 Okay, hi everyone. Welcome. Good to see you all. Welcome to our Heart of Christ retreat weekend and thank you for joining us this Easter. You've got a beautiful theme, Rise into Joy. And so yeah, I'm really looking forward to this weekend. And I can give you a little bit of an idea of how the weekend is going to flow. So I can say that this evening we'll be having our friends at the monastery share there with music and just deep beautiful heart shareings. Tomorrow we have a movie with David. And then on Sunday we'll have the closing session here again with David and Francis. And we have David and Francis with us in the studio this morning so I'm going to cross straight over to them now. Hi everyone. Happy Holy Week. So beautiful to see everybody's smiling faces all around the world. Yeah, welcome. Yeah, we have such a large group today because we have all of you joining us for this weekend online retreat. And then we also have our group from the mystical Christ Academy joining us as well so huge welcome. And David and I were actually looking at the list of your names and the country and they're really cross the world around the world. And some of you actually I know it's in the middle of the night and you guys just, yeah, stay awake to be part of the live session. It's really beautiful. So maybe I'll just give some examples of the yeah, there's so many countries that are represented here on this beautiful retreat for Easter. Australia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States. Anything else. Yeah, we have chili Peru. Yep. Malphite and her and her son, Norway, from Norway. Yeah, it's, it's just amazing that we've all gathered here on in the world's terms and the Christian calendar it's, it's good Friday. And we're here to really find out what is good about good Friday. We want to really, we want to go into the, the goodness, not maybe the interpretation of crucifixion because that's what we Jesus tells us you will never be able to understand the error. You can only accept the correction so don't even try to analyze the error, figure it out or try to describe it. It's, it's an error that has already been corrected. So he's telling us don't focus on the error, focus on the correction. And that'll be part of our reinterpretation for this week for sure. I'm really excited because I, this is such a deep topic with this morning. I was asking Jesus to give me, you know, the point, point me to where is going to be the focus of today. And David and I joined and just go, just goes deeper and deeper and seems like we're going to undo all the beliefs that is still holding us hostage or holding us chained to this world. So I'm really excited. Yeah. And when we looked at all the things that you wrote into us, every time we do one of these online retreats, we get we've received so many questions and this time we particularly received really the majority of what you wrote in was prayers, which is really really appropriate here for Holy Week. And so we thought we would just pick a prayer that everybody could just sink into to join at the start of our retreat here. And I think we found one from from Dan. Holly. Yeah, Dan wrote this prayer, I think it's a shared prayer from all of us. That's a quote from the introduction to review five. Steady our feet, our father, let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us. We have no words to give to you. We would but listen to your word and make it ours. Leave our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yeah, does he follow sure that he's safe, because his father leads the way for him. We bring our practicing to you. And if we stumble, you will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon your sure remembering. We wonder off, but you will not forget to call us back. quicken our footsteps now that we may walk more certainly and quickly on to you. We accept the word you offer us to unify our practicing as we review the thoughts that you have given us. Amen. So beautiful. That just brings like a hush over all of us, just a hush of reverence. And, and I do remember. I think one time was talking about Helen Shuckman the scribe of a course of miracles and, and there was a couple times when, when she was scribing a course of miracles or later on when she was just reading the notes. And every time she would come to a particular passage that really touched her heart. She would just tear up. She, you know, she was a research psychologist. She was had been an atheist but when she would read something particular from the course she would just tear up the tears would come to her eyes. And I do remember two of those passages one was the courses version of the Lord's Prayer. When she took that down, she could, she could hardly continue. And, and Bill and Helen were in such a hush after they read Jesus' Course in Miracles interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, and then she, she burst into tears. And then the other one was very short. It's, it's when she reads the line in the course, I was a stranger and you took me in. And then again the tears, I was a stranger and you took me in. And that's what we're going into today and this weekend. The Christ is taking us in. We have believed we are strangers to God. We have believed we were strangers to Jesus. But that line that even brought tears to Helen Shuckman, I was a stranger and you took me in. Jesus wants us to do that with all our brothers and sisters. You know, he wants us to take the stranger in, to see no strangers, to see everyone as our beloved self. That we're really one Christ self and we've just believed in this ego and it made up the strangest creatures, bodies. The course workbook lesson today is I am spirit. It's got to be one of the, the shortest lessons in the book, but is that direct I am spirit. And then to make up time and space, which is nothing like eternity, to make up bodies, which are nothing like eternity. In fact, Jesus is really using his course of miracles to convince us that we've been utterly absolutely mistaken about our identity and we have taken on bodies as a belief in a false identity. And we want to start and kind of reinterpret everything that we perceive today. And Francis is so beautiful because you were up this morning and you were reading and you were like, look at this. Look at this. Look at this like a little child and then Linda had to come and bring book markers for the course book. There was so many. Oh, look at this one. Look at this one. But, but really it was all starting off with. It's like a baseline for reinterpreting everything that we perceive in the world. Yeah. I, you know, this first thing that I actually read this morning, I thought it was such a beautiful way that Jesus is basically how he looks at everything. What is that this, what is going on? What is that we're perceiving and experiencing? And it was so helpful to have Jesus's interpretation of the whole picture here. And I thought I would just, it's just a couple of paragraph but really establishes, you know, this is this whole scheme of what is really happening here. And that is from chapter 20. And he says, prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and messiated, weak and exhausted, exhausted. And with eyes so long cast down in darkness, they remember not the light. Do not leap up in joy. The instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. You groped but feebly in the dust and found your brother's hand uncertain whether to let it go or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your, your hold and raise your eyes onto your strong companion in whom the meaning of your friend freedom lies. To be crucified beside you and yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect. And with him beside you, you shall this day enter with him to paradise and know the peace of God. Such is my will for you and your brother and for each of you for one another and for himself. Here there is only holiness and joining without limit for what is heaven but union direct and perfect and without the veil of fear upon it. Here are we one looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and ourselves here all thoughts of any separation between us become impossible. You who were a prisoner in separation are now made free in paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friend, my brother, myself. Yeah, that's it. Those that have been asleep for a long time do not just leap, leap to joy. And even though the title of our weekend retreat here is rise to joy, rise to joy. We have to start to realize that we, we have to be patient with our mind because it has believed the error. So firmly that it has denied eternity and denied eternal life. And it's denied God and it's been like a fixed belief in error. And it's kind of like if you had an analogy to, I don't know if any of you ever had like a pet bird in your house. You know, when you have a pet bird, you go oftentimes to the, to the there, Amanda's waving the head. You have a pet bird. And you maybe got the bird at a pet store and you buy the cage and you put the bird in the cage and you feed it through the bars and you know you talk to it and sometimes it chirps back to you but. But it's kind of like if you have a pet bird for many years. And then you open the door. The bird will not fly out the door, because it is so accustomed to its cage that it doesn't even have any idea. It hasn't been using its wings to go for long stretches or anything. It's, it basically is become familiar with the cage and content with the cage. And this is really the analogy we'll call it of the sleeping son of God. There's just one son of God, it's one Christ, but, but that Christ is at home in heaven and dreaming of exile. And it seems to be a deep, deep dream of exile. It's a deep amnesia. It's a, it's a very, very deep sleep. And our purpose now is to wake up and we wake up through forgiveness, but it's not the forgiveness that most of us were raised with. You know, we thought we have to forgive people who wronged us or forgive people who didn't do the things that said they were going to do or they broke their promises. But, but it's much deeper. The awakening is much, much deeper than forgiving people. The people just represent the belief in death. And it's hard to think that way because none of us were raised that we have a deep amnesia. Can you imagine on your fifth birthday party before you blow out the candles, your parents say, well, this is what it's all about. You have a deep amnesia and we're celebrating your birthday, but really we need to be reborn again in Christ. We, we have to find a way to get beyond celebrating days and the repetition of days and years to be born again. And Jesus taught that Nicodemus back in the days of Jesus was so amazed when Jesus said, you must be born again to know God. And Nicodemus said to Jesus, what does that mean? Must I go back into my mother's womb? You see how associated the sleeping mind is with bodies that even Nicodemus said, what, what must I do to be born again? Must I go back in a, in my mother's womb? Jesus is like, no, no, stay with me. This is, this is deep, deep, deep awareness that we're going for. We're going for the light. So also another analogy I like is the one of when we go to a movie theater, you know, nowadays we have Zoom and we watch movies on digital. And what we used to use DVDs and Red Box and Blockbuster, some of you stating you there's a Blockbuster over here. Eric's like Blockbuster, we're on Blockbuster Friday here. We're going to try to break out of the of the mesmerism of the hypnotism of this sleep of forgetfulness. Jesus tells us this deep amnesia where we have forgotten our true reality. We forgot God and the light and now we're in a position where, you know, the Christians would say everyone's a sinner. Some of you don't like that. I know that's why you're here. You don't like to hear that everyone's a sinner. And so what Jesus says, he says everyone who believes in this world and perceives it as fragmented and separate is a death worshiper. So you can just relax. If somebody says you're a miserable sinner, just say, No, I'm not. I'm just I'm just a death worshiper. I am not a miserable sinner. I do not want to ever hear that I'm a miserable sinner again. I'm a I'm a death worshiper. Let's get that straight. I'm going to use course and miracles terms now. I'm tired of that sinner stuff. I'm a death worshiper. And now Jesus is saying, Yeah, let's let's start there. This is this is Good Friday. Let's start with the crucifixion, which is the belief in the ego and crucifixion is not related to the body. Isn't that beautiful on holy week to start to free our minds to see that the belief in the ego is a belief in our mind. That's where the mesmerism and the amnesia is coming in. And the belief that there's such a thing as birth or death that relies on our belief in the body and Jesus is saying you aren't a body. You keep talking about things and pointing to things in form as if they're major events like birth being a major event or death or sickness being a major event and he's like it's not there. Everything you perceive through the fragmented lens of the ego is perceived through the filter of death. So as I've said, thousands of time, it's a perceptual problem. The problem. The problems are not really specific. It's the filter that we're looking through is the problem. It's a very dark filter. In Corinthians, it said it's dark and glass. If you look at the Bible, it says you look now through a dark and glass and you believe in the temporal and you've you need to open up to the eternal to the everlasting. So Francis found some really good passages and then I know for myself to when when I was doing the workbook lessons. You know, I, I basically got to lesson 163 in the workbook and lesson 167. And for years I've been calling those those are like Jesus's sermons on death and they're very different than what we have believed about death. Death is not what we think it is. But you were finding some amazing passages that start to take us in the direction of of changing our mind about about our mind because our mind believes in death. So we obviously have to change our mind about our mind because it's not our.