 Okay, great. So now we should have Marina and Juliana in their translation booths and hopefully everybody who needs Spanish or Portuguese translation can select their language. Okay, so without further ado, I'm going to welcome you all and I'm going to introduce you to one of the main organizers for this whole event. She was involved in many of the logistics for this retreat and helped put everything together. She's joining us from our Living Miracle Center in Spain, which she also happens to oversee. So please welcome Emily Alexander. Hi everyone. Welcome. Wow, this is so beautiful. Just before we started, I was scrolling through all the pages and just seeing you all there. I was overwhelmed actually to have so many of us together tonight or wherever you might be in the world for us in Europe. It's nighttime, but I know in the US and Mexico it's still morning time. Well, yeah, we have a beautiful event planned for you. I think at the last count we had nearly 1500 people registered for this event. And for this session also we're streaming live on YouTube. So we have even more friends joining us from around the world. So this is super exciting for us here in Living Miracles. It's like really brand new what we're doing tonight or this morning. So yeah, we've been preparing for this event here in Living Miracles for about two months now. And all I can say is that it has been incredibly joyful. Over the last few months, so much love has been poured into the organization of this event from so many people, many within the community and many friends and collaborators outside of the community. So this has been a beautiful collaboration and today we get to share it all with you and that feels so amazing. So not only is this the largest event that we have ever done, but it's the first time we have done a trilingual event with simultaneous translation in Spanish and Portuguese. So to try and make it a little easier for our beautiful translators, I'm going to try and speak a little slower than I normally do, so that Marina and Juliana can translate for our Spanish and Portuguese friends. We have a really wonderful week planned for you. The first four days of which today is the first day is our free event. And that will end on New Year's Eve. And then the next day we will begin our January three day online retreat starting on January 1st. So we have friends from all over the world joining us for this event. Many of them are participants and many of them are also friends who have a gift that they want to share with you over the next few days. So some of them are going to be hosting some sessions. Today we will be starting at 10 a.m. in Europe and we will be running sessions right throughout the day through multiple time zones and ending in Mexico and the U.S. in the evening. So our sessions will be spanning 18 hours each day for the next few days. So this is very, very exciting for us. We have lots of wonderful sessions planned. One of the highlights will be the movie session with David on Wednesday. We also have a comedy session, some lots of music, some interactive panel discussions and lots more. If you're watching us live on YouTube, our next session will also be streamed live. That's going to be a concert with Eric Archibald and Svava Love. We're also going to be joined by Ricky Como at the beginning of that session. After that, all of our sessions are going to be broadcast directly within Zoom. This is a free event for the next four days. So if you're watching on YouTube and you'd like to participate in all of the other sessions, you can still register. If you go to the description in YouTube below the video you're watching now, you'll see a link where you can sign up. Tonight, we are going to be joined by David Hofmeister and Frances Sue, live from Mexico. This feels like a beautiful way to begin our event. And before we go to David and Frances, we're actually going to be blessed by a beautiful song from our beloved friend, Neda Boine in Holland. Neda has received many songs directly from the Spirit and it is her gift to share these songs with the world. So I'm going to hand it over to Neda now. And at the end of the session, I'm going to share a few more logistics with you about what's going to be happening over the coming days and share about some of the other sessions that we're going to have. So again, welcome. So happy to have you here with us tonight and hope to see you much more over the coming days. Enjoy the session with Neda, David and Frances, and I'll see you in a few hours. Bye. Thank you, Emily. That was a beautiful introduction. I am so happy to be here and I'm just so excited and honored that I get to open this beautiful, beautiful event. With a song. So the song I will feel to share. It's called, it's a song in Spanish inspired by a few workbook lessons from A Course in Miracles. And the song is called La Dicha de Dios, meaning the joy of God. And I think someone's going to put the lyrics into the little chat box so that you can read along. If you feel like it, of course, you can also just close your eyes and just let it come into your heart, whatever feels good for you. Sing along in whatever way feels good for you in whatever language feels comfortable for you. So yeah, let's just start it off together with some music and set an intention for ourselves. My mother, stay in my mind, this is the moment that I wake up. For coming days, lots of inspiration and yeah, I'm just happy to join this moment with you. Thank you. Hello everyone. What a joy to be here with you all. That's going to be our keynote of joy and happiness. It's a celebration and what better to celebrate than waking up to the reality of who you really are. So it's just a great opportunity for us to share very deeply from the heart and to extend this love that we feel to everyone and everything. And to really learn the meaning of forgiveness. It's like the Holy Spirit has neutralized the ego's world and now it can be used as an instrument for joy, happiness, celebration. And we can use the words and the symbols for an expanding experience of our heart. So Francis and I are here and we're so thrilled we could feel the festive atmosphere here when we came in the room. Yeah. Yeah, it feels so wonderful to actually be able to join with you all in celebration. I feel so honored that you choose to spend this time with us together. It feels like, you know, the spirit always is this small inner voice saying, if you just call on me, if you just call on me now, then I will solve everything for you. And over the years, the biggest question had always been, how do I call on the spirit? And then it became very clear as long as I remember him. That's as simple as that is. So it doesn't take working on it. It doesn't take effort. It doesn't take a lot of doing. It is in our mind as a little twig as to remember the spirit. And I feel this, you know, as all being here is nothing but a symbol that we are here together and remembering the spirit together here. Yeah, that's a beautiful reminder. You can call on me. Jesus is saying, all you have to do is pause a moment and call on me. I'll be there for you in any conceivable circumstance, any conceivable situation. I will be there for you, to comfort you, to offer my love and my help. And we just can open our hearts and let the spirit rain down on us. And I'm really grateful that we can have this celebration with music and laughter. We can watch a movie, movies together. We can have shareings from all over the world, from Europe and from India, from the United States, Mexico, South America. It just is like a big celebration that we're all invited to. And also I feel it will be extremely profound for you. Because we talk about forgiveness, but forgiveness is being able to just rest in the love in your heart and just see the false as false. And the only time we ever have any difficulty is when we try to read meaning onto the world. You know, if you follow the ego, you see good and bad, right and wrong, superior and inferior. Through the ego's dark lens, you know, you see competition and strife and war and conflict. And then with a very tiny little tweak in your mind, you lean back into the spirit. And you can just feel the miracle and just see the false as false. And let that majesty in your mind just ripple out over the whole cosmos and bring like a giant blanket of peace. A blanket of light over everything in the truest way that is possible with regard to this world. So I have really enjoyed actually traveling around to meet a lot of you in your living rooms and your backyards and your course of miracles groups around the world. And this year was quite a shift for me. I'm used to planes and trains and buses and cars and going all over the world. And now I'm getting very comfortable just sitting back and having these digital interactions. So it's kind of easy actually. But the joy that I felt where I could go into your living room and hug you and you could say, come on, let's go to the kitchen and have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea where we could have a nice long warm hug and just hold each other for a moment. And remember all that love that God has for us in eternity. Just get a little glimpse of that. And now we have these digital celebrations and online events to do. And I was actually saying, wow, it'd be fun to do this again. I'm already before we start the first one. I'm thinking would be fun to do it again. So I was checking and they told me that while there are two months in 2021 that have five weekends. An extra weekend in two months, January and July. So I said, well, if the calendar is going to give us an extra weekend, we probably have to do another big celebration. So it's just the joy to come here and to be with you. And if I can't be physically in your living room or in your kitchen, then this seems to be the next best thing to do. I'm thrilled about that. Yeah. This morning before I came over here, I saw a Facebook memory shared by David. That was 2016 at the end of the year 2016. We put out a post like some fun statistics of the community. And one of them was David flew on average 1.3 flight per week during that year. That was how much you traveled. Yeah, but I think what we really here to share and to invite all of us to tap into is this joy once we connect with the Holy Spirit. It really doesn't matter whether the life is filled with travels, go to new places and have physical gatherings or it's just being here in the living room. You know, the joy is the same because we, you know, we access the source of the joy. I remember I actually read someone's miracle on a website a while back and this woman she was driving on the highway. And she encountered this heavy travel congestion. And it was caused by a lady, older lady who was picking up trash along the highway. She was very slow and she was picking up trash. And the car had to slow down around her. And she was waiting in the traffic and then suddenly she saw in her vision she saw Jesus next to the trash lady playing with her. Throw up the trash and pick it up like they were playing together. And then I feel so much joy reading that because it feels like this is exactly what the Spirit is like. He just want to be by our side and play with us and light up this playfulness and this joy inside. And want to tell us don't worry about anything. Just let me solve it for you. So this is a week that we want to celebrate and be playful with you together. Yeah, if you could, if you could make a trade for a feeling of joy and playfulness and happiness. And all you had to do to experience this constantly is give up your concern about judging appearances. Sometimes when I was growing up people would have a phrase they would say, Well, sometimes David, you have to keep up appearances. But I think Jesus is finally telling us we don't have to keep up appearances anymore. Sometimes, you know, when you surprise somebody you go to their house or you go into their room and their hair is sticking up. And they're they don't have any kind of makeup or anything. And you see them just spontaneously that to me is coming closer to the present moment. Children are very close to the present moment when they're playing. They they're transported beyond time and space when they're in the play zone in their mind. And what I think we can start to really embrace is that the practicalities, the logistics, the things that need to be handled still get handled. And that's what my discovery has been. I started with A Course in Miracles in 1986. And I just thought, OK, I'm just going to give my whole heart to Jesus and to this experience. And amazingly, all the logistics have been handled. That is the greatest discovery when you discover that by giving your heart to be used by love for love to radiate love, then everything else is handled without your effort. I think the last part is important too, without your effort. It does seem to take an effort to train our minds. It seems to take an effort to expose and release attack thoughts and grievances and judgments. That's where we need to put our effort is into our mind training, to feeling warmth in our heart instead of hatred, to feeling joy just springing from us, to have a happy, light-hearted walk as we skip along the day from that state of mind, then everything that needs to be handled will be handled. And this is basically because of how the miracle works. This is basic cause and effect, that the mind is causative. And when you give your thoughts over to Jesus, over to the Holy Spirit, he says, I will handle everything that does not matter. What does he mean? He's saying that he will orchestrate everything in time and space for our happiness. He will do it. What we have to do is not hold responsibility for ego thoughts. Because why? Because God is our Creator and we have real thoughts that come from God. And when we take concern for the body, when we take concern for the things of the world, we are bringing our mind into this illusory state of guilt. And then the ego will come in and say, you need to use external means to solve the guilt. But what we're learning is it's all an internal matter. Peace of mind is completely an internal matter. And if we allow the Spirit to orchestrate the form, and if we keep our focus on the peace, and we keep our focus on the Spirit, then everything comes to us extremely easily. And it turns into a life of joy where you just wake up in the morning with so much joy to radiate and you go through the entire day with joyful, holy encounters. That's the way our life is destined to go. And that's why we're calling this an illumination celebration. We are not saying that you have to focus on the error. We're saying bring all of the attack thoughts or the grievances in mind and hand them over to the Spirit and they will disappear. It's a sure thing. It's actually guaranteed. It's promised and it is guaranteed. Yeah, we're really here not to celebrate what the world holds, what is external to us. But what we're celebrating is that everything we ever want is actually within us and we can access it. And this is our mission together is to learn to access this endless source, this fountain of joy together constantly. And this is truly what we're here to celebrate because if we have the habit to say the world is lacking or things should be different, people should be different. If only something is different than I could have my happiness. This is actually a very weakening thought. Maybe we don't realize how weakening that thought is because it's basically is telling us over and over again in our mind that we are happiness is determined by the external events and by other people. And we don't have what it takes within to be happy. And I think the strengthening thought, the thought from the Spirit is actually to say, actually, everything else is perfect exactly as they are. And given what they are, well, can we let go of the judgment and find the joy from within. And this is truly what we're training our mind for to keep going toward this one source. And not looking at everything else and merely in pieces of situations and different people different scenarios to look for that. So this is the training to go where you can find to knock and let the door be open to seek and found to be found. So this is really what my training is for. It is not as simple, but it is actually, what is it? No, it is simple, but it's not easy. It's not easy because we have this habit to be a victim. We have this habit to think if only things could be different. And we want to develop this new habit to say everything can be exactly as they are and I alone, I'm going to find the Spirit. And that is strengthening to us. And that is going to reinforce who we truly are over and over and over again. In every single living situation that we encounter every day. And that is how we transfer the purpose of our living here. The purpose of the living start to be unified. We're not going through the day to try to change situations, try to control situations or protect ourselves from being hurt. But the purpose become, let me find what is truly inspiring, what truly is uplifting from within. Yeah, to me everything is really very, very practical. Like, as you open yourself to the Spirit, initially you're not being told that you have to deny the images that you perceive. You're just being asked to give them another purpose. And for a human being it seems like the world is like a maze or a labyrinth. There seems to be so many choices to make every single day as you navigate time and space. And the way that we are told to navigate time and space is through prayer. So it's very direct that we need to really open our hearts to pray. And the prayer that I enjoy is Holy Spirit decide for God for me. So even if you perceive yourself as in a maze or a labyrinth, you can just pause for a moment and close your eyes and pray, Holy Spirit decide for God for me. The guidance is very practical because guidance is evaluative until you reach a state of mind where you become so aligned with the source. And so unified with the source that you are transported beyond the labyrinth. You are transported into a state of mind that is beyond choosing left or right. This direction or that direction to stay or to go. The decisions that human beings face every day. But the guidance will inform you, it will inspire you. So when you seem to go in one direction, you go there with glee. You go there with happiness. You go there with all of your heart. You go there without concerns and worries, because you feel inspired. And so the guidance comes to you as an answer to the specific question that you offer up in prayer. It could involve a relationship. It could involve a job decision. It could involve a decision around health or food. But still those little echoes of prayers are answered in the greater prayer of the greater good for everyone and everything. And there's always holidays movies that come out during the Christmas break. And a group of us, we got to see Wonder Woman and we saw that when she used the power of her prayer to pray for a specific to get her man back. That she lost her powers. Anybody ever done that where you pray for for a partner and then you lose your powers. And you go, what the hell? I thought that was a pretty good prayer. But actually she had to renounce the wish. She had to actually let go of the wish for for this man. In order to regain her powers to use for the good of the whole. And then, interestingly enough, yeah, it's by the end of the movie she was flying. Wonder Woman Superman. It's interesting. You can, you can be lifted above the labyrinth and the maze of complexity. And let your mind soar to where it truly is natural to where its reality is. Because the mind is not really designed or created by God to be dinkering around with little minutiae of time and space. It's actually created by God to create in spirit. And once you put your full focus back on that God goal, that creation goal, then you can spring back into the natural ability of spirit creativity. And that's what the spiritual journey it's about. It's just about remembering what always is so and learning to release and forget that which is of no concern. So put your attention where you truly want it to be into the spirit into the happiness and to pull it away from these worries and concerns of time and space. It does take an effort. It does take a practice as long as you believe in the ego, because to believe in the ego is to believe in opposites. Opposites are not natural. There are no opposites in heaven. There's no competition or conflict in heaven. It's unnatural to put your God given mind in the direction of opposites. But while you have done that, then the next step to do is to just call out in prayer and say, oops, I made a mistake. I took my powerful mind and I aimed it at these tiny little imaginary scenarios and questions and I got all caught up in guilt and shame and struggle. But now spirit I turn back to you. I call upon you Holy Spirit to guide me to direct me. I started in the mid 80s I started to feel there has to be so much more than I'm aware of. And I just started to open up my mind to the possibilities. I started to just say just show me. I don't even know what it is but I know there has to be more than what I'm going through. And then a couple years later, around the summer of August of 1986, a course of miracles came into my life. And it was an answer to a prayer. It was like a tsunami of love, washing over me saying you're right, David, there is much more. And here's a practical course of a mind training course to take you in the direction of your joy and your happiness. And we do have to give ourselves over to it. I know some people say they like to put the course under their pillow at night. If you want to do that, that's good but actually, I think it's the practical application of the ideas that I have found ignites my, my heart. It gives me, it just fills me with energy, it fills me with the joy and the desire to share and extend that joy. And I remember many, many years ago, probably 20 years ago, I bought my first domain name on the internet and it was global-miracles.net. And now two decades later, look, we got a party going on, a global miracles party, but you know, it comes as fast as it comes. And I just happened to have that urge for global miracles. And now Jesus has really showed me the way. And I'm just so grateful to be here with all of you. You're all a part of it. You're all very much a part of it. Yeah. I think, you know, this morning, I was reading the final lessons of the workbook of A Course in Miracles. Above that lesson, basically, Jesus was saying, let's just come together to say, I do not understand. He is preparing the mind to let go of everything, to finish the workbook lesson. At the end of 355 lessons, he said, let's come together to actually say, I do not understand. And then the next step is I put you in his hand. Now you go forward with him, Holy Spirit. And if you seem to have to make a choice, he will tell you. So really A Course in Miracles is just leading us to this point to truly be able to say so humbly that I do not know. And maybe I am wrong about everything. Then I would move forward with him by my side and with humility in my heart to ask him for every single step. And that is actually very relaxing for us. And he was giving us practical steps to even start the day by saying, just think of the kind of day you want and say, if I do not make any decisions today by myself, then I would have the kind of day I want. And I thought that is so relaxing. We don't have to make decisions by ourselves anymore. We don't have to weigh the pros and cons of every single choice in our lives anymore. We just have to focus on the kind of outcome that we want, a state of mind outcome, the outcome of peace and the joy and the love that we feel. We just have to hold that in mind and say to the Spirit, then you take me from here, take it from here. You know, you direct this body to do whatever it does, but this is the state of mind outcome that I want. So it just goes so deep. And recently, I think David and I had a call with a friend of us who had coronavirus. And she said to us that she was praying to want to have the body symptom be taken away. And then she remembered, do not ask the Holy Spirit to take away the symptoms, the body symptoms, but ask the Holy Spirit to change your mind. Because even a symptom, a disease, we have to realize we don't understand. We don't understand the purpose of it. And that's what we come back to, to this I don't really know. And to everything that we think we know. And I think it's, we learn to develop trust, and we learn to expand our faith. When we first admit that we don't know what's happening. We, when we first admit that we cannot figure this world out, and admit that we don't understand it. This goes against our programming because our programming tells us that our past learning can help us figure the world out. It can help us solve problems. It can help us make plans. When I was in university for 10 years full time, I studied all the different disciplines across the entire university. From engineering, mathematics, art. I took a class in the conservatory of music. I went across to all the disciplines. And I could see that the underlying belief was that through learning, you could adapt and adjust and succeed in the world. But I believe through grace, I was shown that this was not the direction. And that I had to unlearn everything that I had learned before university and during university. And that's when a course of miracles came into my experience as a systematic way of undoing and unlearning everything that I believed in. Now, this does require trust, because you're going against all of your past learning and you're trusting that the spirit will show you a way to find the present moment. It will show you a way to find the simplicity. It will show you a way to slip into happiness and slip into joy, which past learning could never offer. So for me, the mechanism was travel because I was shown that everything would be taken care of. If I needed a place to stay, if I needed food, if I needed transportation, it would all be given me. And that's a big stretch to go from thinking in the worldly way where you have to plan for everything yourself from your past learning to listen and follow, trust, have faith. And that's been the great adventure. I've had such an adventure over these decades of listening and following. There's never a dull moment because you always are open to what is given you next. And then through it all, you actually feel that for the first time you can rest your mind. For the first time you give your mind permission to be still. For the first time you get to behold the glory of what is right now. With no thought of the past and no thought of the future. You give yourself permission to relax, to slow down so much that the stillness comes to grace your mind. And everything is perfectly taken care of. That's the beautiful thing is you don't have to divide your day into what you have to do to survive and what you want to do to relax. Actually, you are given the way to relax and let all things be exactly as they are. To realize that everything always has and always will work together from that stillness. And that's what you want. So, to me, it is very practical to listen to your intuition to listen to your inner guidance. Because the more you do, the more the incentive to do it even more comes in. You have incentive to let go of the world. You have incentive to let go of controlling things. You have incentive to bless every relationship that comes your way and to not try to cling to anything or control anything of this world. Once you open your hands up and you no longer have fists that are closed, you can receive a blessing from everything and everyone. And I had to notice this as I began traveling that people I were so kind. They were so generous. They were like long lost friends initially, and then the more I relaxed into that connection and that intimacy of the heart. And then I could just feel that warmth that everyone was part of the family of the mind of the Christ mind. And there was no interest in debating. I wasn't interested in debating theology. I wasn't interested in debating philosophy. I wasn't interested in taking science. I was just interested in sharing present joy and happiness. So it is a step to just give yourself permission to move in that direction. And then when you do, you think, oh my gosh, this was always here for me. This gift was always here for me. And all I had to do was be willing to share it. The willingness to extend it to give it away is everything. The willingness to communicate, Jesus says, attracts communication. And then suddenly I'm surrounded with reflections and witnesses of open-mindedness and open-hearted communication. It is everything. It offers everything. There's really no need to look any further than that. The fruits of the Spirit can come through then. That's where we notice we laugh more. We sing more. Tears of joy can start to come out on your cheeks. It's good to feel tears of joy flowing down your face where you start to feel so happy you can't control the tears. So that's a beautiful attitude. That's a beautiful state of mind to go into. And then you want to share it. You want to give it away. You want to invite. You want to share everything that's on your heart. You don't have any desire to hold anything separate anymore. I find that that's been one of the great joys of living in community. And even when I traveled around the world, the generosity was enormous. I would be hosted in somebody's house sometimes that I'd never met before in this lifetime. And they were so generous. They just were offering, can I help you? Can we talk? Can I get you something to eat? Do you need a place to sleep? I was amazed at the generosity and the kindness. And then as it started to grow stronger in my heart and feel more and more natural, then it became natural to be kind and welcoming. It became natural to be clueless and have no opinion. People would still ask me, what do you think about this? And what do you think about that? But I became more relaxed at just shrugging my shoulders and saying, I don't know. I could speak from my heart of what was important to me, but I had no opinion about people or places and things and the judgments of the ego. They just started to like roll off of me because I didn't have any interest in them. And then you are still. You don't know necessarily what's going to come in the future, but you don't really have a need to know about the future. The future starts to fade away because you let present trust lead the way. And that's all you really need is the present trust. In fact, even in this instant, you could just make a decision that you were going to let present trust lead your life instead of past learning. And I tell you, just that decision alone will take you in the direction of indescribable happiness. Because it's only what we think we know based on our past learning that limits us. And when we remain in the moment, we stay so wide open, so receptive that the spirit can show us, lead us and actually convince us of who we truly are. It just takes that little bit of willingness. And I also find that the spirit is teaching us through our actions and attitude. So when we live in community or go meet with a lot of people, I realize that everybody want to be kind everybody wants to be loving. And it is calling upon an attitude from within me to demonstrate that. But if I don't have it within, I don't know what loving is. I don't know what kindness is. I don't know how to demonstrate it. So in a way, spirit or Jesus is guiding me to show up to speak, to face every single situation, to call that love from within, to call that forgiveness from within, so that I can see how kindness is given. And how contagious it is. Once you demonstrate this attitude of being loving, of being kind. This is truly where everybody wants to join in. And in that, it is me who is starting to learn who I am, what spirit is. So truly in honesty, no matter how much I read the word from A Course in Miracles, no matter how much I'm touched by the words, I don't fully know the spirit until I see the spirit in action through me and through others around me. What I'm convincing is when the spirit acts out through me, then I started to learn who I truly am by my own action, by my own attitude, and that is extremely convincing. That is where you start to feel certainty. This ego, this one who is constantly feeling, being a victim, feeling lack, wants to blame, wants to complain, is not me. That certainty comes through when we call on another, the true self comes through. We call this self through, through every single day and every single scenario. And I know no matter who shows up in front of us to calling us to help them, it is still ourselves that is being helped. It is still ourselves who receive the gift of the spirit. And this is the way the spirit wants to guide us and wants to teach us. So spirit wants to use our body and use this life that we're living in to teach us that we are not this self, the small self that we think we are. And the problems that we encounter in this daily lives are not real. But there's going to be a contrast experience that we cannot deny anymore. Once we start to pray, once we start to trust, once we start to say, you know, I'm just going to give my life over to you. I'm just going to give my decisions over to you. Then this contrast is going to come through you and you're going to start to learn who you truly are. And that is extremely joyful. When you realize that you have so much love to give, you have so much kindness and gentleness to offer to yourself and absolutely everybody. You know, some, you know, in the Bible, Jesus talks about turning the other cheek and he also touched on it in the in the course, but it's confusing whenever you start to think about the specific form. Oh, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that? If people treat me badly, do I really need to turn the other cheek? But I think it is an attitude that you cannot but demonstrate when you identify with the spirit. That's who the spirit is. The spirit loves and only loves. The spirit wants to give and only give. So it doesn't really matter the situation and the condition. And once we identify with the spirit, we demonstrate that attitude that is a kind of attitude. And it's a very, very joyful attitude because that that shows who we truly are. And that is very, very relaxing to us as well. Every day can be devoted to heaven. In you is all of heaven ready to radiate through you and out into the world. Your mind is the point of power that allows the light to shine throughout all of time and space. Just that pinpoint, just that portal in your mind, when you access it, that love comes through you without any kind of limit. And that's why Jesus says the miracle can touch people that you have never met and can touch and influence situations that you are not even aware of. The miracle is universal. It is not under the laws of limits that the ego invented. You, by your love and by the quality of that love, it just comes through you. And that's why he tells us miracles are impersonal in nature. Because they just splash out, they radiate out a blessing to everyone and everything in all of time and space. Not just in this world, but throughout all time and space, everything is blessed in the miracle. Why? How can this be in what seems to be such a limited fragmented world? Well, he's telling us that our perception is distorted when we identify ourselves with the body and with specific forms. And actually telling us that our mind is so powerful and that as the mind was created by God, it never sleeps. It's enormously powerful. And literally, as it says in the Bible, you could move mountains if you had faith the size of a mustard seed. You could literally move mountains. And Jesus is saying in the chorus, yeah, this is no joke. The mind is so powerful that it has been misused by the ego to miscreate a world of time and space. But if you knew the true power that you possess in your mind, moving mountains would not seem like a big deal. It would be like, imagine from space, mountains don't look so tall from outer space. Moving around a couple of pimples. It's a different perspective from the vastness of mind. And we can't tap into that powerful mind as long as we give that mind over to ego beliefs. Everything we do is an opportunity every day to release more ego beliefs, because all of these ego beliefs are predicated on separation. All of them have one thing in common, and that's the beliefs that you can separate from the source. But you won't know that you have dominion over the world. You won't know that you have overcome the world until you clean the mind with the Holy Spirit's help of all judgments of all attack thoughts of all grievances. If you live in the moment, then you have no clue about judgments because they don't go together. All judgments are just past grievances. All worries are just future concerns. And everything a Course in Miracles teaches us is to be content in the present moment. We have fairy tales of where genies come out of a bottle where we have good witches come with wands that move their wands and grant wishes. We have things called pixie dust, and we have all types of wishes. And yet, when we simply say to the Holy Spirit, let me be truly helpful to you today. Let me be the witness of your love. Let me be the joy that radiates to every living thing. Suddenly, those, even those wishes, those whims will come as symbols to us in gratitude of thank you for giving your mind to this purpose. So the journey to God is not a journey of depression. It's not a journey of, of lack. It's not a journey of sacrifice. I cannot honestly tell you that that these last decades in my life have involved sacrifice or depression or lack. It has been peaceful. It has been happy. It has been joyful. There's a swirl of joy that's coming in my heart. And as that gets stronger and stronger, I see this is truly what life is. Life is joy. Life has always been joy. And it was only chasing ego dreams, ego fantasies, ego purposes that were made and given to this world that has blocked the joy. When you experience happiness, you realize you have to do nothing for that happiness. It doesn't require something of you in terms of the world. You just are like a pinpoint of light where all of the light of heaven can come through and radiate to the whole world. Once you join with that light, you will have no idea of comparison. You will never think of yourself as unworthy. You will never think of yourself as not enough. You will never think of yourself as lacking simply by joining in the light in your mind. That shows you everything. And as Francis was saying, then that light uses the puppet of the body for kindness, for gentle words. We have seen it used for different types of counseling, teaching, helpfulness. You actually can embrace being wholly helpful as your vocation. Imagine being asked by somebody, what do you do for a living? And you just say to them, hmm, I'm wholly helpful. That's my vocation. Does it have any benefits? Oh yes, it has enormous benefits that come from being wholly helpful. Because there's no opposition. When you're wholly helpful, there is nothing that can oppose you. Francis said in the Bible, if God is with me, who can be against me? I would add, what can be against me? If you are wholly helpful, you have no opposition and can flow in that love and in that light. So that's the decision that we make in our mind. It's a decision for purpose. Like St. Francis said, Lord, make me an instrument for your peace. And with that prayer, the heart of St. Francis was ignited. The mystical experiences of seeing light in plants and animals and surroundings, the vision was shifted from a perception of ego lack to an abundance of light and seeing that light reflected everywhere in everyone and everything. That's the turnaround we're talking about. That's the turnaround Byron Katie is talking about. That's the turnaround all the sages and mystics have talked about. It's really not new in terms of a teaching, but in terms of you and I practically applying it. That is where we ignite it. The teaching has always been there. But as we apply it and we try to make no exceptions as we move through the day, then that really sparks us. That's where we get our energy and our passion from. What a joy to see your faces. Thank you, Zoom. What a thrill to be able to look and see the screens going by now. We're seeing faces upon faces. Waving, smiling. We're connecting. We were meant to blow kisses to each other. We were meant to make hearts to each other. Every day is Valentine's Day. Every day is Christmas. This is what feels natural to us. Let me have Zoom to help us out now. It's beautiful. It's glorious. Some of you know how much I enjoy watching movies. Movies have inspired me. I one time asked Jesus, what are these movies? And he said, these are the modern day parables. Because we need examples. We need sometimes to see things acted out for us. We can't just receive an idea directly. Sometimes we actually need to see it demonstrated. We need to see it put into action. So, yeah, it looks like for this beautiful illumination celebration, we have movies lined up and then there's more to come. We're really looking forward to spending Saturdays together with the blessing of our translators so we can have these global movies. And we're going to be practicing during the holidays, but then we'll get into our rhythm of how we do this. We also enjoy the interactivity. So that's one thing that's very nice about this format is you can take the time to share what you're going through, what's on your heart, what you need in terms of help, what you appreciate in your life, what would bring more of the practice into your life. That's where we can have these interactions that are very helpful. Instead of necessarily, for me, traveling around the world, this is the format that is very simple. We can have a party, we can have our own parade, and we don't even have to clean up the confetti. We just join in and we feel the inner confetti. But we don't have to handle so many logistics. And I have enjoyed all the retreats that I've done around the world and all hosting some of you. But really, this is nice, this digital. We started to do digital movie gatherings since, I think, since May 2020. David has been doing weekly movie gatherings in English, then for European audience, then in Spanish. But next year, we're going to do a weekly Saturday movie workshop, starting January 9th. So it will be with dedicated the whole day of Saturday to watching movies together, to have very deep commentary coming in, and then we'll have breakout groups for everybody to share what comes up emotionally for them. And so it will be a very profound and interactive Saturday for 2021. I always enjoyed that when we could have interactions and then we could have breakout groups. But now with the translation options, we can have an English breakout group, a Spanish and perhaps a Portuguese group as well. And then after we talk about our emotions and what we went through with the movie, we can come back together again for the blessing of the whole. We learn from each other. We learn as we practice and we put these miracles into practice, we learn from the experiences of each other. That's been the greatest gift I've ever experienced is to be able to travel and meet so many people and really listen to them at what they've confronted in their life and how they've been able to call upon inner strength to overcome all types of ego challenges, conflicts and concerns. And more than that, it gives us inspiration that we can go all the way with this. You know, it's when we think about self-realization, or we think about illumination or enlightenment, this can seem to a human being like a very far off goal, far, far, far in the future. But through the miracle, we collapse time because we learn from each other, because we share our notes, because we share what works for us. And the more that we do that, we actually inspire each other to continue on, you know, to keep the faith, even though we're tempted to slide off and tempted to become distracted or depressed, the sharing of the experience draws us back. And I know in these movie gatherings, when we've had smaller intimate groups, everyone starts to relax. Everyone starts to appreciate what they're hearing from their brothers and sisters. I mean, I hear it over and over where there's the gratitude. Thank you for sharing that. Sometimes two, three, four people think this one, this one, this one for sharing what they did. Also, with our online retreats, oftentimes people put their hand up or their digital hand up, and by the time that they get called on, they have to say, well, my question has already been answered by something that was spoken or something that was shared. And this is a time collapse. We don't have to think of it as something that will take a long, long, long time when we're open, when we lower the mask, when we're open to hearing and really receiving what we need to hear, everything goes much faster. All of time starts to collapse. So to me, I think what we've been experiencing is that this time collapse, it starts to be something that you can actually feel in your heart. You can feel it in your soul that there's some kind of celestial speed up, some kind of a big collapse of time, and you know it because you smile more frequently, you laugh more frequently, you're more lighthearted, you're more playful. Those are the symptoms of spiritual awakening. And it's good. It's good news. Yeah. Yeah, it's just when we come together to share that we realize actually the ego is not personal. What we think to be our personal problems and our personal judgments or beliefs are actually not personal. But we do have a choice in each and every one of us to choose the spirit. That's really the undoing of the ego is in this choosing against the ego, choosing the spirit. I remember many years ago I did a silent retreat in Australia, a three-week silent retreat. And it was very strict rules of silence throughout the three weeks. And yet everybody's allowed to have one-on-ones throughout the day with me. And I noticed every single day we have the exact same theme. No matter who comes to me to express, they don't really know everybody else's problem. And they just come to tell me this is intensity and emotion and thoughts coming up in their own mind. But I get to see that everybody else have the same thought in that day. And the next day is the same kind of problem. So it was extremely interesting for me to see that actually what we think to be our own problems are not personal. And I think that was, that's one of the benefits when we do this kind of online events and a lot of people share their questions and their thoughts because that gives everybody else a chance to see why they're speaking for me. And I feel relaxed because I'm not the only one dealing with it. And I don't have to feel responsible actually anymore to solve the problem by myself. It seems like we're coming together to ask for the help together. And we're all facing, we're all on the same journey and the same path at the same time. So that is how we realize the time can be collapsed because it's not a personal journey. Yeah. Yeah, I know many of you are drawn toward a silent mind and many of you have tried and have practiced meditation. And I think the mind has to be opened and ready to experience the stillness. And since the ego made the body and since the ego invented the words, then what if the body and the words could be given over to the spirit? What if the words that you speak were only to inspire and to bless? They were not to figure out. What if all your communication was so inspired by the spirit that if you didn't have something good to say about someone, you wouldn't say anything at all because what would be the point? If you saw communication as a means of freeing your mind from ego beliefs and you saw inspired communication as the way to transcend all fear and guilt and pain, then wouldn't you want to devote yourself to inspired communication? And this comes down to the purpose for words and the purpose for the body. There is one point in A Course in Miracles where Jesus says that the only purpose the body has is to let the voice for God speak through it. He comes right out and says it. And we look at the ego's hundreds and thousands of purposes for the body because to the ego the body is an end and not a means. And yet to the Holy Spirit the body is a means of communication to take you into enlightenment, to know who you truly are. And that simplifies everything. Then you can think, oh that's what communication is for. It's not for any other purposes. And we don't even have to use the words to try to solve interpersonal problems or solve all the make-believe problems that the ego generates but just to inspire and to bless. That's something that I was told when I was growing up. I remember being told if you don't have something good to say about anybody, don't say anything at all. That was a starting point. Now Jesus would even take us the next step, even higher than that. And you may say what could be higher than if you don't have anything good to say about anybody, don't say anything at all. But here it is. Jesus is saying if you don't have any thoughts that are good and that bless the whole it's better not to think at all. And we need some mind training to let go of those ego thoughts. Because releasing ego thoughts seems to be more difficult than losing weight, than stopping smoking, and then building a bank account or building a financial empire. If you want to be free of ego thoughts it will take mind training. All right, if the ego made time then the best use of time must be to train the mind to let go of the ego. If I believe in the symbols of time and space it can only be giving them to the Holy Spirit to use that would free me from the guilt that comes from misusing the symbols of time and space. And yet it all comes down to purifying our hearts and purifying our minds by devotion to a purpose. For the past 30 some years I've been inviting my beloved friends, family, relatives anyone to join me in this devotion and actually I have to say it's going very well. I'm receiving a lot of reflection of my prayer of my heart. I find for me the world is lighting up and I'm seeing many, many, many witnesses of the devotion to living a life of love. It's not seeming to be an extraordinary thing anymore. It's starting to feel more like a momentum, a natural momentum of devoting everything to love. And there are no drawbacks actually. I can't say it's not like a vaccine where there are side effects. No, if you devote your mind to love and you devote your mind to forgiving everything that would block awareness of love there are no side effects. There's only blessings. Lots and lots and lots of blessings that come from that. Oftentimes when you talk to people they'll say that sounds good. What's the downside? Yeah, there is no downside. That's what I'm trying to say. There is no downside to devoting your life to spirit. You just get an abundance of blessings and then it's like cascading like a fountain. It's cascading blessings that come from devoting your life to spirit. People say isn't requiring some kind of balance between the practical things of the world and the practice of forgiveness. No, actually the practice of forgiveness will free your mind of thinking that things in form have to be a certain way. It will free your mind of planning. What a joy to wake up and to not have to plan your day. To let the day just unfold naturally. To let the events just come very naturally without trying to direct them without trying to control them. Part of the fun I had when I was traveling was I felt like I was moving into the moment. When people said we better watch it because you may miss out on something or you might miss a train or a plane or something. I really could just be intuitive and trust that everything was working together for the good and then just stay in the joy. But as soon as I'm leaving that things have to be different or that I have to control things in form then the joy is out of awareness. And I think in the world they call it stress. The ego is a stress generator. It will stress about anything. It will pick anything to stress about. But in the end you start to feel like it's not worth it. You're being stressed out over nothing. People told me don't sweat the small stuff. Everything is small stuff. Don't strain over things that you cannot control. And in the eyes of the spirit the world is a prearranged plan that's being used for the wake up. We're not being asked to control the world. We're actually being asked to start to train our mind to be aligned with the light. That's all we're being asked to do. In that sense it is a celebration that is without end. Because our mind is so powerful like you said that if we want to focus on what we want to give the power to we will experience. So if we go through our lives and our days focusing on what has gone wrong or what might be wrong I can guarantee you you will find it because not because it is true but because what we give our mind over to it will reflect back. So for example if we go to see a movie and we can just focus on criticizing the movie the production, the acting the technicality we can leave the movie theater thinking this movie is really not that great and this is why. But what I feel would be a better use of the enormous power of our mind is to go into absolutely every single situation and call on the spirit to give us an experience of the spirit to have the spirit show us the visions, the perceptions the interpretations so that we are constantly inspired no matter the situation because we're not going into the event or the situation to judge we're not going there to find how things can be different and how things are wrong we're not going in there to reinforce all of ourselves that we think we already know but we're going in every single situation and every moment to say I am here to be inspired I want to be inspired and everything around us can be used to inspire as a symbol to inspire so I'm going to tune into the spirit inside to learn how to interpret it what to see, what to think so I feel that is a very joyful way to live then you truly are holding this forgiving state of mind because you forgive absolutely everything your mind is there to reinterpret everything with the spirit and it's actually not that hard to do but it's just a motivation once we do it more we become more motivated because the reward is enormous so that's why we're here to celebrate and I want to invite you all to join us in the whole week of living like this watching whatever that shows up on the screen with this attitude I'm here just to be inspired and I'm here to inspire yeah this is the first time that we have have done an event where we made a conscious prayer to bring in comedy so we have we have recorded some skits some comedy skits so there you go you've heard it now Course in Miracles comedy skits we've got our own genre now Course in Miracles comedy skits in terms of the music we have so much skill and talent and spiritually inspired lyrics that are coming through singers and songwriters that the concert that's coming up today will be just a meditation for you you can just sit back in your chair or put on headphones and let the love just wash over you and that's all it takes is just the receptivity just let the spirit come into your heart through the music through the lyrics I know for myself I am not a trained singer and I am not a trained speaker like with toastmasters or something with public speaking and I definitely am not a trained dancer but in my moments of glee and happiness I cannot help but dancing when I was with my biological family years ago I would get so happy and so excited that my fingers would dance and that was the big joke in my family they go oh here goes David again with his dancing fingers so I know that's not Fred's stare but still I have a lot of fun expressing because it just comes through in a very natural way we're meant to be inspired and then let our happiness and joy just spill out into the world not that we're trying to consciously control it and I think you'll find in our comedy skits that we had so much fun making them we had fun thinking about them we had so much fun just thinking about the comedy skits and we said well this is new we've never done comedy skits before but what a great opportunity to do it during the celebration of illumination because it's natural it's just the gentle humor of the spirit it's part of that playfulness it just is very very natural and all of us enjoy that playful ones and it turns into an inspiration if we see people beginning to relax and to be playful and humorous then that just is a reflection of our own heart with what we really want in our life and it's part of learning to be tuned in I think to the spirit that's part of it we're not asked to become spiritual scholars we're not asked to become intellectual geniuses around the spirit it's actually just a very simple experience in our hearts that just wants to flow through us so that's part of what we are attempting with this event and we also will have some panel discussions where you'll be able to hear a number of people that are part of a panel explaining and describing their experiences because it is helpful it is helpful to hear from our brothers and sisters we don't need to fear open communication I found that that was the biggest helpful direction for me because I had been so shy when I was younger so open communication and the encouragement of that seemed to be something that was bringing me the greatest blessing what it shows us is we don't have to hide we don't have to isolate we can be in collaboration with all of our brothers and sisters through the purpose in our mind and it doesn't have to have any kind of other motive other than present happiness most of us are used to thinking about the future and we were told that it was practical to think about the future but I've become convinced that it is not practical and that if there are plans to be made the spirit will give them to us it's more that we receive the plans until we're at a place of mind training where we can just let go of all future plans and imagine the relief of that where you have absolutely nothing scheduled for your day where you just wake up and you might do your happy finger dance or do a meditation or dance around the room or something and just your glee in the moment is everything you don't have to try to accomplish something in the world you don't have to try to make the world a better place you don't have to solve the problems of the world God created you happy and God wants you to be as you were created to be and I think children have a pretty strong remembrance of this a lot of children I've met are naturally happy they're very naturally happy I have a lot of fun with children because I'm not trying to make any demands on them and they're not making demands on me and without demands happiness flowers and flourishes it's very very natural it's like the light just shines so brightly when you put no constraints and no limits on it so that's what we're going to encourage this week and also it's a celebration from all around the world because we're truly all in this together so this week we will have Spanish sections Spanish shareings and Portuguese sections and we'll have core students from India sharing their experience practicing a course in miracles in this ancient spiritual land and we'll have people who live in the community sharing their experience of living with 20 plus people and what comes up for them in that situation we'll have people come together share how they have relationships how they practice a course within relationships and we have a lot of musicians really using their gift of music to express the love and the feelings deep feelings from within and we have comedy so it's kind of like yeah we're riding this wave of the spirit you know this is what our life feels like the spirit provides all kinds of joy rise and we just leap from one wave to the next and it feels really abundant and abundance comes from the joy within you know when we think about abundance normally we think oh how much material resource do we have but this life is so abundant filled with joy provided by the spirit and from friends from all around the world so this is what we want to share together this week we have so many so many people who want to express their healing stories and their joy and their encounter with the spirit so yeah and some of you have heard of quantum physics and some of you know the difference between Newtonian physics between a science of the parts and the science of the whole and what I would invite you to do is start to expand your mind to thinking that way about everything maybe when you think of the word family you think of a group of bodies that are genetically connected but I assure you if you learn to pray to the Holy Spirit in Jesus they will reconfigure the dream of perception to show you your spiritual family family is something that's more related to frequency and vibration the family of purpose will show up in your dream to support you and nurture you because they will reflect your miraculous way of thinking so just like Isaac Newton invented a science of looking at the world through the parts and then quantum physics is now saying look at the whole see the big picture you can transfer this to everything that you perceive to your job to your family to your neighborhood your city and your country you can start to see the world in an entirely different way that's based on the purpose that you hold in your mind and it will set you free it will set you free of guilt it will set you free of obligations and duties and lead you to a very very inspired life and that's my wish for you is happiness I want you to all experience the happiness and joy that comes from your heart without any kind of limits placed on that happiness so let's go back to Emily over in Spain and hear a little bit more about what's coming and also Netta let's hear another beautiful song from Netta Bowen and it's just lighting up our whole vibrational family here that's for sure was that my cue to sing I thought Emily you're on since you mentioned Emily first thank you yeah I'm happy to close this beautiful session and I wanted to do that with a song that is on my album the light has come and the song is named I feel the love of God because I think after all of this beautiful inspiration we feel the love of God and if not maybe after this song we will and the lyrics come from workbook lesson 189 I feel the love of God within me now so yeah enjoy I do not know the way to you but I have called precious we love you we're so grateful love you too so me thank you all thank you for joining us today and we just our hearts are so open and we're so grateful for you sharing this precious time with us thank you David and Francis so beautiful thank you Neda what a great way to end our opening session well in two hours time as 1pm MST and 9pm CET in Europe we're going to have a music concert with two friends from our community Eric Archbold and Riki Komo Riki Komo is also going to be singing some songs at the beginning of that session so I think it's going to be really beautiful if you want to take a little break have a rest have a bite to eat and then come back and join us for that session we'll have another break after that and then our friend Peter Kirk is going to be doing a movie session so he's going to be showing a movie and sharing some beautiful commentary just to really open up our hearts that will be the end of our sessions for today and then tomorrow morning we'll be starting again in Europe at 10am and I'm going to be joined by my friend Jason Werwick an episode from a series that we have been watching here that has a really deep message so that's going to be an interactive session it will just be in English and you're very welcome to join us from wherever you are in the world so like I said at the beginning if you want to keep an eye on the most up-to-date schedule you can check out our event page we'll put the link in the chat and at any time over the coming days you can just go there to see what time slots we have for the different sessions it's been such a joy to be with you tonight I'm so happy to see all your smiley faces on the screen it's really beautiful thank you so much have a beautiful rest and we will see you many many times again over the coming days thank you everyone bye for now