 I've got another question. When you do this intensive, to whom is it normally directed? What level of awareness do you normally direct this intensive to? Well, we go where we're invited to go. We did one in Terror City that was about two weeks, and there were people there that came. Everybody seems to have a little different level of awareness. People that came in for a couple of days even, and said, well, this is too deep for me. It's not as helpful as we were going to be going deeper and deeper over two weeks. And so they said, this isn't for me now, and then they left. And a number of people stayed. I guess it was about 11 or so that stayed for the two weeks. And so we throw it out. I mean, the course of the tool has all these different levels in it, and the whole object is to go as deep as you can, and the whole object is to wake up so that you come to a state of mind that there's no pain, that it's pure peace, peace of mind. You're not speaking within the term of the intensive. No, in the sense of, I don't put a time limit on it. In other words, to me it has everything to do with the level of readiness of the mind, which is highly individualized. There are many levels of readiness, and it has to do with desire. And for example, we just came from Adrian, and there were just enormous mind shifts in the span of one week, where people had been working with the course, sometimes dabbling in and out for a while, and they really were intent. I mean, they came, and they were then morning some of them in the afternoon and in the evening. They didn't, some of them, at the end of the week, stopped going to work. They were just profoundly touching to them, and they were having these shifts, and they were seeing everything differently. I mean, there were a lot of shifts taking place. So once again, all I do is I kind of sow the seeds, and people, it all depends on their level of readiness and their desire. There is no normal. Yeah, there is no normal. And that's what I've learned from being involved in a few of them. We started at the very beginning with the real basic level, and we're going to leave the tapes, too, and a lot of times it's helpful. Just the mind is, these terms are so new. It's kind of like last night, I used that metaphor of like a little baby, where a little baby when he comes into the world, he hears all these figures moving about him, and he hears all this noise, and Jesus was saying from that quote last night that those will become his comforters, and that will be his native tongue, all that gibberish. And initially, I mean, I've studied many different philosophies, many different spiritualities. This is very clear. I mean, if you want to cut through the much, which could take thousands and thousands of years, this is a way of coming to a clarity and waking up. I like to think of it as a very sharp tool. There are many tools, but it's a very sharp one. And also, there's lots of resistance that comes up to the ideas. It can take many forms. It's kind of like you just take what you can take, though. There's no sense of anybody being coerced or rushed, and as questions start coming up, then that's when to ask them. Yeah, but I have always found that there has to be a relative degree of understanding before you can ask questions. So, you know, I really, this wasn't exactly to be quite frank. What I thought that it might be where I'm at is more in dealing with my day-to-day interactions with other people on a more spiritual level. I try to explain this to other people who are close to me so they understand what's going on because they tend to wonder, what on earth is she up to all the time? She's constantly changing and getting into something new and different and where is she going? And I'm more interested in absolutely dealing with my ego. Now, I'm not at the point where I feel that I can... I don't think I've learned enough from dealing with my ego to let it go and go somewhere else. I'm trying to blend the two, which I understand is not a possibility in the overall scheme of this course. But that's where I'm at. I'm trying to tone down the ego, be a softer person, less intense, more understanding, forgetting, and so forth. And this, so far, as I've been able to take anything out of it, has not helped me learn how to deal with it. It's telling me that you have to deny the ego or deny it or realize that it isn't important. And at this point in my life, it is very important because it's causing me a lot of stress. So what we're going to do is we're going to use this sheet. It's a real practical sheet for taking your upset whenever you like to have an interpersonal upset with somebody and you're feeling a little miffed at them or a little irritated or whatever, and then writing down how you're feeling at the top of the sheet. And then it's a metaphysical tracing, working it back into the mind to try to get your mind to a place where it can see it differently, perceive it differently, and choose a miracle. And a lot of the stuff that we've talked about, particularly that first day, it gets into some basic metaphysical understanding that's very important and the more you understand the metaphysics, the more meaningful the sheet will become. And the easier the tracing back gets. In other words, initially, a lot of people will take this sheet and they'll just use it, they'll make lots of copies of it, they'll punch holes and they'll make a binder because the ego seems so entrenched and so deep like you're saying that to think of completely letting it go initially seems like, wow, that's a beautiful thing. To me, it's one mile after another. The journey may be 100 miles long, but I can't just say, okay, I'm there. I have to take it mile by mile. And my ego may in fact only be a mile too, but I've got to get through that in order to go further. So that's good. Also too, my approach always has been to start with what people are perceiving as practical problems and you start with that and you work it back. So my approach has been going around the country and just going deeply into the metaphysics. Everywhere I've gone, twice around the continental United States and all kinds of places has been the same thing of coming together, sometimes not for a period of a week, sometimes it's for a weekend or for an evening or for an afternoon. But the whole process is start where you're perceiving yourself. And we need to think like your discussions on Tai Chi, you may have questions about how all that fits in. The deeper you go, everything just starts to click in and integrate. And until you get to the deeper levels, then it's kind of like more of like a smorgasbord. That feels comfortable over there. I don't know how or why that fits in, but I feel like I want to do Tai Chi or I feel like I want to do certain types of meditation or things like diet, exercise, healing practices, hands on and all kinds of different things. We can talk about those, any subject, because I know that everyone here including you have been in spirituality for some time and what the Course does is it just starts to integrate everything in the ideas of mind and it starts to pull everything together. So all of a sudden everything starts to have meaning instead of being like little things orbiting off here. Like I don't know exactly how the shockers relate to Tai Chi or to the diet or this or this. It seems like there's lots of things on the surface but it all starts to integrate. So anything that anybody wants to bring up is fair game. I think in some ways you may have felt like I've appealed at times but like one of the things I learned from another place and another time is that especially with this ego some of us have to be somebody before we can be nobody and before, you know, we feel we've got to do all these things and when you start building them all up and doing them then you find out that like hey, it's not always cracked up to be and then you can begin or at least I can begin to let someone that ego go. I haven't let it all go but, you know, I find that how the ego has led me on to do all these different things really wasn't it. And so now I've been there and now I can sort of come back and sort of try to resolve it. Well that's where I think I am because I've allowed my ego to put me in a corner too many times and I don't like that position. It's not very comfortable. In fact I have just found a different room to be in that has different corners and then I'll be damned to end up in one of those corners again. So what I'm trying to do now is I'm realizing that I need to approach situations in a manner that says well wait a minute, why am I allowing Beverly's behavior to threaten me because it really doesn't it doesn't mean anything one way or another. I'm trying to deal with these common everyday things dealing with people that I can't just walk out on. I mean I can leave you and never see you again and that'll suit me just fine. I can do that with people I know well when they put me in these corners when I allow them to. I don't have to see you anymore, I can deal without you but in some situations like extended family members or people that you work with it's impossible to do that and so I've learned the hard way that I got to stay in that corner or figure out how not to get in it next time. So that's, it's pretty critical to me but it's one of those things where you're forced into it because of an emergency. It's something that just has to be done because now you're there. So I'm there. And it doesn't feel good. When we feel like we're having an irritation with someone else we have a sense in science that there has to be a better way there has to be something better than this instead of just repeating it or keep going on. And I can look at these individuals and I can rationalize and I can say this woman is in pain this woman is not happy about herself why are you letting this distress you? Why are you letting this behavior infringe on your comfort? And I haven't quite figured it out yet so that's one component of why I've been searching and trying to find a better way. And this first one that has writing on it everybody takes one copy of the act. So it's got 12 steps. I like the 12 step program instead of having to go to a 12 step review you can get out your little sheet and say I mean that's a little space over here so you can even punch holes. A lot of times people will do that will work with these things and will put them in a notebook and then when you feel like the ego is really going on and saying you haven't proved in the last year or done this or that you can go through it. I have improved. If you look through your notebook you can see I have made some progress so it can kind of be a way of charting a little bit of progress or at least it can be a symbol of progress when the ego kicks in and says you haven't improved one bit in the last six months you can say oh yes I have. Oh my goodness. I remember when I used to set up that mate it didn't bother me anymore and it's real witness to the mind that the mind can change its mind. It starts off, the mind of peace is healed the mind of peace has wholeheartedly welcomed peace in this world lack of peace appears in many forms for permanent healing to occur lack of peace must be traced back to its singular cause in the mind use of this instrument for that tracing back can help a willing mind let go of what it thinks it knows see the world differently and experience the present state that peace enjoys so that singular cause in the mind lack of peace again that would be the ego when we talk about go into right mind and wrong mind or Holy Spirit and ego that's the cause of all the upsets it's just the ego it doesn't seem that way initially when you start working with these things it seems like if you have an aching back there might be 15 reasons it might come to mind if I hadn't been carrying those groceries or if I hadn't if I had just a little more sleep and I'd rested it or all the things come to mind. It's not an occupational hazard I'm a dentist, it's a given. It's tied in with occupationalism that that's what it seems like on the surface and what this sheet will help us do is trace it back to it's just the ego it's just the decision for the ego that's where the upset and pain is coming from Should we use an example? Yeah, if you can think like what I was saying sometimes interpersonal if you think you have a person that you're having difficulty with or something could be anything that's going on it's just upsetting that there's a lack of peace around and it can be a small thing too it could be like this major hair in the sink that was one that we thought of that always comes to mind it's like one of those minor things even that, it bugs me yeah, anything was that one that you're thinking of something that would be that we could use like a hair in the sink? no I guess you're a co-worker or something is that a specific experience you're having or is that just I have a specific experience I don't want to use