 Hi, everybody. Good morning. Nice to see you all. Thanks for joining us again. Welcome to our All Day Movie Workshop. I'm Peter. I'm going to be the host today. And yeah, we have a brand new movie. I don't think any of us have seen, so really looking forward to that. And I can just let you know about the day. So we're going to start with the movie with David. And then we'll have a 10 minute break afterwards. And then we'll have our breakout rooms where you can express and share any emotions or experiences you had through the movie. And then we'll have a 45 minute break and then a Q&A session with me. So I'm going to pass it over to you now, David. Thank you, Pete. Hi, everyone. Welcome. I'm broadcasting live from St. Augustine, Florida. And we have a whole gang here in St. Augustine that is sharing a retreat with us, a three day retreat. So they're joining us. And we're actually joined by well over 100 people from around the world, all over the place, from east and west, all the way around the world. And I'm so grateful to be with you today because we have a very deep movie in the in the write up. They the description was this is a movie of a journey to self realization. So you know, when that makes it into the write up of the movie that you're in for a deep movie. I'm also very grateful because this is the first Turkish movie that I have shown on these things. And it's an amazing Turkish movie with original mystical Turkish songs in it from a yoga retreat. We have basically it's dubbed into English, but we'll have English subtitles and Spanish subtitles. And of course, Marina is doing a simultaneous Spanish translation to so we are touching a lot of people with this beautiful deep movie. So every week, we ask you to vote on themes that are the most relevant and the most important in your life. And then we pray and receive a movie from Jesus to show to really dive into those themes and go into an experience of those themes because they're very profound. And sometimes it helps us to to be drawn into a story a parable. And Jesus taught a lot in parables and these movies today are modern day parables. And they help us go into an experience that is so profound. And it's really what we've been praying for. We all want to be connected. We all want to feel joy and happiness. We all want to learn to relax in the present moment and live a life without effort, just being as God created us, not trying to make something of ourselves or achieve something in the world, but just to be as God created us because God created us in spirit and spirit is perfect. Heaven is perfect. Why speak for something else but heaven? Why not have nirvana be our default program and go back to default? Let's stay in the default mode of heaven. So this week, when you voted on the polls, these are the results. This is what helped lead us to this movie with Jesus's guidance. The first theme is from the Song of Prayer, which Jesus dictated to Helen Shuckman when Helen and Ken Wapnick were wondering about prayer. What is prayer and what is the purpose of prayer and what is going on with prayer? Is it words? Is it beyond the words? What is prayer? And in that pamphlet, which is called the Song of Prayer, Jesus said these words. And this is our first theme. The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. And I remember the first time when I read those words in the Song of Prayer, I had to just stop right there at that sentence. And I just had to close my eyes and I had the biggest smile on my face because I just said, well, Jesus has just contradicted all my past learning, all my conditioning, everything I ever learned from my parents or in school was just contradicted in this lesson from the Song of Prayer. The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. That sounds like an invitation into deep meditation too. So that received 56 votes, the most votes of all the themes. And coming in a close second with 55 votes sounds like a horse race. Coming in second is daring to live in the present moment. Wow, those two go together. Forget the things you think you need and daring, daring to live in the present moment. No matter what the world tells you, daring to live in the present moment, no matter what the opinions, the conditioning of the past was, daring to live in the present moment. We need help for that. We need to be somebody to show us the way for that because it seems like we've put quite a lot of effort and goals for the future and we've been kind of a little bit like a hamster on a hamster wheel in a cage. We've seemed to be the hamster running in circles with this wheel of time, the wheel of karma going and our ego is pushing the wheel of karma telling us that we're guilty in the past and we're going to have to overcome the guilt in the future. It's a sneaky wheel and the hamster just keeps spinning until the, finally the hamster has to remember the secret of true prayer is to forget the wheel and to forget the past and forget the future. As they say in Italian, forget about it. Just, just forget about it. You know, let's forget about past, forget about the future. That's a new godfather, a true godfather. Forget about the world. Forget about it. Our third theme is called deepening in trust, patience and faith. And I think our third theme is how we're going to reach the present moment and how we're going to forget about this world and the things of this world as we need, we need a means to do it. We need to be able to pray and then our faith will deepen as we pray deeper and deeper and our patience and faith grows stronger as we start to trust in the voice of the Holy Spirit and Jesus. The more we trust our inner guidance, the more we trust that we can be intuitive and we can live from our heart. We can live totally from our intuition, 100% from our intuition, 0% from the past, from analysis and 100% from present guidance and present direction, then that is going to help us reach the present moment in awareness. Of course, the present moment is already there, but we have to be aware of it. If we are stuck and addicted to time, we are not aware of the present moment. We've let the ego cover it over with worries and concerns and regrets. That's no fun. We know that is not. There's no fun and joy in that. The fourth theme that we're going to explore today is called let go of all the voices of the past. I don't know about you, but for me, every time my heart started to open and I start to feel these lottery vibrations of happiness and joy, as soon as I would have these huge miracles, suddenly these voices of doubt would come and say, don't get too joyful there. Don't get too happy. You need to be serious. I always wondered, do I really need to be serious? Does Jesus want me to be serious? Jesus tells us in the Course that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of joy and that the Holy Spirit's curriculum is a curriculum of joy and that happy lessons are attained through happiness. You don't reach happiness through sadness. You reach happiness through happiness. Your means have to be happy to find the end, which is the present moment. So I think that's important that we are deepening in trust, patience, and faith. We let go of the voices of the past and the final theme is compromise is never justified. When I was growing up, when I was with my parents and my family and in school, I was taught that, David, you're going to have to compromise, that everything in life of this world is about compromise. You're just going to have to make a lot of compromises and then I discovered that the other word for compromise is sacrifice. So they were telling me, you've got to sacrifice. Everybody has to sacrifice. You're no different and you have to compromise. I found a quote from Jesus that speaks on compromise and what he says was, ultimately no compromise is possible between everything and nothing. Time is essentially a device by which all compromise and disrespect can be given up. And of course, when Jesus is talking about everything and nothing, he's saying, God is everything. Spirit is everything. Love is everything. And the world of time and space is nothing. And yet, if we believe in nothing as our identity, then we're not happy because we're children of God. We live and breathe and move in spirit and light. We are a child of light. And when we forget our identity and believe in the forms, then we start to feel we have to compromise. Every day, what am I going to sacrifice? What am I going to compromise? I would rather do this, but I have to do that. I feel joyful thinking about this, but I should do that. And you see, the ego has set up a very complex maze of time and space to keep us from being happy. It's basically designed to keep us guilty. And Jesus is saying, no, it's actually a device that the Holy Spirit can use to finally teach the mind that there is no sacrifice and that you are worthy of everything. And God's will for you is to know love, which is everything. All you need is love. The Beatles had it right. All you need is love. That's our one need is to know love because that's our identity. So today's movie is a Turkish movie that just came out. Like Pete said, it's brand new, 2022. And the title of the movie is called Doom of Love. Now, that may sound like a strange name to you because Doom is usually associated with disaster or failure. So Doom of Love may seem like a contradiction in terms, but let me just reinterpret you, love for you with the Holy Spirit and Jesus. It's that ego is doomed in the experience of love. It's the ego that's doomed because it's an illusion, so it can't exist in the light. As soon as we open up to the light, the ego is gone. And that's what the whole point of self realization is, is to recognize yourself as the Christ, which is the light. And then there's no ego. So the ego is just a belief. And in heaven, there are no beliefs. With a sleeping mind, we're dealing with an ego belief really. So that's why we have to empty our mind of all of our beliefs of the ego and all of our attack thoughts and grievances. So to give you a little setup about this movie, I think for me, the main themes in the movie is, first of all, that you have to let go of your worry and concern about the body. I think a lot of people tell me that they went into a career that their parents told them to, or maybe they're continuing on in the family business, or maybe they're just working at a job and a career that they don't really enjoy, but they have to find a way to make a living and then they don't feel happy, but they have to do it anyway. And so what this movie is going to do, it's going to take us on a journey because the main character, his name is Farat. And Farat lives over in Istanbul, modern Istanbul, 20th century. He's just basically, he's pretty much into his career and he runs an ad agency, an advertising agency. And the main thing that the advertising agency advertises is obituaries. So obituaries are statements of people who have died, its descriptions of their life and what they were about. So in one sense, he has an ad agency that has to advertise death. And then in this scenario we're going to watch, the business is not doing well. People are still dying in Istanbul, but they're not putting obituaries with his ad agency. So he's very stressed out, he's frustrated. And I have to laugh that Jesus is showing us a movie where the main character's business is, he's in the business of death. He has to sell obituaries and if they don't sell, he's got a problem. He's in debt. He has a small group of dedicated employees that he feels, I think, a sense of shame and guilt about because the business of writing obituaries is advertising that is not making enough money to even pay the employees. So his employees are working basically without getting paid. And that will be the opening of our movie as Farat, kind of very angry and frustrated with his staff and wondering why is it when people are still dying in Istanbul that we are not able to sell ads or obituaries? Now it's going to start there, but that's the first part of the movie. And that's what all of us face whenever we come to a crossroads where we feel things are stressful, intense, frustrating, and not working out. It doesn't have to be a job. It can be a relationship. It can be a situation that you're experiencing in the world where you start to feel hopeless or you start to say, what's the point of my experience on earth? What is the point? So this will move Farat very quickly to a point where he sees that he has to just let go of his business. And when he does, he has a moment where he starts to open up to what's next. And we know that experience very well when something seems to end in this world, we really wonder what's next. Maybe we don't. Maybe we pause for a moment with just a big smile on our face and go, wow, that's gone. And we just enjoy it. Don't you ever remember those moments when something crashes and you just go, well, that's gone. And just might as well enjoy this moment. It's gone now, whatever it was. But then the voices of the past come to us and say, what are you going to do next? What are you going to do for a living? How are you going to pay off your debt? How are you going to deal with the circumstances that you have in your earth situation? And that is the belief in time. That is the belief in feeling this guilt and thinking that if we do something in form, we can alleviate the guilt feelings that we're experiencing. So it's almost like we jump on the treadmill and again, we're like the hamster in the wheel. We're on the treadmill, desperately trying to solve something using the world in some way. A better situation, a better partner, a better job, a better location to live in, a better climate, a better economy. Anything the ego will use to say, you have it bad. But if the circumstances in your life would change, then you would be happy. Actually, what Jesus is teaching us is that as we change our purpose for the world, as we learn to forgive the world and we learn to just listen and follow our inner guidance and intuition, that's how we find the happiness, not through circumstances, but through a different perspective on the world, a different filter, a different way of looking at the world. So I think one of the main themes of this movie is, first of all, that nothing achieved through effort brings happiness. Now, again, that goes against all my conditioning. Everything that I was ever raised with was you can achieve much through great effort. You can become happy through great effort. If you're poor, you can use great effort to be rich. If you're ugly, you can use great effort to move in the direction of being beautiful, we'll say. The ego always is telling us that we can achieve happiness through effort. And what Jesus is telling us in the Course is actually that happiness is experienced when there is a release of the body identity, a release of the doer, and we sink into the present moment and we realize, oh my gosh, it was here all along. I didn't really have to pursue all of these personal goals to find happiness. All I had to do was sink inward and relax and deeply relax and realize the happiness is right now. I picked a few passages from Jesus about effort because I think that's one of the things that have been the most pressuring, stressful, and guilt-inducing things is the belief that happiness is achieved through effort. And in this movie, you'll see the teachings are the exact opposite, that it's actually through an experience of the present moment. Jesus tells us, he says, put all your faith in the love of God within you, eternal, changeless, and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the love of God within you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence. Wow, through the love of God within and without effort. Wouldn't you enjoy an effortless life? Wouldn't that be fun? I think that was enough for me to read in the course when he said it's achieved without effort. I thought, I'm in. I've put a lot of effort into my 10 years of university full-time. I've put so much effort into achieving and accomplishing and trying to carve out my niche in the world that it never occurred to me that I could be happy by trusting in the love of God within me and letting go of effort. But he says, without effort, all difficulties will be resolved. Here's another thing that Jesus says. That's from the workbook, the first one. This one's from chapter two. Jesus says, it is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort. But this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet. The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do. The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. There is no strain in doing God's will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. That's another thing we were not taught. Nobody told me my will and God's will are the same. It was all about God's will, God's will. But now when you realize that God's will for you and your will for you are the same, then there's no effort. You're just back in divine ease, you know, back in basking in the light. There's another one. Here's one from the clarification of terms. Call upon the being which you both have and are. This recognition is wholly without effort since it's already true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore, inclusion is total and creation is without limit. There's another one here. I love them from the workbook, Lesson 131. There walks with you, the Spirit of the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door someday and through his aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Slip effortlessly past it to the light. I'm interested in that door and I'm even more interested in slipping effortlessly past the door into the light. I like that word slip. You know, seems like time is so long and it seems like it's such a grind. It's so heavy and then Jesus saying, well, good news is there's a door and you slip effortlessly with his help, his aid back into the light. You slip back into the I am presence before time was. And now finally, this is the one that got me the most. I remember at the beginning when I was first practicing the course. I think I read this next paragraph and I just cried. It was so beautiful. And it just was so touched my heart that I just thought I'm just going to put my heart and soul in going for this because this is so beautiful. And it's so famous in the course that this I think this is one of the very few paragraphs in the course where it already has a nickname. People people are calling this passage by a nickname. And of course, the course has been around, yeah, for about 50 50 years now. So after 50 years, here's a passage that actually has a nickname. What is the nickname for this passage? It's called the promise. If anybody ever says, read the promise. And of course, the miracles, they're referring to this passage. Once you accept his plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort. He will go before you making straight your path and leaving in your way, no stones to trip on and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty, but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. That inspired me so much that I hopped in my car and I started driving and I started traveling because I thought if every care is going to melt away before I reach it, if I'm just willing to serve this purpose, I'm willing to go for that. I'll hop into a car. I don't know where the gas money is going to come from. I don't know who I'm going to stay with. I don't even know where I'm going to go. But if he tells me, he promises me that if I trust and put God first and I put that purpose to love and to forgive first, then he'll handle everything of time and space. And he does say that in there. He says, if you'll be a miracle worker for me, I will arrange time and space for you. That's a pretty good deal in exchange for saying yes to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Their response is, all right, I'll take the rest. All I want you to do is be happy and extend love to all your brothers and sisters and I'll handle all the logistics. That's a pretty good deal. I mean, that's the kind of deal I thought I can't refuse that. I'm not saying no to that. If he's making that offer and he is, I'm saying yes. And I'm not going back. I'm not going to renegotiate this. This is non-renegotiable. Every time I feel afraid, I'm going to just say, wait a minute, Jesus, I gave it all to you. Other food's going to come from, but that's your job. You said I have to practice the purpose and you handle the rest. If I need a place, a means to travel, I trust you will handle that if I need a place to stay. And I actually have to say now, I'm back in St. Augustine now for the first time in 30 years. This is the first city in Florida that I went to exactly 30 years ago this summer. So I'm back and I'm summering here in St. Augustine and I'm very happy and grateful to be here. And it's kind of a symbol that 30 years ago today I took the trip. I didn't know it was six weeks. I'd be on the road for six weeks, but that's what happened. So in this movie, we have Farat. He's our main character. He's the one with the Ed agency and he's in debt and he's not happy and he doesn't feel connected to his work or to his family. And we're going to see a series of scenes at the beginning of the movie where it looks like he's laying down and he's pondering things. There's a scene where he's asking his mother, where are the others? And at this point in the movie, we don't know what he's talking about. Where are the others? He seems a little bit disoriented. And then we're going to see some of the scenes of his earthly life, which is with his co-workers at the Ed agency. And then we're going to see him with his friend Melda. And Melda has a husband and they're going to invite him. He also will have people saying, you need a job. You need to get back to work. You need to make something of your life. You need to get back in the rat race. And so we've got that happening. But he is going to go with Melda and her husband to a yoga retreat. He doesn't realize it, but he's been invited to a yoga enlightenment and self-realization retreat during the lowest part of his life. The spirit's going to reach out to Farat and say, yeah, come this direction. Come over here. I think you need to go within. But he doesn't really understand what that is. So he's going out of the box and then he's going on a journey. And we're going on the same journey with him. So remember these ideas. Remember that happiness and the choiceless moment of the present moment and the effortless moment is what the purpose is for us to reach on earth. It's really in our mind, but that's the whole purpose of our earth experience is to reach a state where we relax so deeply that suddenly we realize that everything is effortless. It was only the ego that had us distracted with all of these future goals and ambitions and pursuits that are tied into the personality self that brought up all the stress and all the worry and concern. But when we give ourselves the restful moment of just sinking back into the present moment, all of a sudden we get the biggest smile on our face because when you start to realize, oh my God, I never realized it was effortless. I never realized that I didn't have to effort for happiness. I just had to accept it, not to make it, not to figure it out just to sink back and accept it. So also we will see as he goes on this journey, he's going to go to a yoga retreat and he's curious. We'll say he's curious at the yoga retreat and then he's going to hear this Turkish singer sing and her name is Lydia and something about her presence and her voice and her songs is going to draw him very deeply. He's very touched, kind of like the story of Siddhartha. When Siddhartha was supposed to be the king, his father had groomed him to be the king, but suddenly everyone in the kingdom fell asleep and Siddhartha walked out of the kingdom that he was supposed to inherit because he heard this beautiful song and this beautiful melody and he could not help but follow it. That's why Siddhartha left the kingdom and took the journey toward enlightenment because he was drawn by this song. Farat is going to hear the songs of Lydia and he's going to be so touched in his heart that something will get activated within him through her presence and songs and that's going to be his inroad to let go of the world and let go of all the pursuits of the world and then he will go and kind of very serendipitously, very unexpectedly, he will meet Lydia and he will meet the man Yesif that Lydia is traveling with. Yesif plays the guitar, Lydia sings and he's going to meet them by surprise again and that will be another symbol from the spirit like let go of the past, let go of trying to pursue something in the world and just follow the flow of guidance in the moment and everything will be taken care of effortlessly. So I hope you're prepared for this amazing Turkish movie and we will go with the flow of this and I will pop in during the movie to give some commentary at certain points. So enjoy the ride we are on a great ride of self-realization today.