 Yeah, it's a good word. It's just like the word like soul has so many different uses and connotations depending on what sentence it's used in and what philosophy. Some talk about the soul as this synonymous with spirit and others talk about it in many other ways as if it's going through a journey as if it has to be nurtured and as if that it can come to this world and incarnate and there are many definitions. It's the same with consciousness. There's a lot of spiritualities that talk about the goal is to become fully conscious or they'll talk about words like Christ consciousness or the wholeness consciousness and Jesus in the Course his definition is that consciousness is the domain of the ego, so he never ever says Christ consciousness once in the book because he's defining it in a little bit different way than the common vernacular of spirituality, but he does that with mind too. He's got a very specific use of the word mind, right mind, wrong mind, Christ's mind, all three are very very different and for people in psychology the mind also has all kinds of connotations because it gets associated with the brain and the mind really has nothing to do with the brain. The brain is just grey matter and electrical impulses and the mind is very vast. So I think the first thing would be is that consciousness is the domain of the ego and because it's the domain of the ego it is subject to training. You can't train the spirit. It would be ridiculous to say, okay, I am presence. All that is, I'm going to train you. You can see how silly that sounds. I am, I will train you. I am, you know, training doesn't even compute to the spirit, you know, it doesn't and and even in terms of the soul and the soul's journey if the soul is created by God or the soul is spirit then the soul doesn't even need any training either. So when we talk about consciousness as the domain of the ego and that which can be trained we're talking about like a small mind, like the mind that is sleeping and dreaming it's separate from God, that that mind can be trained and when we start talking about the right mind even when we talk about that where Jesus says the Holy Spirit lives in your right mind the right mind is your remembrance of God. The right mind doesn't even need training. It would be ridiculous to think of the Holy Spirit or the where the Holy Spirit resides and abides needing training. So then if the right mind doesn't need training and the spirit doesn't need training and the wrong mind is the domain of the ego and the wrong mind is the ego then we're talking about the training of the mind that believes it's identified with the ego and that's consciousness. So let's go back to some earlier connotations of consciousness like the 1960s peace, love, unity. Hey, man, let's raise some consciousness. Let's go for some higher consciousness. They were right on. They training consciousness, going for higher consciousness. They were using words in a very appropriate way because they knew that there was more of an expanded consciousness. Maybe they accessed it through LSD or weed or something, but they know that some kind of psychotropic drug they tapped into something that was massive, was huge and then they just wanted to get back there. You know, is there a way that I can come into that higher consciousness, that transcendent consciousness? And if consciousness can be trained and consciousness is the domain of the ego then what you're going for is a training that removes the limits that are on that consciousness. So consciousness is divided and we have two terms for that divided consciousness, we call it being conscious and being unconscious and unconscious is kind of like the Inception movie that you watched three times that you really enjoyed. It seems to have layers and you seem to be able to go down, down, down into that subconscious and it's like layers of sleep, layers of dreaming where just when you think you've come out of one and you go, wow, I'm awake. This is fantastic. You have no clue that you're just in another level, seeming level of dreaming and if you ever saw that movie, the 13th floor, he gets kind of bewildered because he keeps coming out of these different realms and then he starts to discover that they're all unreal and he gets very disheartened like, oh, what else is there? So really when we talk about enlightenment or we talk about waking up we would say that I think of waking up is really that God takes the final step or when you purify your mind and you reach such a state of high consciousness that you can't go any higher then you've made your mind ready for the return to that which is beyond consciousness, just the I Am Presence and Spirit and so it's it's like step by step by step by step and basically what we're learning is that the mind is too fearful to take it in one full dose it would just be, Jesus says it would be more traumatic than beatific you know, if you had a sustained light experience in the way that you perceive yourself as a body or as a separated self, it would be just horrific it would be the most terrifying thing imaginable and so the miracles have to make the mind ready for that revelatory experience and that's why I always say with the Course it's called a Course in Miracles instead of a Course in Revelation Course in Revelation would be much shorter and it wouldn't have to have all these lessons in it and all that theology and all those chapters, 31 chapters and so forth, it would be I think you probably could do it in maybe three or four pages really you wouldn't need 1200 and some pages it would just probably take three or four and if Jesus had come to earth and just taught Revelation he wouldn't really have needed three years of a public ministry he could have just kind of gathered them all up on the mount say, okay, I'm going to give it to you straight it's going to be really quick and then I'm poofing out of here I'm not hanging around for three years, but that was a part of the plan the plan was to reveal it in a way that not only gave you the full presence of revelation, that presence, but also that gave lots of examples, lots of parables and a, we'll say a three-year window, a three-year demonstration of this is the direction where you're going and more of a calming effect be not afraid I am with you always and these three years are going to have to suffice you know, you get a three-year demonstration of eternity you know, if you've seen me, if you really see me and who I really am then you can see God too, you can know God to the extent that you know me, you know God so it was always appropriate before Abraham was I am I am the way the truth of the life it was that was this the universal spirit was speaking and it just seemed to be playing out in terms of a man but it couldn't have been a man ridiculous to think that spirit could be a man or even shrink itself down It was more like remote control Spirit never really comes into this world, you know, it can't just okay. I'm vast let me turn on changes I'm gonna shrink myself down like a little shrink wrap into a little human form that's absurd, but it's more like like a remote control, like the spirit had remote control over Jesus' body It could make it talk It could make it move like the Truman Show You know, it could move it around and it had little eyeballs that were like cameras Cool What that green thing is over there Look at all those things. See it's spirit can't really know what anything means even the Holy Spirit God is so fast that God doesn't even know this world. The Holy Spirit is like the bridge and then you think well, if the Holy Spirit is the bridge then maybe the Holy Spirit sees the world like I see it and Jesus says no The Holy Spirit doesn't even see the world the way that a human being sees it The Holy Spirit is not anthropomorphic Oh my gosh, your your electric bills do on Friday. How are we gonna do this now? You've just prayed to me and I've kind of figured out a way to pay you like you know, that's not the way the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit doesn't deal with with specific perceptual problems. The Holy Spirit deals with the mind that believes in specific problems So the Holy Spirit is working with the mind that believes in all of these fragmented concepts but not working as if the concepts are real That's the human condition It's as if oh, okay, I'm a human being I've got all these problems and issues financial and relationship issues health issues and on and on and on maybe I'm sensitive to sounds or sensitive to sights or whatever it could be. Those are not the realm that the Holy Spirit deals with So in the end, that's why Consciousness, we're back to the 60s, you know, we're here. This is just a consciousness raising event that we're having here on the mountain. We're here to raise consciousness We're here to go for higher consciousness and This is just the symbol of the format it's taking Really, it's it's all occurring within our mind and in our awareness and this just seems to be the out-picturing of how it looks now And it's good once you start to get a clearness of this then you you start to feel there's meanings within yourself that you start to grasp and realize and then when you're having conversations with somebody They can be talking about whatever using whatever words they want to use and You don't ever have to have a debate over a word You know like, you know conversations going somebody says, well, no, I don't I don't like that word Whenever somebody says that to me, I don't like that word. I say, okay Well, let's use another one Not about debating about the rightness of the wrongness of a word And it's the same with Symbols if you meet somebody and you're talking about a symbol and they say well I think this and this and this it's like there's never a call really to debate about a person a place a thing an event You know, it's just a symbol and the Holy Spirit is always going to use the symbols to so we can join never to separate never to feel like there's something to to Have allegiance for or to defend against, you know, that basically they're just these light symbols Like little feathers and the Holy Spirit is happy for the feathers to be used in a way that's uplifting while not taking any of the feathers seriously and I like that likeness, you know, that's that keeps it really really light So I guess that's an interesting word Consciousness