 Welcome once again to our Saturday movie workshop and we're blessed to have our Portuguese speaking friends with us today. So welcome to you too and and also for our Portuguese speaking friends, you can pin the video marked Portuguese film at any time to watch the movie. So I'd like to pass it over to you now, David. Take it away. Okay. Thank you, Peter. Welcome, everyone. Glad you can be here. Oh my goodness, we have such a healing movie today. I can just feel as the day goes on, your heart is just going to crack wide open and we know how wonderful that feels when your when your heart is open and you'd feel the love just pouring through you and radiating to the whole world. So, it's beautiful. We have people here on our zoom and with streaming from all around the world and as Peter was just saying, we we have our triple language translations going today. So that is a miracle in itself. Spontaneous translations into Spanish and to Portuguese from the English. So we had some themes that you voted on through the week and the movie poll results came out in a combined results we're coming out number one, being in presence versus trying to get it right, finding true safety beyond form, practicing defenselessness, fear of speaking up and finally being good to avoid punishment. So that is an amazing group of themes and equally amazing is the movie that we will all be watching today and it will lead us into cracking open our mind so that we can we can let go of any dark thoughts and judgments and grievances that we have and and it's really an honor. This movie today is is called Pay It Forward and some of you know Haley Joel Osment. You might have remembered him as a child actor from the sixth sense in the movie with Bruce Willis. He will play an 11-year-old seventh grader who is trying to deal emotionally with with his life on planet Earth and it's quite intense and then Helen Hunt will be playing his mother and Kevin Spacey will be playing his social studies teacher and this movie is so profound and helpful for all of us because everyone who has come to time and space has come to we could say dark planet, dark city. It is a place where death and disease and sickness and war seem to exist and these things actually are the farthest thing from the truth, but to believe you exist on a planet with such things is the height of insanity. You can forget about dysfunctional families. This is dysfunctional planet and we at times try to cover over or deny the darkness and try to pursue distractions and things that will keep our mind off of this darkness. Sometimes games. It's a world of games and Mary Baker-Eddie used an interesting word for this world. She called it mesmerism. It's like hypnotism. It's like dark hypnotism to convince yourself that you're something that you're not in such a deep dark way that at times it can feel hopeless. You can feel intense despair. Many people through some time of their life have suicidal thoughts because the darkness is is so deep and dark and this movie really shows us that without so many filters we get to see a close drug addiction, severe alcoholism, homelessness. We get to see the just the despair of the human condition up close and yet even with that we are given an opportunity to see what is the escape from from this world of darkness. That's why we're here. We're here today to have the spirit lead us through a clinic on escaping darkness, lead us on an experiential journey of opening our heart up and learning to give the love away that we have. We have so much love in our heart, but as long as we hide it, as long as we cover it, as long as we feel uncomfortable with the love or even distract away from the love, then we can't know the only thing that can ever be known, which is the love and this movie brings in the idea of kind of like what they sometimes call random acts of kindness where you start to feel the goodness in your heart. You start to feel the kindness and the love inside of you and you start to have the the faintest glimmering that you will have to give it away in order to fully become aware of of it as a reality. Otherwise, it's just like you get little glimmers, little flashes. You get a little trickle of the love and for many human beings they're thrilled to have a trickle. They've had such a hard life and such an intense life that when the trickle comes, it's like hallelujah. There is something more. There is another way. So this world is like a heavy ego fog, very thick, and you may seem to distract away from the darkness with comfers and conveniences of the body with hobbies, with pursuits in the world, but sooner or later you start to realize that that these pursuits are set up by the ego to keep you from giving, from loving, from being truly helpful. The prayer at the beginning of the course is the prayer to be truly helpful. I am here only to be truly helpful. Even if you just pray that first line of the prayer, I am here only to be truly helpful. It gives you the hint that your life has to be about giving because this is a world of lack. This is a world of belief in need. This is a world of getting, of trying to achieve, accumulate, collect. Even to say that the word human beings, that isn't accurate description of what most people experience in this world, we could rename it to make it a little more accurate for this world. Human consumers, human needers, human seekers, human strivers. This, this is a planet that where the truth has been so blocked out of awareness that the mind is trapped and tricked into trying to get things for a personality self that has no reality and no existence whatsoever. It's a game and it's very sneaky because it's so widely accepted in the sleeping mind. It's so part of the fabric of the dream that as we open up with this movie, we will see our little, our main character, little Trevor, Trevor McKinney and little Trevor 11 years old goes to school. His mom is alcoholic. His father is gone, but he's gone after he perpetually beat his mother and so he's just looking out at the world wondering how he can emotionally make it like most human beings are. He goes to school and then he has some friends. He goes home. His mother is emotionally very distraught and using drinking, except she's hiding her drinking and he's pretty intuitive. He knows it. And he just, like most human beings, they just want a sense of honesty. Just be honest with me and that's very frustrating for him to be aware that his mother's not happy, his mother's sneaking and drinking kind of behind his back, not openly even, and then lying about it. And his father's gone and so he's just trying to survive. You might, as you start this movie, you know, you start to see from his point of view he's just trying to make it emotionally through each day and through each night. And I remember when I was in seventh grade and I remember going to junior high and I said, what classes do I take? And they said social studies. So I remember very well in the parable of David when I went to seventh grade and I went to social studies and I remember my teacher, Mr. Herbert, and he was teaching us about the world. It's kind of good, you know, you go through six grades and then now you get social studies and he starts talking all about the world. It can be a little overwhelming when you're in seventh grade, you're about 11 years old and then, whoa. Oh, tells you about the countries, tells you about the problems and the issues, tells you about the history on planet Earth. It's pretty much a downer. I mean, if you made it through the first six grades and you were fairly happy, then social studies will get you, you know, it's like it's a little more putting you in touch with the world than maybe then mathematics or English. Although English, you know, if you start reading a lot of literature, you know, that can do the same thing. So, Trevor is going to go to school and his social studies teacher is going to basically really say, this is the world that we're dealing with and you can try to ignore it. And from what I've heard now on planet Earth, there's many, many children who are caught up in video games and computer games and they are, I'd say children, children, teenagers, adults, the whole group are so bored, are so disheartened, are so turned off by this world that they are just using their time to distract their mind in reality games and video games in any way to pass the time. And this is not a good motive. I remember when I was younger, when I would be sitting there and doing something and a friend would come over and say, oh, are you killing time? Oh, it's just the sound of it, killing time. You know, are you distracting away from this very dark, dark world? How are you dealing with it? How are you distracting from it? Is it that was healthy to distract away from the world? And distracting away is not going to bring happiness. You know, Jesus is telling us through the course that he's saying, you are using many ego defense mechanisms to try to make your experience manageable, survivable, to just get through. And these defense mechanisms are of the ego and it's a way of staying trapped in ego beliefs. He says ego defenses do what they would defend. Basically, they are defending the ego and they are defending fear and all of the mechanisms are fearful. Every last one of them, whether it's denial or projection, whether it's some form of escapism or distraction, game playing, it doesn't really matter. And there are trillions of distractions, but really it's just the ego trying to perpetuate itself. It just wants to exist as an idea separate from God. And so this movie is going to show us really what Jesus is teaching in the course. It's the only way that you can escape from this world is by activating your connection with the Holy Spirit, with your intuition, with Jesus. That's it. There aren't many different ways to escape. There is one and it's in mind and it comes from laying aside the ego. What is the ego but the getting mechanism and what is escape but learning to give as God gives. Don't let one hand know what the other hand is doing. Jesus taught, be so generous in your heart, so loving, so expressive of that love that you merge with the love that you are and you forget the ego. You forget needs. You forget about getting anything. You understand that it's only what you give that you receive and that by getting you remain asleep to who you really are. I remember today I was looking and there was an idea from the course that came and it was such a profound idea. I just want to read it to you at the beginning because I think this kind of summarizes what we need to be aware of as we watch this movie. It says, the son is helpless without the father who alone is his help. We said before that of yourselves you can do nothing but you are not of yourselves. If you were what you have made would be true and you could never escape. So more than you need air, more than you need food or shelter or clothing, there is an absolute essential, I will even use the word desperate need for this intuition, for this connection with the Creator, for this guidance that is inside and to the extent that you are not in touch with this or aware of this, then this is what I would call wandering, lost in time and space, without a tether in awareness, without a connecting point in awareness. And Jesus is telling us that the Holy Spirit is the answer. But the only way that you can be in touch with this answer is to give it away. You have to listen for the Holy Spirit in all of your brothers and sisters. Not what this is being spoken on the surface of consciousness, which is the behaviors and the actions. But in every person that you meet or think of, the Holy Spirit is there. And it is absolutely essential to be so tuned in to the Holy Spirit. He tells us at one point, you cannot find God alone. He tells us the lonely journey fails. And he tells us that what is our temple is our relationship. He doesn't say, as the Bible says, the body is the temple of the Spirit. Jesus says, oh, let's wipe that one out too. Put it in the etch-a-sketch, shake it and let it out. No, no, the body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit. Your relationship is the temple of the Holy Spirit. That's the crucible where you find release. Your brother, your sister is a mirror. And the only way you can find this love is to go past the mirror and go to the Holy Spirit, which is always communicating to the mind. It always, God's voice speaks to me all through the day. It's always there. And so in this movie we see young Trevor goes to his social study class and he looks pretty bored. I know how I looked when I was in seventh grade, when I was sitting behind a desk in social study class. You're not going to see me waving my arms or dancing or singing. I was like, he's got the same look. It's like, what next? Seventh grade, what now? What now? And my social study teacher, he started teaching. But in this case, our teacher is played by Kevin Spacey. He's going to give them extra credit assignment for the whole year. And basically, it's come up with an idea that will change the world. So I know if Mr. Herbert had done that, I probably would have went, oh, this is new. Come up with an idea that will change the world. And you have to learn to come up with the idea, but there's another part to the assignment. You have to come up with it and it's something that has to be life-changing. It has to be absolutely life-changing. And the second part is you have to put the idea into action. That is spectacular. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, listen, learn and do. Listen to my voice. Learn from my guidance and my instructions and do what I guide and instruct you to do. Listen, learn and do. The doing component is extremely important. Now, I know that in the time of Jesus, Judaism was a very devoted religion and culture to monotheism, to a single God. That's quite advanced actually on the planet, in a planet where the ego has made God's of everything. Billions and billions of different God for a group of people to have one God. That's like, whoa, I can see why Jesus manifested and incarnated there in Galilee, because that's very advanced. One God has huge benefits over many because there is one reality, not many. And there is one spirit, not many. And there is one experience of light and joy, not many. And the many is a projection of the ego. It is duality, it is multiplicity, it is fragmentation. And so this social studies teacher is going to say, here's your extra credit. It goes on all year long and you have to come up with an idea that will change the world. And an idea that will be so radical that it will change the world and you have to put it into action. You don't get the credit unless you put it into action. When Jesus came along, actually there was quite a lot of scribes and Pharisees and rabbis that were into what he called the letter of the law. They would just sit around and read the Torah every day and close their eyes and go to the wailing wall and just rock. That's all they do is rock, rock, rock, rock around the clock tonight. They were just, they were into the study of the scriptures and they studied about it and they talked about it incessantly. And they had lots of rules and rituals based on these things and you had to do all the right things or God was going to get you. In fact, there's many references in the Bible. I think they've counted, but it's a number too big for me to know of how many people got killed in the Bible. And a lot of times it was associated with God. God was zapping. It's not a good planet to be on, you know, where it's, you've got enough plagues, pestilence, wars, conflicts, rape, murder. And then now you've got God zapping you. God's, you know, it's like, what the hell? What kind of planet is this? I think Arten and Persa in Disappearance of the Universe, they call this world psycho planet. Well, it's not hard to draw that conclusion if you've got all these things to deal with and then now God is zapping you too. I think God killed a lot of people in the Bible. And what we're learning is this is dark. This has nothing to do with the truth. It has nothing to do with love. And yet, as long as we believe in the ego, we believe that this darkness is reality. It's been accepted as real. It's been, Jesus says in the Course, what you believe, you make real for you. Not real in eternity, but you make it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe in separation and then you think separation is reality. And this fog is so thick. So, Trevor's going to school and he's not, he's pretty bored. Okay, I was bored too. Most all of us were bored in social studies, let's admit it. And then he gets this idea that has to be an idea that will change the world and that you can put into action. It has to fulfill those two requirements. You don't get the credit if it doesn't fulfill that. What does that mean in Course and Miracles terms? Because Jesus teaches us over and over, you know, seek not to change the world. Seek rather to change your mind about the world. It's saying that if you accept this gift of giving, then you will give the Holy Spirit away. So fully, so completely, that you will wake up from this psychoplanet and psychotime in space. Through the giving of the Holy Spirit. And in this, this is like with a seventh grader. Now, he's not a Course and Miracle student, but he feels the same heaviness that all human beings have felt throughout history. And the same confusion and the same disorientation and the same boredom and sadness. And yet through this teacher, he's giving an opportunity to believe he can, he can make a difference. Not maybe he's not sure if he can make a difference in the whole world. But he has a feeling, an intuitive feeling that he can make a huge difference in his life, in his experience. And what Jesus is teaching us is this, this is our mind. We have to have a spark in our mind and we have to go so fully with this spark of giving that we transcend the beliefs of this world. What's an example of a belief in this world? I'll scratch your back if you scratch my back. If you do a favor for me, I will return the favor. Jesus is saying, not even close to the kingdom of heaven. Returning favor, you do this for me and I'll do this back for you. That seems to be pretty, pretty good in this world. Doesn't even register on the Richter scale of heaven. Because why? Because it's total reciprocity. You're just responding. Oh, thank you for doing this kind deed. Now I will reciprocate, hear the word reciprocate. Jesus is saying, no, don't let the one hand know what the other is doing. You have to give because it comes from inside you and because you see the value of giving. And I'm not just talking about material things because that's again the ego. That's why when you grow up, your parents say, learn how to read, learn how to write, learn how to do math, learn your skills so you can get good grades in school, so you can graduate, so you can get a good job, go maybe to extra education to get more skills to get a good job, good career. Where is our class in giving? I remember that we had like six or seven bells, you know, all these classes. Where's my giving class? Where do I learn how to escape planet Earth? Where do I learn how to follow guidance? Where do I learn how to get in touch with all the love in my heart and learn how to give this kindness and this gentleness and this true care. How to give it away so that I may experience it for myself. Jesus tells us, you know, that's why he says, resign now as your own teacher. He says, because you have been poorly taught, the ego projected out a world in which we have, in many cases, parents, teachers, church leaders, friends, family, who don't reflect this desire to give. Instead, it's dark. In this movie we see homeless, drug addict, chronic alcoholism, homelessness. I remember when I was reading the Bible one time, it talked about the sins that were revisited to the third and fourth generations. Well, when you're in Bible school, that doesn't sound very good. Does that sound good to you? The sins that are revisited to the third and fourth generations. And yet, most people, when they go through their family trees and research it, they find what that means. Oh, my family has a history of alcoholism, has a history of drug addiction, has a history of abuse, has a history of abandonment. And maybe you say, well, my family wasn't too much on all those. How about a history of liars? That's what, has anybody not experienced that? You know, when you grow up, you're like, you've got to be kidding me. Why didn't you tell me? And then you go further along in your life and you find that your whole existence and your whole family tree is built on a bed of secrets. Just tune in to Ken's show if you want to hear about the bed of secrets. Every week, we just get on there for two hours and it's like, everybody throws up all their darkest thoughts and their darkest secrets and everything. Ken's like, good, good, good. Come on. Keep it coming. Keep it coming. You know, this is a dark planet. If you haven't noticed, you know, don't try to sugarcoat things and don't try to say it's all been lollipops. And don't throw pink paint over everything. You have to start to realize that this is a planet of secrets. And you know that for yourself and you also know that for your family and your country. It's like people are always saying, what is the most corrupt country in the world? Listen, the whole thing's corrupt. It's corrupted. It was made by the ego. Don't try to figure out who the corrupt people are, who the tyrants are and who the worst politicians in the worst countries are. It's generated from corruption. It's generated from the ego. God did not create this world. God did not create time and space. And if you are very sincere about escaping from it, then this movie will have huge benefit. Because we're going to watch an 11-year-old who is given an inception of an idea from his social studies teacher. Wow. If I had this inception, it probably would be disappeared. Gone by now. Because if I had this inception in social studies, I'd have been lit up. It took maybe until my late 20s before I got my inception. But this is an 11-year-old getting an inception of a healing idea that will transcend the world if applied. All you have to do is take the idea and apply it without exception throughout your day. And you are home free. You will be dancing and singing and tap dancing down the street if you get into the joy of giving. If you actually see that that's the only purpose in your life is giving and there is no other, then that's what opens you to the Kingdom of Heaven. And this is such a good movie of that. Also, I think you will see that in this movie you can see by the characters that they're really afraid. Human beings are afraid to give. Human beings are sitting on top of so many secrets that the unworthiness is usually pretty easy to see. If you spend any amount of time with someone who hasn't really opened their heart and trained their mind, it won't take long to feel the sense of deep unworthiness. It's there. I mean dark, dark unworthiness. And in this movie you can see all the characters are frightened. And just like a frightened dog can be vicious, frightened human beings can be vicious at times. And it's just a call for love. It's just a cry for please see me as I truly am. Please don't take this to be who I am. So in this movie, Trevor's got his own struggles to deal with. His mom is struggling greatly. His social studies teacher is struggling greatly. His grandmother, who he loves, played by Angie Dickinson, she's struggling. Everybody thinks that they have done so many things wrong and are so lost that Jesus says in the Course, as you move toward the light, you will rush to darkness. The belief in unworthiness is so intense that even when you have miraculous experiences and you open towards the light and love, Jesus says you will rush to darkness. You will recoil. And he talks about this in the workbook where you think that you're so dark. If anybody ever knew how dark you really are and nobody would love you, nobody would even want to be your friend. These characters are raw. We're going to see some really raw characters. And this is showing us the ego. This is showing us what we must escape. This is showing us what we must transcend. And it's going to take a decision. I think the main character, Trevor, he is presented with an idea and then somewhere deep inside he has to feel like, I'm going for it. And it's the same with all of us. Even the mystics and saints somewhere deep inside decided there has to be something beyond this world. There has to be something that I can pour my heart into. There has to be something that is honest that won't trick me, that won't fool me, that won't deceive me. It's a desperate cry from the heart for integrity. It's a desperate cry for clarity. It's a desperate cry for happiness. It's of the strongest, strongest force that something in us wants to break free. And yet the mesmerism of the ego is so thick that even those who seem to have some moments and glimpses, the ego tries to just cover it over. Just cover it in so much darkness that the mind has to think and doubt that it ever happened. That's what you face on this journey of miracles is that you have miracles and then the ego rushes in to cover it over as if the miracle never happened. And you don't always see the benefits of the miracle in perception. It's like that song that they sang at La Casa. Even when I don't feel it, he's working. He never stops. He never stops. He never stops working. God is so powerful that God can reach through the darkness, through the fog, through the blackness and reach the mind that has a spark of hope that there's another way of looking at this world. And that's what we're going to see in our main character. There is a spark of hope in the face of a very, very, very dark world. So what that does is once he gets into it and once he gets into the joy of blessing for the sake of blessing, not in order to receive something back. That's what the giving is. Give it away with no sense of getting something back in a personal way. I know when I first got into the course and I immersed myself in it that that's why Jesus took me on the road around the United States and Canada for those five years. Because you have to learn how to give, not give to just your mother, your father, your grandmother, your grandfather, your sister, your friends. Give to everything and everyone. He said, let me direct your giving. Let me show you how to give. Let me give through you so fully that you forget that you ever were lacking for anything. Don't be a trickle for God. Be a river. Be an ocean of love for God, because that's what God is. And you can only know who you are by being that ocean. Start out trickle, stream, river, ocean. Don't hold back on your giving. But we're going to watch a movie that shows us how to take the first steps by not just thinking of helping but actually allowing the Spirit to come through us and move us to act based on this inner inspiration. That's what activates the spiritual awakening. It's in the giving that you receive, is St. Francis prayed. He was saying, Lord, make me an instrument for it is giving as we receive. And this is a perfect movie for that. So enjoy the movie and I will pop in from time to time. Maybe if it starts to get really intense again, stay with your hands inside the carpet on this one. Do not attempt to judge or interpret or react aside from