 Sharing the joy, shining the light, singing the play so soaring in Christ. These discussions, they're not so much talks, but they're more interactive discussions. We're going to have a collaborative experience tonight. And so I hope you will raise any kind of topics or issues or things that you'd like to have a little more insight on. And just share what you're at. It's like, to me, there was one point in my life when I was still unwinding from the world. And I was saying to the Holy Spirit, I said, it would just be great if all I could do my whole life and do this for a living is have just heart to heart talks. Wouldn't it be great if I could do that for a living? And the Spirit said, you can. And it was a shock. That's not really working. Heart to heart talks with friends is something that we tend to think of as what we do during our off time, during our leisure time, but that you could actually make it your full-time profession is kind of cool. And to me, it's been very important because those heart to heart talks have been a way to let the Holy Spirit kind of speak through me and wash through me. And that's been the way that I've come to be still in my mind. That when I try to meditate, I think a lot of us have had those experiences with meditation. We could feel it's helpful, but why is it taking so long? Why has this practice had to go on so long? Because letting the Spirit speak through me and shine through me has been a way I feel of really removing the obstacles and the resistance to the stillness. So now my mind is just very, very still. Sometimes I have a Holy Spirit music playing, but that's as noisy as it gets about this chatter and this committee meeting and all these opinions and judgments. That stuff is gone. And I have to say that the Course workbook really works. That text really gives us good metaphysics, but we have to actually use the workbook. We have to actually do the lessons from the Course to have the experience. And it just takes you deeper and deeper when you really give your mind over to those workbook lessons. There may be some ego resistance in there for a while, but then when you really start to just give your heart and soul over to those lessons, then you can really feel a very experiential change in the way that you perceive the world. You get lighter and lighter and lighter. Actually, there's a group trailer with me now. There's like ten of us. We just got a couple Honda Vans and a pop-up trailer and took off on the road. And our friend Patrick hosted us in Sacramento and Sundari's hosting us here. And then we're going to head on over towards the Bay Area a little bit more. But it's kind of fun. This is like a good old-fashioned road trip. You know, all we need is our beads and long hair. We'll be back in the sixties and we'll go out there, paint the vans, put the peace signs on the vans and everything. Here we are, close to Berkeley. It's a dream come true. All the great history here. It's just spectacular. And I'm traveling with people. See our Mel there from Belgium, Kirsten from New Zealand. Sarah's here from Ireland. Jenny. And coming up on Sweden and Eric, J.G. We just have a gang of us here. It's kind of an international flavor. Because a lot of the people that are here tonight with me, I have met them on my travels in all these different countries. And it's kind of a treat to go to Course Americans groups all over the world. I know Gary has got to go and meet a lot of people in countries too. Gary, you're in Ireland. And I think it's a treat to go and just be with all these different people because you can see it being practiced in such... With such sincerity and such earnestness and such... I guess there's an appreciation for the Course and how well it works. And then you get to hear all these different experiences. And Jesus does tell us in the Course that you can learn from His experiences and we can learn from each other's experiences. So I think that this really important one aspect is studying the book. But the practical aspect and how you're applying it in your life can be very uplifting for your brothers and sisters and those people that are around you. So I think there's a great place for the expression of miracles. The everyday miracles that happen. We're always supposed to have the parting of the Red Sea or walking on water or multiplying the fishes and the loaves. We have these more ordinary acts of kindness that flow through us when the Spirit just very gently and kindly just shines through us and demonstrates the way back to the Kingdom of Heaven. And I did realize early on that teaching was not done through words alone. Our attitude has to be the demonstration of the words. Otherwise it's just more words. It's just another theology. It's just more concepts. And we're here this time for an experience. My life is an open book and everything that I do and everything that you do, we do for each other. We all have the answers tucked away in our heart but we're here to remove the obstacles and we learn to do that by paying attention and listening. And at our monastery we go through our day trying to be very attentive to the mind, very attentive to our emotions realizing that there are no small upsets that anytime we are upset about anything whether it seems to be a minor irritation or annoyance or something like rage that it's always a grievance. We're always just trying to crucify ourselves whenever we're holding on to any kind of an upset. So part of our process is allowing those upsets to come up into awareness, to feel the safety, to feel the security, to feel that we're with brothers and sisters who care about healing of the mind who are willing to listen to us express what we have to express and are willing to hold a space and not take it personal so that we can actually let it up and get in touch with it and then we can let it go. Because we can't really release something that we're not even aware of and if we're too afraid of coming into awareness then we're just going to stay stuck. And we don't want to just stay stuck with a lot of platitudes and scriptures and verses that really don't serve us. We want to actually have that experience. People come from places where they really find that it's not a habit to be so in touch with their emotions or to speak about their emotions. I always remember the family therapist, John Bradshaw. You might remember John Bradshaw. He made a joke one time about his life growing up and his family with his parents. He used the phrase, Grab it, there's a feeling loose in the living room. There's something about that phrase that I just like. It was so kind of like you could talk about the weather and talk about the news and the sports scores but don't talk about the feelings. It's too intimate because it could lead to friction. And that's part of that people place that you were talking about where everyone's trying to smooth things over and never talk about any issues that could be highly charged. And with the monastery it's like there's an open welcome for that. So that can't be part of that breaking the cycle of people placing to be able to openly talk about things that you're feeling. Because when you start talking about it then you get more in touch with it. If you're just kind of distracting yourself with other things and kind of pushing them down then those feelings never get addressed. And of course America of course deals with the whole psyche. It deals with our perceptions, with our emotions, with our thoughts, our beliefs and even our desire. And our desire really deals with the whole package to go for emotional healing and to go for spiritual healing as well. As for the people placing, yeah it's one of the most insidious defenses against our true self. And like you were saying to become such a habit that we realize that there's conflict with that where we sometimes will speak something or say something for someone's approval or to be liked. To not hurt the feelings. Yeah, to not hurt the feelings and to kind of not rock the boat too much. Go along with the crowd, go along with something. And then when we're away from that situation we can have conflicting thoughts and feelings that come in. Why did I say that? Why did I commit to that? To do that this weekend. I would much rather do this, this, this weekend instead of that. And then we had this like a war going on inside. Like if I could commit a meeting, you know, like we got to hear all the different sides and it's like suddenly we're at a meeting of the United Nations in our own mind. And I find that the way through that is basically what I would call integrity of mind where everything that we perceive and feel and think and believe and desire becomes into alignment. How the world seems to come at us seems to have a lot to do with our state of mind instead of us being 100% responsible for our state of mind. So I really love that part of the course where Jesus says I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience and I decide upon the goal I would achieve and everything that seems to happen to me I ask for and receive as I have asked. Talk about 100% responsibility. That's like a ho-o-pono-pono statement in the course. That is like there's no where you can squeeze that out on. It's 100% responsibility. And really it's wonderful when we're willing to start to take that much responsibility for our state of mind.