the whole tradition of coming to enlightenment and self-realization he was like no I'm a politician trying to become a saint I don't care how famous you say I am I don't care how many people you say follow me and this and that I'm experimenting with truth I'm trying to work on my own soul here and trying to purify it and it doesn't help when you call me Mahatma it's just feeding my ego so stop it no so you see it puts everything in a context of how it's really valuable to go for that transformation of consciousness where you are seeking not to change the world not to free a country or to free a group of people even but actually going for a state of mind that is free that has forever been free and that's a huge leap in consciousness I mean I get a gathering I think in New York City one time and this woman came who has spent her whole life as a child advocate and a social worker and striving to make people's lives better to leave the world a better place and she spent a whole afternoon with me and a gathering and just had her pad and pencil and just with all her openness and sincerity she was just like almost squinting to try to open up to some of these ideas at the end she came up to me and she just said oh I feel you all the love pouring from you and I feel such sincerity and such wisdom and happiness she said but ideas you're sharing are just contradicting so many things that I believe in my whole life my whole my job my all the effort and energy I met a woman I did a talk in Geneva and I met a woman who was the head of UNICEF in all the Middle East I think it was she had been based in Iran and so she had been working with UNICEF her whole life was dedicated decades to helping children and feeding the poor and so on and so forth and she came to me there in Geneva and she came up afterwards and she just was smiling she said oh I'm just so glad I got to hear these ideas oh it's so exciting but wow really it was like it was a stretch such a passion and a desire to help to be altruistic and truly helpful and then start to come into some of the deeper ideas the most helpful thing you can do is to free your mind from ego thinking and from trying to fix and change the world and so it's a progression I certainly went through the very stages myself from starting off and oh David you're very good in science and math and you would excel in taking all the aptitude test in high school going to this program in high school called engineer for a day and they took me to they took me to the plant where most of the the propulsion the jet engines, those big things that are hanging on the plane are built, general electric in Cincinnati not too far from my peace house built these massive turbine engines and they stick on the planes all around the world so I went there and kind of toured and oh you're very good in mathematics and calculus and science and everything so I started off in the university in engineering something wasn't right just wasn't my calling so then I got into more of the urban planning and then I got more interested in causes and making the world the planet a better place and that's the progression you know if you watch everyone goes through these progressions where you want to be helpful to become less egocentric and less self centered on the personality stuff and you want to help and then you kind of swing over maybe towards more towards service or helping others in some way and many people burn out with that along the way they feel so tired they feel drained working with clients and it's almost like they're trying to there's a dam and the dam is breaking loose and the water is squirting out and they're taking little rocks and little clumps of clay every day and try to plug as many holes in the dam as they can and they come home exhausted they're just totally exhausted just plugging the holes every day and feeling like almost like a martyr I'm sacrificing my life here to make the world a better place and it's too big of a job and then progressively you go deeper into spirituality and you get to a point where you start to realize the reason it is so draining is because it's an inside job that you can't fix all of the problems of the world on all those different levels from communal levels and interpersonal levels and psychic conflicts and conflicts between nations you know if you put all your energy into trying to solve the world in that way you will become drained because you're looking for a solution where there is no solution you know you can't just keep trying to plug the dam you know you have to get back to where all that pressure that water pressure is coming from you've got to go back into the mind there are many examples of people I remember when I first got into A Course in Miracles I started watching these videotapes of people who are working with A Course in Miracles the speech writer for the president of the United States studies A Course in Miracles I'm like you've got to be kidding me I'm listening to Milton Friedman and he's like going he said on the video before we can have peace between nations this is the speech writer for the president talking we need to come to inner peace we need to learn to forgive in our own awareness in our own consciousness before we can have peace in the world oh then I saw another guy who was a pentagon general former pentagon general who got out of he got out of being the general thing and he started working for the Library of Congress United Nations he left his whole general role behind and he became an advocate for communications better communications between nations he was representative to China and he worked for United Nations Library of Congress he got into A Course in Miracles we have this former pentagon general now who's working for the United Nations and he says on the video I opened the book up and the passage that really struck me because I had spent my whole life trying to change the world was seek not to change the world seek rather to change your mind about the world this is like a pentagon general and somebody who's in the United Nations reading, getting hit from Jesus and what did he do he married Judy Scutch the publisher of A Course in Miracles and he spent the last decades translating A Course in Miracles into all these different languages he's the one who was in charge of getting it translated into Swedish so the book if you're reading the book in Swedish there's a ex pentagon general from the United States that was involved in you reading that book in Swedish because he married the publisher and he spent he's very devoted, his name is William Whitson and he spent the last decades starting off in the 70s and now we're in 2008 like a steward stewarding this book along