 During the break we were talking about some things like nutrition and we could talk about economics. There's so many things that we put our mind energy and our trust in. And we basically have to start with drawing our faith and trust from these beliefs and putting our trust in the Holy Spirit. And it's one thing to say the words, I trust you Holy Spirit, I want to hear you Holy Spirit, but most of the work with the Course is actually taking a very close, honest look at what have I invested in. It's not a matter of actually having more trust because you can run a guilt trip on yourself for that event. But I don't have enough trust, I need to trust more. It's not so much a more or a less thing, but it's like withdrawing our belief and trust in the ego's belief system and trusting in that guidance. And I think for me that's what made all the difference at the very beginning of early years because I actually did the work with lessons. I actually started to look at what are my beliefs in economics and medicine and nutrition, some of the things he mentions in lesson 50 being liked, knowing the right people. Okay, do I have any investment in that? Really it takes you inward to really start to take an honest examination of how have I invested my mind's energy, my mind's belief. So he teaches us, you made the ego by believing in it and you can dispel it by withdrawing your belief from it. That's the thing. It's not about trusting more, it's about reinvesting our trust in that which will bring us true fruition, true peace of mind. And we have equated with sometimes peace with a particular person or location or a particular environment. Even though the Course teaches us that the holiest spot on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. We have invested belief in freedom. We actually believed in personal freedom and we still seem to experience the opposite, which is imprisonment. So we have to loosen up from this investment in personal freedom to a state of mind and freedom in the Spirit, freedom in listening to the Holy Spirit. So it's not like we've been seeking for the wrong things, it's just that we've been seeking in the world and through worldly definitions for the experiences that we want. And we deserve those experiences, that peace, love, happiness and joy. We've just been looking in the wrong direction and that's really all the Course in Miracles is doing, is nudging us back to say you are entitled to all of this. This is your birthright, this is how you were created. This is actually natural for you, but you forgot this and you've just been looking to the ego and the ego's world and it's not going to ever sense by you. So that's the meaning of I'm calling you out of the world. I'm calling you out of the thinking of the world, out of the belief system of the world. Doesn't mean we all have to go off and live in caves and in the woods. It just means we have to divest our mind from that ego belief system. And it's a worthy cause that's worth putting your mind into. In fact that's really the only thing you can succeed at is peace of mind. Everything else will just fall away. Even though the relationships of this world were set up by the ego the Holy Spirit uses those same relationships to help us get in touch with what's going on in our mind. And I would say out of all the issues and all of the mirroring that goes on in parent-child relationships probably the central issue and the one issue that we really have to deal with is called the authority problem is controlled. In fact one time when I was traveling in South America I was in Argentina and the course is really big in Argentina. There's a lot of people working with the course and I was out in rural Argentina away from the big cities and I was with a group of mothers and children and the mothers were saying oh we're working the course and our small children are teaching us so much. We're learning so much from them every day. And I said well could you give me an example what is the major lesson that you're learning from the small children and they told it to me in Spanish and then they translated it to English and the English version of what the small children were teaching the mothers was you're done. That was the whole translation. That's it, you're done. In other words this game of inequality this game of superior and inferior this game of you have more powers I have less powers is over, you're done. It's really good to get to the point and of course that's what is played out on a daily basis that the only problem we have in this world is we have forgotten that we are perfect equals and that this whole world was made on differences and to teach inferior or superior. That's where the problems come in. And so it's kind of interesting because certainly from a developmental point of view you would say that young children seem to come into this world very dependent much like very elderly people seem to leave the world in a state of dependence and you could say that in terms of skills and development of the brain and motor skills and so on and so forth it doesn't seem that parents and children are equals in the level of form certainly they seem to be young children need to be taken care of and nurtured along but we could say that in terms of attitude the central problem is one of inequality. So what we find is that when you trace that back metaphysically that the control issues that parents and children face are projections of the control issue of the ego believing that it has its own autonomy and that basically the core ego belief is I can be the author of myself. That's what this planet was made to demonstrate. I am not authored by God. I can be the author of myself. If we give it a few more words I can make myself to be any way that I want to be I can be male female I can be tall or short I can pick my color I can pick all these aspects but it's kind of like this cosmos is invent yourself invent yourself in a damn well way you want to be talk about uniqueness talk about ingenuity diversity multiplicity it's all like a kind of like turning your back on oneness on love on the sameness of heaven and trying to make up a self different than the self that God created which is pure spirit. So it plays out in many many different ways we can say the authority issue can play out with authority figures like police officers or doctors or lawyers or politicians or anyone that seems to be in a position of superiority but most definitely it plays out in parent-child relationships and I think that's beautiful when you sum it up as you're done it really reminds you every day to be very very humble now in the Course in Miracles Jesus says that teaching and learning goes on all the time and he has some interesting things to say he says that the teacher and the learner are in the same order of learning in other words they're in the same realm teachers are not above learners it's not better to be a teacher than it is to be a learner that at a mind level we're teaching and learning every second of the day and we can tell whether we're learning the spirit's lesson forgiveness or the ego's lesson of pride and autonomy by how we feel the best way to know which lesson you're teaching and learning is how you feel in the most simple direct way of course the ego will complicate that even because it's invented its own feel-good emotions and that's why when you go much deeper into the Course you start to even realizing that that actually Jesus teaches that pleasure and pain are actually the same talk about something that is really different from the human experience where one seems to be something to avoid at all costs and one seems to be something that you pursue he's basically saying they're the same because they both reinforce your identification with the body and the body is substitute for the spirit so at first glance you can say I don't get that at all pleasure and pain don't seem to be alike at all but once you get to the purpose underneath why they were invented it's because they both reinforce a false identity and remember this is distraction bill we're talking about a cosmos made carefully designed by the ego to keep you trapped