 Hello, and welcome to A Course in Miracles TV. My name is Robin Duncan, and I am your host. The purpose of this channel is to teach, share, and celebrate the principles of A Course in Miracles. I will be talking with many of the teachers of the course around the world, and I look forward to bringing great content, tips, tools, and miracle stories that will help you on your spiritual path. Our topic today is how A Course in Miracles changes your life, because it surely does. I have a very special guest with me today, and his name is David Huffmeister. I have known David for years, and I have always admired his dedication to teaching and sharing the principles of A Course in Miracles around the world. Over the past 34 years, David has traveled to 44 countries across six continents to share his message that truth is available for everyone. His books and audios and videos based on A Course in Miracles have been translated into 13 languages. David is a wonderful guide for anyone seeking clarity about the course. Welcome to the show, David. Thank you, Robin. It's a joy to be here, and I've enjoyed our friendship over all these years. It is so fun. It's been... I added it up. It's actually been about 16 years since we first met and traveled that journey together for you helping to kick off my first healing center, and I'm so grateful to this day. Tell me, David, how did A Course in Miracles come to you? How did that book find its way into your heart? Well, I was actually out in your part of the world. I came out to Southern California, and I traveled down to La Jolla, down towards San Diego for a humanistic psychology conference that I was going to see some of the speakers that really had touched my heart, like Carl Rogers and Virginia Satir and Roger Walsh, Francis Vaughn, and so I went there and I was going through listening to all these amazing speakers, and I went down to the area where the psychologists were selling their books and CDs and DVDs at the time. And there was a table that had a videotape playing of A Course in Miracles teacher from India named Tara Singh, and two of the students were there, and they were playing some videos, and they had his book called Nothing Real Can Be Threatened, and Ken Wabnick's book, Forgiveness in Jesus, and they had the course. They're right at the conference. And so I began talking to them, and I kept being drawn back there every day of the conference, because I was fascinated, and I felt this huge heart opening, and I felt as soon as I opened the book, I felt like waves, like a tsunami of love whoosh across me and splash across my mind, and I had this feeling in my heart like my whole life would be different and nothing would be the same, and somehow that my whole life would be dedicated to this book and sharing the teachings of this book. So it was quite a striking time there, and then I did come up to LA right after that and went to Tara Singh's center on South Burnside. So that's how it was. It had me from that first encounter. From right from hello, so you opened the book and you actually could see this journey for yourself, that this was going to be a huge impact to your life. Yeah, I don't think I'd ever had that experience where I could feel like the whole trajectory of my whole life was changing in one moment, and it was a very striking kind of feeling. And so I said, I don't even know how this is going to go. But when I did come up to LA to South Burnside Avenue, I walked into the house and there was Gandhi and sayings, Mother Teresa and sayings from the course on the walls. It was a group that was living there in community with Tara Singh. And I just had this feeling then again, like my life would never be the same and just get ready because here it goes. So that was it. That is so great. It's so nice when something is clear right out of the gate, you know. So when you were new and studying the course in the beginning, would you say that there were any parts of the course that you had to think about more deeply than others or challenges? What do you think you faced as you first started studying? Well, I was aware that the course was saying that whichever part resonated with you to go with, whether it was the manual for teachers or the workbook or the text and actually I was in such I would pray and kind of use the course very initially as as an oracle. So I would receive so many answers from just formulating a question or a prayer in my mind and then open the book seemingly randomly. Although now we know there really isn't anything random. But at the time I would open it up and then I would be so touched by the answer. Sometimes I didn't have tears at how relevant the answer was and is spectacular as if the spirit was just sitting right in front of me talking to me, addressing every nuance of every question. So I think of the sections of the book, though, I was actually when I started to actually study the book in that way, I was first drawn to actually the manual for teachers with the questions and answers. Fascinating about his reins carnation. So and development of trust and, you know, these is how his judgment relinquished. I mean, for somebody who was a curious spiritual seeker, those questions were my questions and then the answers were just so spectacular and succinct. They were very succinct in the manual for teachers. So I think that's why that grabbed me first. And then as I went on from that, I moved over to the text. And it didn't take me very long to start really feeling very strongly that I needed to really start on lesson one of the workbook and really go through this and really in a devoted way. So it all of it followed pretty quickly after that initial splurge. I know when I first came to the course, it was actually through my very good friend at the time. His name was Terry, who happens to be my husband now for going on 20 years. And it was something where every time I would have a challenge and I was going through a pretty dark time in my life and he would have these beautiful things to say and he would have these beautiful prayers. And I would just look at him and say, how do you know what to say? How do you know what to pray? And he said, oh, it's just this book I'm reading. It's called A Course in Miracles. He goes, I'm just sharing some of the things that I'm learning in the book. And I thought, I need to get a hold of that book. So it's amazing when people find their way to a course in miracles. It becomes a friend. And I love your journey that you knew right away what this was going to represent in your life, at least a little glimmer. So as you were studying the course, were there any aha moments where you read something and it just changed you? Do you recall any time like that? Well, I think I was pretty primed for the course because I'd seem like every day I just felt like the kid in the candy store. You know, I was just absolutely blown away every day. I opened the book up. I just couldn't wait to do that. And I I think actually I I think for the first two and a half years, I think I I spent about eight hours a day on the average with my nose in that book, actually. And I it was like what people call an immersion. And there were different parts that really were lighting up. But I think I was so ripe and so ready for it at that time. When it first came in that it wasn't long. I mean, actually, after after maybe about four or five years, I actually had three revelatory experiences where I went just totally into the light and the entire world completely disappeared. And and after those three, I think they were probably over a span of like maybe two or three months, all three of them occurred. That when I would come back from the revelatory experience, I started to see the world in a drastically different way like a like it was a film, like it was a very thin veil. And it didn't have the heaviness that it had the rest of the beginning part of my life. The first twenty seven, twenty eight years of my life were pretty intense, a lot of intense reactions to the world and a lot of heaviness and sadness. And then this was like a piercing experience. So I think, you know, there was like the prayer on page twenty four of those early editions. I think it's on twenty eight, page twenty eight. I'm here only to be truly helpful. That was a prayer that became almost a bit like a mantra. I would I would actually practice it silently before I would go through a doorway, even when I was going to visit my grandmother or going to grocery shopping or to a restroom, whatever I would go through a doorway, I would pause and and silently repeat that to prepare my mind for what was to come on the other side of the doorway. That is so great. You know, those three times you say when you basically merged into the light or turned into light, I actually had one experience like that. And I know I tried to identify what was going on that made that happen. For me, it only was maybe about a ten minute experience, but it was so profound. And as I observed that situation, it seemed like what happened was it was the first time that I actually forgave myself, just forgave myself for mistakes, errors. And I was reading a part in the course that was telling me that all we needed to do was release the past, release the future and that freedom is available right now any moment. And that was such a big idea to me. The first time I read it, it hit me and I started almost seeing spots in my eyes and then all of a sudden I was one with the light. And like you say, you just come back changed. Was there anything that prompted those three experiences? Or were they just spontaneous from all the study? Can you recall? Just so others listening, they might want to be able to jump right into that light experience as soon as possible. Well, you know, it's interesting how the course is a path of relationships. And I was actually in all three cases, I had a friend of mine and we were doing open eyed eye gazing meditations, like sometimes you hear about like Zen open eyed meditations where we would be sitting across from each other, across on a sitting across a table. Or in one case, we were out in a lake and in Kentucky and in a rowboat and the wind we pulled in the oars. The wind was just slowly moving the boat over the water. And then we were sitting on the on the seats in the boat and just doing our eye gazing. And that was one of them. Oh, that's nice. It was it was very interpersonal. It started out where we were just gazing the two of us. And in each case, then the figure ground started to collapse. So what seemed to be the foreground and the background collapsed. And then where her silhouette was kind of her frame of her body, the light just started screaming through the crack right where the silhouette was where the border of the body and the background. And then then it just overtook everything and it all went to light and she just disappeared three different times. So it's kind of unique in that sense to be doing open eyed meditation with a friend. You know, it says the memory of God comes to a quiet mind. And, you know, in this world, it can be tough to get to that quiet mind. We have to actually make time. And I love that you are making time with others and just being quiet. You know, the times I've had my most spectacular experiences spiritually have been when I've been rested and my mind was very quiet. And I was just holding that place of listening and allowing because we go through the day and so many people have so many activities and things to do. And so it is so important. Would you agree that just to make that quiet time and really just kind of showing up in prayer and just letting yourself be in that space and spending time with God and the Holy Spirit and having that time available to them? What do you think about it? Oh, yeah, totally. I totally feel that. And in one of the descriptions of forgiveness in the course that really relates to that is forgiveness is quiet and silently does nothing. It looks and waits and watches and judges not. And to me, I like that feel of the quiet reverence. And I actually see that in one sense, it kind of gives a sense that forgiveness is like a state of mind, almost like a passive state of mind where you're so quiet and still and surrendered that you can behold the world in a new way, which a lot of times people think of forgiveness is more like a verb. Like I've got to forgive my mother or I have to forgive my neighbor as if they actively have to go and, you know, put the heebie-jeebies on something or do something in an active way. And that's not been my experience of forgiveness at all. It's much more like you just said, it's very still and very, very quiet. What do you think would help new people since you've had such a rich journey with the course? What do you think would help them to be able to embrace this information more easily? Is there any suggestion you have for them that would really quicken their pace a bit? Well, I think I would say to be extremely gentle with yourself to never feel like you have to make something happen or force something or push yourself. I find that it has more to do with readiness and as I've traveled around and talked to course students and teachers around the world in these 44 countries, that's what's come back to me as feedback. Like, wow, it just came at the perfect time in my life. Sometimes they had to get into their house, like, oh, I used it as a plant stand, as a doorstop. Oh, I had it in my library for two weeks or two months or two years, but all the stories I've heard there's a strong factor of readiness. So I would say be extremely gentle with yourself and just let it find you and use it in a way that feels nurturing and not something that has a pressure or some kind of a force to it. I love that because as we begin that study, the course is teaching us how to stop judging other people. It does so well at that and it tells us that our first temptation will be to judge ourselves because we stopped judging the world but then we turn that judgment on ourselves and that that is the same mistake. So I know for new people that I've been involved with, they become far less judgmental of others and then they almost heighten their judgment against themselves. I should be doing more, I should be saying it right, I should be praying more, I should be reading more and if we can refrain from doing that. Just do your best and really try to have non-judgment towards yourself as well. I think that slowed me down. My judgments against myself were always more harsh than against others and for other people it might be vice versa but once it got down to just those final judgments of myself, those were the ones I really had to let go of. Be more forgiving, I loved your words about being gentle with yourself and allowing yourself to go through this journey and sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we still don't say it right or do it right but I love knowing that the Holy Spirit already has it right. There's a place within us that already has it right so we don't have to be so perfect and we don't have to say and do all the right things. That really helped me on my journey. You know as you travel through all the countries, is there a particular memory of a trip that you had or a group that you had, something that just really stood out to you in your travels? Well I think my first trip to Argentina was it really stands out because I felt like I was just being taken on a journey into a place that I'd never been in language, I didn't know culture, I didn't know and I think that's maybe why it stands out is because it seems like that the Holy Spirit's method of operation, the less I knew, the more helpful I could be. Because I didn't have any preconceived notions and then when I landed and I had two ladies who were course facilitators that had set up 19 gatherings and 19 days in Buenos Aires, my first time down there after I landed, then I was whisked around in basically taxicabs over Buenos Aires, it was a very large city, didn't speak the language and so I was having so much fun with everybody and I was in such a state of surrender that I could have the windows down in the taxi when the air condition wasn't working and a bus could go by and blow black soot in on my face and I just had the biggest smile on my face. I was so enamored, I was so happy to be used by the Holy Spirit that even black soot on my face couldn't wipe the smile off my face, I was like so happy. So that stands out plus just getting to know, meeting the people and yeah, it was just a good kind of inauguration to go away from the United States and Canada and start stretching it out. How was it working with a translator when you have this group and everything's through a translator, did you find that it moves a little bit at a slower pace but you really get the same content? I think that Argentinian trip showed me too. I was there for maybe a couple weeks, a few weeks maybe and it seems like there was about 14 different translators that were all part of that and that was my first experience about how the spirit, Jesus goes before me and handles everything including the translators and I found that it was more like a revival. The translators were so tuned in with me telepathically and I was tuned in with them that the spirit was pouring through both of us, me and the translator and people were crying and there were people running around like a Pentecostal service, nothing like I'd ever experienced and it was more like Jesus saying, well, get used to this. This is just the beginning here. So it relax and enjoy yourself. So that's kind of the way I did. I've never had translation difficulties because I feel like I show up in full service and then let Jesus arrange the translations and everything else and it seems to work best. That's great. So that trip to Argentina, that was pretty early on in your world travels? It was. I think I got the course in 1986 out there in La Jolla, California and then spent probably the 80s and the 90s immersing myself traveling a bit in the United States starting around 1989 to Michigan and then to Roscoe, New York where Ken and Gloria Wapnick were in 1990, 1991. And then by 2003, I was just in full swing. I was just had really got my stride and that's when the invitation came in to go to Argentina. I met a man named David on one of my tours in the United States who had won frequent flyer mile bonanza for Latin America Airlines. And I said, what? And he said, yeah, I won a million frequent flyer miles and I wanna fly you and himself and pick two guests of your choice. First class, a Hecutiva down to Argentina. Well, I can handle that. That's an example of how Jesus orchestrates things. So I had to get a passport and it just got more surreal from then on. It just got even more surreal. That's great, David. Can you tell us a little bit about one of your favorite miracle stories? I know you have many, but what's one that would light us up here today? Well, you know, I like being of service and I was just sharing this one last night too that I was in Argentina a number of times and I would go to the rural areas and the people were so poor, I would meet with a group of mothers who had young children and they would have a Xerox copy of one chapter of A Course in Miracles in Spanish of Incurso de Milagros and they would pass for weeks, they would pass around one chapter because they couldn't afford it. They just got a Xerox copy. So I got this feeling, Jesus was like saying, you know, you gotta get the book down here in an affordable way to my people. It takes to ship the book all the way from the United States to Buenos Aires and then out to the rural areas. And one woman told me she spent two months salary to buy the book and my heart was just like, oh. And then Jesus was like saying, do this. So then I meet another friend in Buenos Aires and he's also from the United States, from Connecticut and he's like, yeah, we've gotta get the book down here. It's gotta be affordable. So then I go back, I'm at watching at this little peace house I had in Cincinnati a movie about this German monk who translated the Bible into German because it was only available in Latin and the poor people couldn't read the Bible. And I'm like, that's striking. The doorbell rings, I go there and a man named Guzman, a professor from Mexico had translated the entire course book into Spanish and his daughter had mailed it up to me. And it was while I'm watching the movie after I've just got back from Argentina and now I'm seeing, here's a course book, hand translated. That is a small task. Yeah, years translating this. So I keep getting, all right, Jesus, I got you. You want your book in South America at an affordable rate, I get it. So I go down to Bogota on my next trip. I meet some friends, Leon and Elsa at their apartment as I walk in and I shake the hand of a Colombian businessman and I say to him, I think we have an assignment together. I think we're supposed to get the Course in Miracles printed down here on Cursor de Milagros in an affordable way for the people of South America. He said, I'm right with you, I'll do it. Oh, wow. We had never met, we just shook hands. And I told him what I was feeling. He said, I join you completely. Two years later, we got the plates, Judy, Scotch and Company Foundation for Interpeace shipped the plates down there. He took me to a factory in rural Columbia and there they had printed on Bible paper, a little, even a smaller paperback version than the one in English that was affordable for people and they shipped it. I went to the factory. He gave me a box of them, I took them to Medellin and the whole course group just ripped the box open and took the whole thing out, took them 30 seconds to get all these books out of this big box. That was a touching moment for me because I do feel like while we believe we have bodies and while we believe we are here in time and space, we do take a part in helping in a greater plan like Judy and Ken and Bill and Helen where you and I have done the same. You opened the one center you've continued on for years in Los Angeles and I've gone on my travels but we're very open to be used not just to sit in and read the book to really live it. It does feel like a family. I know when you meet other people studying and it's not just a course of miracles people but I think that because it teaches us to love so deeply without the judgments, without persecution, once you become a friend in the course it just seems that that friendship just goes on forever. I love that you were able to get those books down there. You have this joyful thought and then it shows up. So some people listening might think, well, that's great for you, David, you have miracles, but what about me? So what would you say? I have my own thoughts about it but what would you say really help to open the way for that to be such a beautiful miracle that just was like silk? What would help someone new to invite those miracles in their lives? Well, I think what comes to mind is that if we are willing, the spirit can work with us right as we perceive ourselves, right with the world as we believe it to be. Because a lot of us, like you were sharing earlier with me before we started about worthiness, we have a lot of beliefs about being ready, being worthy, being competent. And many people say, why me and why now? And I say, well, it's beautiful, it's that it's you and it's now and you don't have to have any huge expectations around that, you just have to be willing to be open to that opening in your heart and that shift of mind. And I think that's nice to know that it's not, you don't have to prepare like a resume for the spirit of to say, here, am I good enough? It's more like, here I am, I'm showing up, I'm ready. I'll give it my heart, I'll give it my best. And that's all this required really, we're not asked to present some kind of resume. It's not like a job interview. When we find this course, we must be ready in some sense for working with it. I think it does help to imagine that miracles can happen. I think there are people that I've met that feel like they happen for other people but not for themselves. And fortunately for me, I grew up in a home where actually I was raised in Christian science. So miracles were really a part of what we did and we would pray about things, we would have healings. My sister was healed of epilepsy in a day. After years with the challenge, I had seen so many healings in my life that as I became an adult and found my way to a course in miracles, the idea of miracles was very natural to me. And that's probably why I've had so many because I don't think at any level I've ever thought either I shouldn't have them or they're not possible. So that was helpful, seeing that as a child. But anyone listening here today, if you haven't had a miracle that you could call a miracle, that's okay. But open your heart to have one, to be wowed by the power and the greatness and the brilliance of the Holy Spirit as that flows through your life and just be willing to know that miracles are possible. I know David, I'm sure you've had dozens if not hundreds of just miraculous moments and events and so have I. And so the more that we study, the more that we practice, we have those gentle corrections all along the way and sometimes they look a whole lot like a miracle. We can't explain them. There's nothing we did to make them happen. They just happen. For those listening, if you can know that you're worthy of everything good, that God created you worthy, God created you to be happy and that if something's out of whack, it's a perfect time to pray, it's a perfect time to turn it over and to make room for the Holy Spirit to heal the part of the mind that is projecting that whole idea in the first place. As we think about those books that went down to Argentina, that just makes me really excited though because we find those resources are available and it really had nothing to do with you. It came through you and it opens you to such a big constellation of resources, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. I think we really can't conceive of the way our life can go and the way we can be used. I think if we're just open at the beginning just to be willing to give it a try, give it a chance, then really we're saying to the Spirit, okay, I'll give you a chance to convince me because honestly, everyone on earth needs lots of convincing. It's a place that has, but for many people had been very dark and dismal and even if they feel they've had a fairly happy home life or family life, they can all recite their challenges and their hard moments. So I think if we just give it a chance, then we can say, oh, it's on you Spirit, you show me, you convince me, then it takes the pressure off of thinking somehow that you have to personally figure out a way or be good enough to do it when it's really not that way at all. That is such a key part, I think allowing God's plan in your life that we're so busy trying to map out our own plan and we think we know where we're going and where we're headed and the scariest words to the ego are, I do not know. So for me, I was a CPA, a CFO, everything was about budgeting, forecasting, trying to anticipate the future. So it was very new to me when I started studying A Course in Miracles to think of this idea that a healed mind doesn't plan. Oh, yeah, that was so different and I had to really breathe that in and allow that to be. And it was a little scary at first because I used to be a planner. So I felt a little exposed, a little naked in that way, it's to go into a situation or a group and not have a plan. The first time I did go into a group without the plan, it was actually the Saturday after 9-11. And so this was for me 2001 where I was teaching just a fairly large group and I decided I would not go with any kind of a writeup or an agenda and that was very new to me. I mean, I know you do that all over the world and up till that point, I always had an agenda. I always had something written down so that I would know what I was doing and I decided to show up without the agenda and I sat down and we had this lovely group of people and right away this woman just starts crying and I couldn't have anticipated that and so I went over to her and I knelt down and it turned out that she had lost one of her sons in the towers on 9-11. And so it was just so raw, it was so right there ready for healing and so we ended up talking about that, we ended up helping her as a group through all of those feelings and emotions and it just ended up in the most wonderful way. She stayed for the whole event, she was able to be lifted, she was able to be just held up in the light and all of it. There's not one thing I could have written down that would have prepared me for what was about to happen. Did you ever have that experience where you walk in thinking you might think it's going this way and then it went completely another way? Can you think of a time? Yeah, I can. I had a feeling one time when I went to talk to a group in Michigan and I was ready to start speaking and then it felt like the spirit was just saying, wait, wait, wait. And so I was like, okay. And then the door opened and somebody came in a few minutes late who had just been to the doctor and had been diagnosed with cancer. So she came in, she sat down, she burst into tears. But then I could feel a weight. I could let her share her emotions and she'd been studying the course for years and she had the, of course, belief system of that sickness is a decision in your mind and she'd been preaching to her husband who's not a course student and her children on and on and on. And then when she was diagnosed with cancer, she felt so embarrassed, so ashamed that she had come to the meeting and said, how can I even go home? My children, my husband are going to just point the finger back into my face and I can't even bear to think of facing them. And I don't know what to do now whether I should go to a medical, to a hospital for a procedure to be treated and so forth. So after she poured all of that out, then the spirit gently came through me about how it's all perfect and about how she shouldn't shy away from her family or from going to a hospital that the spirit uses us in our attitude and our light to shine and we don't have to be afraid of situations. These situations are perfectly given for us to help us strengthen our own experience of the miracle. And she cleared her eyes and her face lit up and like, oh my gosh, I can do this. And so she went from very shameful and fearful and depressed to back into her miracle working function and ready to go back and face her family and go for treatment, whatever she felt inspired to do. So that was very impactful for me about just wait, wait, don't, don't have a plan of thinking what you'll say and when the meeting will start, just like your 9-11 meeting, it had the same feel for me, like I need to step back and let spirit lead the way here. That's so great because can you imagine coming back from getting that kind of diagnosis and what a gift it is to walk into a situation where you can be so embraced and held in love and reminded that it's okay, you're going to be okay and maybe a few words of guidance to help you know what your next step is. So that's so wonderful that you're able to be there for her. So obviously she was really in sync to be able to walk right into a situation where she could be reinforced in that way. What do you think in terms of your own life, your relationships, like how has the course helped you the most on a personal level? What do you think? Well, I think cause I was so shy as a child and as an adolescent and into my 20s that I would say how the course has helped on a personal level is it really opened my heart up. It opened my emotions up from being more into denial and repression to being open-hearted. It opened my expression up of helping me be able to just relax and let the love flow through and smile and hug and laugh and let all those emotions pour through as well as let the dark emotions come up too which really needed to for healing. So I would say it changed the context. I even met a woman who had worked at a co-op job with me back in the, I think it was the 1980s. And then I remet her 10 years later and she just looked at me and she said, my God, what happened to you? You are not even the same person. It's just hard to believe that you've changed that much. It was like, she said you're like, your whole personality has changed like 360. And I said, well, it's like, Terry, I'm reading this book, I call it Miracles, you know, the same kind of thing, you know? And she's like, what? She said, I started feeling that my life had something to do with peace and I was looking at the Peace Corps but I wanna hear more about this Course in Miracles book. If this has changed you that much in your personality, then I have to investigate it and she did. She ended up, you know, really diving into the Course as well. And that's the testimony right there of if it can change us seemingly that much, then it certainly could have a huge impact for basically anybody who gave themselves over to, practicing it. It sure does. And it's so great how it just has this ripple effect and people see the peace on your face and they just wanna know more about that peace. I've had many people ask me about that, you know, what is it you're doing? Why do you look different? And I am different, I feel different and I know you do too and I'm so grateful for it. I think I feel so much more peaceful now than I did 30 years ago, you know, that even in my younger years, I remember my jaw was clenched and my hair was falling out. I couldn't really turn my neck very well this way, that way. I was seeing a chiropractor three times a week to get injections into my neck so that I could be more relaxed and I was working 75 hours a week and it was just a lot and I had two little boys in the balance and I remember when I was first practicing a Course in Miracles and I was going through a divorce there was just so many things going on and I was holding on to it. Like you say, just immersion, like I just needed it like food and every day my head buried in the book and Terry was my friend at the time and we would talk from time to time on our breaks and things and we would just be sharing course quotes and what do you think about that and what do you think this means and how come it says this? And so we had so much banter about the course but one of the first times that I was ready to move I had moved out of my residence and into a little apartment and I was getting ready to move into a little rental house again, getting my life started again and one thing I knew is that I did not want to decide myself that I had learned from the course that there's a plan and if I will allow that plan to play through me I was feeling the nudge about moving but for the first time ever did not decide what that would look like or how it would go. So that was new to me and again CPA, CFO that was very different for me. Normally I'd have my pen and pencil out and I would be noodling the numbers and checking the places and going through statistics and all those things. So I gave it to God and I said, you know what God? I think I'm feeling this nudge to move if it is your will that I move I would love guidance about that. What would you have me do? And I just let that sit for a bit and I felt guided to pull out some one ads back when we had newspapers, right? Pull out the one ads for the apartments and things and I found about six places that I thought might fit with a budget. I called all of them and I went to see what I thought was all of them and none of them were good. I mean, they were just not very good not very safe. Some of them smelled just wasn't the right time. And I said, okay, I receive your message that this just isn't the right time. And instead of getting mopey or grumpy or feeling like God wasn't supporting me, I just took it to mean it just wasn't the right time. And I just let it be. And then all of a sudden about 8.30 that night I got a phone call and it was someone I had called and I thought I had actually checked off all the houses and somehow there was one left. And this man said to me, he said, you called about my house. And I said, I did. I thought I saw every house I had called about. And he said, well, I've had 35 people fill out applications for my house. Would you like to fill out an application? I said, well, if you've had 35 applications why did you call me? I mean, that's great. I'm glad you have that kind of turnout. And he said, well, you were the last one on the list. And I said, okay, tell me about your house. And he said, well, it's serene. And right away I'm like serene. And he said, it has four bedrooms. It has three bathrooms. It has a pool. It has a hot tub. It has a beautiful lot. It has a lot of trees. And I was like, wow, what do you mean? Because every house I had looked at looked nothing like that. It wasn't even half that. And then he said, it's on Denise Avenue. And I said, well, that's really interesting because that's my middle name. And I said, now, where is Denise Avenue? And he kind of forgotten my name, I guess. But he said, well, it's in the city of Orange and it's one street past Robin Hood. I just started laughing. And I just knew this was my house. And I went ahead, I went and saw the house. And ultimately I was the one that was able to move in. I ended up buying it like seven months later. It was such a lovely house. But God is so funny with names, with familiarity. I always feel like the Holy Spirit has such a great sense of humor. Jesus has such a great sense of humor. And there will be times when you're praying and asking for information and it will be given to you in such a familiar way. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly how it went for me with guidance around traveling so much, meeting people. You know, it would be so obvious and there would be such a chuckle involved. And even last night we all watched the movie together and called, what was it, The Lego Movie. And it was from 2014 and it was packed full of all this meaning. And we just howled laughing. I don't think we've laughed so much but I find that that's the big characteristic where the symbols come in such an obvious way like that middle name is Denise and then Robin Hood. And then it's like you can't mess it up as you start to see these telegraph symbols that are like, here you go, here you go. I'm making it obvious for you. So I find that's been a lot of my journey with The Course in Miracles. It's very obvious symbols like that. Well, tell me about your mindful movie watching. What's that about? Well, I think I know that Jesus taught with parables 2,000 years ago. And then after I was guided by Jesus to watch movies and I would hear his commentary in my mind that I was so insightful that I sat down one day and started to put down the movies and the reviews and the insights and calling it the movie watchers guide to enlightenment. And then eventually there was a second edition, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh as it grew and grew and grew and people around the world found it so helpful that we eventually developed a website, mwge.org. And Pete, who's right here with me right now, he made a little caricature. What was it? Mr. Pops. And it was a popcorn bag who had emotions and had steam coming off. It was a little animation, Pete's good with those animations. We put that on there and then it has grown and grown now so that I basically do on Wednesday nights, like last night I do a movie with a group online on Zoom like we're using Zoom right now. We watch a movie with setup and commentary during the movie, discussion afterwards, basically anywhere from three and a half to four and a half, five hours of online joy together with these insightful, deep metaphysical movies, quantum movies, animated like last night, the Lego movie was. So it's a fun way to look differently at the world. It's a fun way to retrain the mind. And I find it's just catching on. We do a Wednesday night movie, then Thursday night, right now as we speak, they're playing the movie with my commentary over in Europe with a group of people. And then tomorrow, Marina who's in the room with me now, she puts the Spanish translation onto the movie and we go in live, we do with Latin America and we're even thinking maybe of doing Portuguese coming up as more and more things, just this catching on. So it's very practical and it's very fun and it's also very deep. People say they've never had such deep experiences sometimes as during these movies. Some, a few of my friends even have had mystical experiences in the movies, in the middle of the movies because it's so impactful. So it's just a way the course can be applied in this modern day world. So the website again is mwge.org? Yes. What does that stand for? The mwge part? Movie Watchers Guide to Enlightenment. There you go. So if somebody forgets the letters, they can maybe remember the phrase, movie watchers guide to enlightenment.org. You know, as we are all experiencing the things in the world that we are right now, there's so much temptation to either be in fear or worry about the future or judgment or conflict or trying to take a side. Do you have any words of wisdom you'd like to share for people as they are seeing what they're seeing to help them out with that? Well, I think the blessing of it is it is bringing in more flexibility, which to me equates to more willingness to just stay in the moment and follow the guidance. And like you, you know, CFO and what you came from and how your life has unfolded with you and Terry and your work with the course, the way it went for me being shy. I was in the university for 10 years and then whoosh, the way it's opened up for me. I think it's good for people to remember that you can stay in the moment and the more you are able to just stay tuned in in the moment, the more peaceful you will be and that you will be given what you need in terms of practical guidance, instruction or a feeling to do something and you don't have to try to figure the whole scheme out. You can just learn to flow with the guidance and your intuition be much more intuitive. I think everyone's becoming more intuitive that I know. They sure are. And you know, when Terry and I started our journey we did much of the same thing with the book. We would either have a question or a prayer and we would just flip open the book and see where we would land. And like you say, so many times it would bring up emotion because sometimes the answers would be so direct you would feel like there was no place else in the book that could give you the answer that you just got and it was so perfect. And if somebody opens the book and it doesn't seem to say what you would love it to say then open it again. Let Holy Spirit know that you really just want that answer. Sometimes we get in our own way I think and we might open up the book and we think, well, that doesn't say anything about what I know I've had that happen early on because maybe in my mind I was thinking that no one will answer or maybe I'm not worthy of an answer or sometimes we have those thoughts in the back of our mind. So I would say for those listening that if you haven't done that before those we call them flip opens. If you haven't done a flip open then just be very committed to the process. Like just keep flipping it until you get an answer that you love and you're going to find that it will turn out to be the first time in no time at all that you'll get something that just speaks right to you. You know, in my journey I had to really understand that I am worthy because God created me as worthy. You know, I think we've all made certain mistakes that we might call mistakes in our life. Maybe not everybody, but a lot of people. And I know I used to take my mistakes so seriously and I would be really hard on myself. And I went through a long period of time where I wouldn't really let good things happen to me. I felt like I hadn't done enough or I hadn't worked hard enough or and then this book called The Course in Miracles came along and I think it taught me so much about not only loving others that came much more naturally to me. I think it was about being willing to love, offer love back to myself and to recognize that light within me. And that took a little more time but as that began to take hold my life just started showing up in color and everything started to work and every relationship is healed, every relationship. And there was a time when there was quite a few that were not healed for one reason or another. So I have such gratitude for what I've learned and what would you say in this final moment here, David, about how is it in a summary, how has it just kissed your life? What do you think? Well, the happiness is and the joy is what the big kiss is. That's a big wet kiss. Because how we live our life and our state of mind, our attitude to me is everything. Some people say, oh, it's an amazing book and Shakespearean blank verse and all these different things about it. Those are all wonderful things but I think it's that attitude that you're left with where you wake up and your eyes are just sparkling to greet the new day. You can't wait to be about your joy, your intuitive extensions for the day and that is no small thing considering planet Earth to wake up and sparkle and shine throughout the day and feel that calmness and peace. The Bible said, don't go to bed angry. Wow, when you're into the course, sometimes you can't drift off to sleep. You've got so much energy going on from the day's miracles and experiences that you have to just, oh, okay, calm down and rest. So that's the greatest thing for me. It's just the state of mind that it has taken me into. Such a blessing, right? Just like you, David. Well, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you, catch up with you. Thank you for all you are doing to make the world a better place. You're out there every day just lighting it up. I appreciate that. And I hope you'll join me again soon on another episode. So thank you for joining me today. Oh, thank you, Robin. Always such a joy to come together with you for whatever reason we do. It's really always a very deep joy in my heart. Thank you, David. We'll talk again soon. Have a blessed day and enjoy Mexico. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you, everyone. This is Robin Duncan with a Course in Miracles TV. Be sure to check out the website at accoursemiracles.tv for upcoming events and resources. And this channel is offered for public benefit and your support is so greatly appreciated. Thank you and have a blessed day. Bye-bye.