 We're ready for the long run. Let's get started. The buzz. The buzz is on. We're all super excited. We're ready to get the buzz. There's a buzz in Sydney. There's a buzz. Okay, everyone, we're going to start here. I hear people outside are still buzzing. Paul's gone out to calling. Calling all angels. Calling all angels. Walk me through this world. Don't leave me alone. Thank you, Paul. We were calling the angels in from the kitchen. Okay, we have our friend. What's our friend? Nick. Nick from New Zealand. The Kiwis have joined us. The Kiwis are alive and well here. He's amazing. He's joining us through the... Nick! In a digital world. Our digital selves are joining. Nick. It's all one mind, right? To think that that's one mind. Yeah, that's right. To me, it's great. Nick's right here with us. And it's with Skype video. It's like he's just as much in the room as any of us. Our quantum reach has reached all the way to New Zealand. And before we started this movie, we did a live streaming periscope from the kitchen. So the periscope, we clicked on, we hit the broadcast button, and no word going out ahead of time about it. It was just a spontaneous thing. Let's do it. And so over 300 people joined us spontaneously from around the world. Probably a lot of them from over in this time zone because they always were probably sleeping. But it was kind of fun because we're sharing that. And it's just another symbol of minds are connected. And what they call real time, which is the simultaneity of the present moment. And us joining in the joy and the happiness of this. Okay, we can open up. Anyone have any topics or anything? Yes. Question. Question. It's about my personal experience with the Course in Miracles. The Course in Miracles came to me only in October last year by divine guidance. I've been very, very blessed. I was born with many of the teachings in the book that are very familiar to me since I was born. And I've always been guided by spirit throughout my life. Not on a daily basis, but I've always been very happy and trusting and knowing that my father takes care of everything for me. And for me, Jesus, it's always been my brother. No, my God, but my brother. It's my cool brother. And then when I got the Course in Miracles, I've been reading it and it's very beautiful. And I started reading it. At the beginning I was sort of not liking it, but I knew it was good. And I felt it was fantastic. But the words that the book says sometimes is like you almost like pointing a finger. Like you decided to be separate from God. No, I'm not. I'm not separate from God. And stuff like that. And then through the book I'm now only chapter 19 or 18 because I keep going back and forth as I guide it to go and read. And then I've been having some experiences that are like very low. And then I go back to sort of unlearn what I had already learned of being in oneness. And I end up falling back into ego. And I don't understand why is that happening because I'm very happy, very trusting, very connected. Fantastic things happen to me. And then I go on through one of the lessons, whichever. And then I go up. I don't have this or what I'm going to do. I don't have that problem or I don't have that. And then I go, no, maybe I have to go back into it. And then I fall into a very deep, low space and I become very aware of my split mind. And it's me, I guess my true self and my projection of myself. And I'm like, no, that's not real. It didn't even exist. And then I have a very dark moment. And I'm just calling it with the Holy Spirit and Jesus. And come on, I didn't accept this. I know this is not real. Why is this happening? And am I doing something wrong? Am I forcing myself to go back into learning something that I had already unlearned? Well, that's my question about the book. Am I? I was very hesitant to read it as well at the beginning because the way it came to me was I was asking God for three days and stuff. God needed the highest, purest, wisest, divine guidance. And then, although I always get what I ask, and so I was directed to see a woman on YouTube that she channels Jesus. And it's a medium. I'm not a channel. And I've been like, I don't like channels. I'm like that because of the Bible. I want to have it that. But the Spirit was not. You have to listen. You have to listen. And I listen all the messages. And then in the messages came that she has published a book, The Autobiography of Jesus, that Jesus dictated. And I read it in a week and it was so beautiful. And in the book, he's saying, I've dictated the course in miracles. You need to read it. And I was like, no, I don't. And I insisted so much that I ended up reading the book. But I feel, am I doing something? Am I forcing myself to go back into places that I don't need to go? Or do I need to go to these places again because maybe I left something undone? OK. I hope everyone hear the question, OK? I think this is almost a continuation of Frank's question because Frank was talking about the, it's just the unconscious mind and resistance that's down there. And so for many people, I get to meet so many people all over the world in so many different cultures and traditions. So I get to hear their stories. And there are quite a few people I meet that are, they're very like guided as you feel, feel very blessed, feel like there's been all these synchronicities and I'm careful about my loving father and they really feel that way too. And then what a course in miracles does is it's literally like taking you through the darkness to the light. So the only thing that you've been missing and the only thing that a lot of these people are talking about, this kind of life of cared for by our father and so forth is constancy. In other words, the definition of a split mind is a mind that's unaware of the constancy of God's love. And love has to be constant to be what it itself is. So what we're realizing is that it's almost like if you're cleaning up a place or a house or something and you realize there's rooms that you haven't been in yet or there's areas of the mind that are out of awareness that you haven't been found yet, that those are part of a prayer. Really your prayer is, I want to know you fully. I want to serve you fully. I want to be one with you and that's pushing up the unconscious into the conscious and then the mind will do all kinds of flips like am I going backwards? Am I going forwards? Am I making this too complicated? Am I doing something wrong? That's a common thing that comes up and everything's always going right and even when the darkness is coming up those are things that are having to be exposed. Like the two fingers, right? This one is the one saying constant love is always with me and I'm always loved and it's impossible to be otherwise but then it's just this other thing. She's doing a puppets show. Maybe you can, for a friend over there in New Zealand you could just take your fingers and show them because he's hanging. It's the two puppets that are going, he's praying saying thank you. Because that's the definition of the split mind where there's two parts, one part that remembers the truth and then one part that has completely denied the truth and has gotten into complete amnesia so it's completely blocked out of awareness and that's the thing, even if you have lots of miracles and a whole lot of miracles and then you get into a doubt thought that doubt thought is like a black cloud that blocks because if you've never had any miracles as if you've been having all these miracles for years and all of a sudden the dark thought comes over and it's like as if it's gone and as if there's a doubting part that's going uh-oh, what's this? I've never felt this before but it's just the block. So it reminds me too of when I first came across a course of miracles and I felt that big wave of love and I just felt so much love and gratitude and I remember at that point I was in California and I was saying okay, God, point me to the nearest mountain I'm ready to ascend and it was almost like there was all these angels laughing at the same time like, oh, cute! Oh, thanks for doing this and they all were laughing and laughing and laughing and then it was like, no, dude, you're at the beginning it's like the beginning of like the alphabet A, you're not at Z you're at A and you are just starting which is the way it is for all of us because it's humbling to start to open up to the idea that if love is constant and I've never experienced it as constant then I might have had glimmers and lots of reflections of it but I don't know the actuality of it which is very humbling when you think of it to wake up every day to open your eyes and say, ah, another day of forgiveness and then if you're confident enough you open your eyes and you say another day of forgiveness then you can say to the Holy Spirit of Jesus bring it on you can do the Pat Benatar hit me with your best shot come on hit me with your best shot fire away now if you're confident enough to do that with the Holy Spirit you may have a very interesting life I thought I was saying because that's like a willingness you're saying I am willing to heal I will do whatever it takes I am not wanting to linger in time I'm wanting to know my home in eternity I'm wanting to connect with what is real what is absolutely real so the good thing about it is is that the Course that's very common for many people that the Course comes into their lives and the overall consistency and quality of their life first seems to take a hit and I remember Louise Hay one time using the metaphor in the United States we have this holiday called Thanksgiving where they roast a turkey and they stuff the turkey and everything well, she said that spiritual journey is like cleaning a turkey pan after Thanksgiving you it's all baked on and there's gunk stuck to the side and this and this and it's very dirty greasy, dark and so forth you fill it with water you throw in all the soap and then you scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and you're going to have to go through a lot before that turkey pan is clean and then you just throw the water in and the soap is going to get a lot dirtier before it gets clean which I thought that was great advice from Louise Hay because we're facing we want the spirit to be realistic with us we don't want the spirit to sugar coat it and always always be lulley beautiful roses and sweet smells tell me to give it to me straight so my prayer with of course the miracles of spiritual awakening was I was basically saying to Jesus give it to me straight I want it straight even if it's harsh I want it straight and so when I said that and I opened the book to the manual for teachers I noticed that those stages of development of trust that I was talking about are in there that you have to go through these stages before you wake up and I started looking at those stages very closely and I noticed that four out of the six two thirds of the stages that we all have to go through are dark two thirds and I was like whoa I was sobering but again that was an answer to a prayer like give it to me straight like this is a path of through the darkness to the light this is not a path of just affirming light and love if you really affirm light and love and you really that's the prayer of your heart that you want the experience of light and love then everything that's blocking you from the light and love must come from the unconscious mind up into awareness and it's really just coming up to move through almost like clouds just moving through there's really no need to attach to any of it but usually the mind's in this habit of starting judge and condemn itself based on what it's experiencing and feeling when you feel the dark thoughts of upset fear, pain anger, jealousy and all those thoughts you are feeling the ego's feelings those are not actually your feelings they never have been your feelings because you weren't created to feel in that way you were created to be you are a being and you were created in love and light to experience joy and happiness, freedom stillness silence, divine silence that is part of our what we were given in our creation and so when you feel the ego's feelings it must mean that you're thinking with the ego you're still thinking with the ego thoughts and also underneath those thoughts you're believing in those thoughts and you might say that belief is something there are no beliefs in heaven but in the separated state it's all come about from belief and the good news is they're actually out of all those trillions of beliefs there actually is one helpful belief there's a needle in the haystack there's one helpful belief out of all those trillions of beliefs and that's forgiveness it's still an illusion there's no beliefs in heaven but it's the one that takes you home and that's why I imagine one belief that will work and all the trillions of others that won't and Jesus described his pathway to heaven in the bible as straight and narrow well one out of a trillion is pretty straight and narrow it just seems like that's why it takes so much time to find that but there's actually a workbook lesson that says salvation is a thought that is in your mind find it he says so we're on a journey to find that needle in the haystack so for me at that point I thought well okay then that's simply the purpose of life not to achieve, accumulate get success in terms of how the world defines it and describes it but actually to go for that salvation that's in the mind go for that peace and once you start to give your mind over to it that's when more and more things just start to come your way you need to meet people see videos come across books even your facebook page your profile may start to change you start to feel feelings, experiences, connection you start to write about it or post links to it or whatever notice that your friends start to change some friends fall away they are not part of your vibration in terms of where your mind's at it can be quite a conversion where some just start to disappear it's not a problem when people even disappear from your awareness in the sense that you can be sure that everyone can come and go from your life in your life's awareness it's all part of a meaningful plan there are no accidents there's nothing random you don't have to be concerned about losing friends it's more like you want to put your focus on becoming friendly being friendly be having a friendly state of mind not trying to collect friends in fact if you had a choice of losing all your friends and then being friendly wouldn't you make that that choice because then you would be friendly with everyone and everything that you meet every animal, every person even every every fly imagine maybe they have flies down here we have them up there imagine being friendly with a fly one time Kirsten and I went to this place and she was sitting over the cross from me and she was meditating and I was meditating and then this fly came into the room and it was just buzzing around and it just decided to keep landing on Kirsten and on her nose and on her cheeks and on her thighs and on her arms and everything and then she raised an eye and looked at the fly the fly would go off and come back and land on the skin again and open her eyes during her meditation pay attention to the fly and so this continued for a while I was doing an open-eyed meditation so I was beholding the whole thing and then finally this continued on for four or five minutes finally she just reached over and she got a a piece of like a newspaper magazine and began to roll it up and make a fly spotter and the fly flew away when she got the fly spotter and then the fly flew over and landed on my knee and then just turned and watched her with her fly-swatter paper from my knee I was like can you believe that she would actually think of swatting me it was like she was watching it's all our mind and our mind wants to be free of attack it wants to be free of threat it wants to be free of fear it's very unnatural to our mind we weren't created to be fearful beings and so it's just a purification it's a purge of the fear and the best way to free your mind of fear is through miracles in fact Jesus says that miracles are your preparation to make your mind ready for revelation like you're too frightened of the light right now it would be like if the light came into your awareness it would be like destroying a giant light sentinel destroying your perceptual world and the light is not destructive the light doesn't even know what destruction is so you have to open to it you have to come to it on its terms you need miracles actually many miracles to prepare your mind for that revelatory state you will not be hurled into reality you're not going to be hurled into mystical states until you're ready for them you can practice on a daily basis of cleaning and clearing the judgments the debris away and how do you clear out judgments well Jesus says you have to allow judgments through you rather than by you in other words the by you is the ego just judging and interpreting everything the through you is guidance when you get guidance to call somebody to go visit somebody to go on a retreat to go on a seminar to take a vacation with somebody to write a letter to somebody and express your love to all the different ways that we can communicate that's guidance that's the Holy Spirit's use of the physical what seems to be physical images words, images sending a poem, sending a painting having it dance and so like meditation, moving meditations it's all part of clearing the debris in your mind so that you can be ready for that light, for that mystical experience and to me that's the most gentle gradual way to go with this and that's why when I first opened up to A Course in Miracles I thought how practical this is a practical book that's basically saying it's good to study it but don't push it it's good to practice the lessons but do it lightly do it gently, do it softly take one lesson a day which is really not complicated and just as best you can carry it like a torch through the day go about your regular activities if you promise people something fulfill your promises live it integrity go through your day and do what you're doing whether it's with a job whether it's childcare whether it's building something working on a project or working in a garden or whatever it seems to be you can practice tuning into spirit and giving it over to spirit for whatever you're doing and to me that's a practical spirituality it's not saying you necessarily have to go live in a cave it's not saying you necessarily have to be or that you have to fast 40 days or that your diet has to be this way or that way those can all become disciplines just like exercise can be a discipline yoga can be a discipline practicing a course of miracles is a discipline of not beating yourself up when you're doing those lessons not being harsh on yourself when you miss a practice period when he says we'll have four practice periods today and you get three of them and then suddenly you're falling asleep and you go oh sorry four just disappeared there and it can be an oops it can be like try again we'll try again tomorrow like you would if you were dealing with a child in a very loving way if a child falls down you don't scold the child you pick the child up in a very loving gentle way and you encourage the successes or it has to do the same with our mind training be very encouraging with our successes and by that means when we start to have stretches of peaceful feeling peaceful and light and joyful think oh wow this is good I feel that's been a very productive day not in terms of what I accomplished in the world but if I'm having a happy day that's a wonderful thing to celebrate and then to move on and to continue on it's definitely a course in mind training and any spiritual tradition or deeply religious tradition has discipline and we all know that from our educations we had to discipline ourselves not that all of us were just born studyers oh I can't wait to study yeah but I'd rather study than go out and take a walk on a study day or go swimming or go sailing or something we had to discipline ourselves even with our careers even with our jobs our skills parenting skills all the things we've done have taken a certain amount of concentration and focus so we can't expect that the course is going to be different that somehow we're going to get it through osmosis by putting it under our pillow you know we actually have to actively apply it for me I love the metaphysics of the course but I have to say that the thing that excited me the most about Course in Miracles was its practicality that instead of having to sit for long stretches in the day or change the form and go live in an ashram or go live in an isolated forest or whatever that I could practice every day with every person I met and everything I was doing I could contemplate focus I could direct my thoughts more and more the way I was instructed and feel a momentum building with that and then more momentum and like okay this is good I'm getting it I'm feeling more peaceful and feeling the transfer of training I'm feeling it in seeming emergencies or trying times and also doing just peaceful relaxing times that is starting to spread spread out feeling like it's transferring and we learn from each other that's why it is helpful to be able to share what we're doing what we're going through and experiencing with our brothers and sisters to be able to share our miracles and also to share the times when our heart is heavy and when we're having despair and difficulty you know to feel safe enough and feel a safe enough environment and enough trust that we can start to open up about those which undoes the belief that we're on our own somehow that we have to personally figure out a way to handle with this darkness and this heaviness to me that's that's the likeness of having mighty companions that's the likeness of having a shared purpose or even when they say like-minded friends that are really interested in spiritual awakening there's a lot of concern about well, will I have to leave my family or will I have to leave my friends to go on this journey whenever remember that the people of the world are just reflections of your thought and there are no set distinctions we can't make hard and fast rules for how this has to go and how it has to look informed it can be I always enjoyed Paramahansa Yogananda out of biography of Yogi and one of Yogananda's teachings was that he Yogananda actually came out and cautioned against friendship cautioned against friendship unless those friends were truly devoted to the Lord imagine if you went through your closet and you had to clean your clothes out and you thought this one was no longer I don't wear that I haven't worn it in months it's just taking up space in my closet imagine if you do that with your life friends, family members anyone it was fascinating to me that Yogananda cautioned against friendship unless they were devoted to the Lord and I would say what he was doing is he was saying you've got to build you've got to see the worthiness of this purpose, of forgiveness you've got to see how valuable this waking up is we've placed value in a lot of things in this world where we get locked into contracts and relationships and we feel like we're all tied down we're all trapped and tethered to the world with all these obligations and duties and responsibilities but it's like what is it for? does this truly serve my awakening just like if you went through your clothes in the closet and you were saying do I really wear these clothes anymore? why am I keeping around, hanging things around that I'm not using often times that's a good time for us to clear out and clean out and we can do that with thoughts we can do that with relationships we're not trying to you know make a draw a line about I'm just going to be friends with some and not with others because we do want to be friendly to everyone we want to have a cultivated attitude of friendliness, of integrity of respect of honesty and we also realize that we're going through a sorting out in our mind the Holy Spirit is sorting out the valuable from the valueless the true from the false no human being can make that distinction the persona is a mask that's drawn over the face of our true reality of the light so the persona is not capable of deciding what's going to serve in the awakening and not it's the Holy Spirit it's reliance on the Holy Spirit but when you start to really look at your life and you look around you and you say what is it that really serves my awakening then that is a different set of priorities and you might say we'll reconfigure your life so how does this play out in the parable of David I remember one point I started to get a little hint of this like some big changes were coming in my consciousness and in my perceived world and I basically started to go deeper with the Course and deeper and deeper and I had a set of family and friends and basically I read to Jesus and I said I still have quite a few conflicted relationships and I don't know how to solve it that's a pretty common thing on planet earth you have these certain relationships that they just dog you they hang at you it's like a bulldog that's got a hold of your jeans and you do everything you can and the bull are there it is not letting go it's just got jaws and it's clenched in and you can't get the bulldog off your jeans we've had that with relationships so I was saying to Jesus I need some help here with healing our relationships and you might say healing the specialness of relationships is really what my prayer was and Jesus said well it's like a card game I said card game? what card game? war? and he said no it's not that card game it's card pick up where you have to throw all the cards on the floor so he actually had me go get a deck of cards so he could I could really understand what is he talking about this is the last card game I think he would 52 card game so I throw all the 52 cards on the floor and I looked at the cards on the floor and he said now those are all the relationships that you currently have in your life I said okay alright and he said and the ego dealt every one of them why? because they all are separate they all have their own likes, dislikes, minds of their own temperaments yeah it's a hodgepodge it's the human condition those 52 cards and those relationships are representative of the conditions in my life when I came to this world it wasn't God that dealt those people it was the Holy Spirit that will heal your mind but it was the ego that actually dealt them all the preferences you pick your parents your siblings, your teachers all these encounters that you seem to have in what you call your earth life and it's all been special specialness dealt to the deck and I said okay what's the solution for this now and he said well 52 card pick up pick them up pick them all up pick every last one up and get them back in the deck and bring the deck to me so there's actually some of the cards I tried to hide like slipped one my grandmother particularly I really enjoyed that card conditionally I said I don't think the ego dealt her out she's been like a beacon of light and he was very specific like don't hide your grandmother in your pocket you think I can't see that the instructions were bring all the cards back to the deck and so okay and then hand me the deck so hand me the deck and then Jesus said now I will do the dealing I will deal from now on you've got a clean fresh start on planet earth all those relationships you've just handed them back to me they belong in my hands the healing is not going to occur until they're back in my hands but I can deal in a way that you I can lead you back to the king of heaven I can deal reflections of love and the light and I had a lot of questions at that point I'm like well am I going to see some of these cards that I've just given back to you what about my mom and my dad you know I had this history and this and this and he said well he said it may be a little startling and surprising to you which ones come but remember we're not using your past learning anymore we're not using your ego in this dealing it's the spirit dealing witnesses to the truth of you the spirit dealing those in which you can see the Christ in you that you can look past the form and see the innocence see the true essence of who they really are and who you really are because the only way you're going to go back to heaven is to come back to this innocence you have to just in one person if you can just see one person with no past yes if you can just see the Christ in one person it will transfer to all the rest of the deck all you have to do is achieve this with one person and you've done it for the whole deck so it's not accumulated you don't have a burden on you to try to forgive and forgive and forgive and work your way back no it's the grace of God it's just through one graceful moment of seeing that you are completely mistaken about who you thought they were you have to let go of their history you have to let go of everything Jesus even has guided meditations in the Course think of someone who's harmed you or treated you badly you have thought of them like God we got zeroed in how did you know I thought of you he's right there with you it's all designed by the master to take you back into this innocence so in one sense that's what we're talking about sometimes Christians call it a born again moment it's actually a moment where you surrender over trying to deal the deck you surrender trying to control the relationships you surrender trying to be the architect of your own life in form and something in your heart cries out I would rather be happy and free than be the architect of the designer of the life form of life in this world I would rather be clueless about the world and cared for I would rather be carefree and happy I would rather be like a flower offering my fragrance up to everyone and everything instead of deciding who gets what and what it's going to bring for me that getting mechanism so we're going through a purification where we're just basically handing over however our life is gone it is shown to us anew there was a friend of mine who I was going to go to communist China and he had lived and worked in China and he knew seven different languages and I said it would be great to have on this trip to China he used to speak Mandarin and everything so he came to me and when he lived and worked in Shanghai he was part of a very cutthroat business a very highly competitive, stressful cutthroat business and then when he went with me this time when we were going around shining our light speaking about course miracles the spirit, oneness, awakening non-duality around of these different cities and everything he was there helping do some translations and help filming and using his many skills we were one time we were sent because there was so much censorship over there we went to a group it was kind of a hidden group where they were meeting around spirituality but they didn't really tell anybody because they didn't want the government to come and break it up we went to that group and when we came out we were in the city of Shanghai and we were in the very same neighborhood where this man had lived and worked in his cutthroat business and he just burst into tears almost like when Helen Shekman took down a course of miracles that when it came to a course of miracles version of the Lord's Prayer Helen Shekman just burst into tears because of his deep passage that she was just overwhelmed with love that she couldn't not cry she had to cry he burst into tears and he just looked at me this is the same place where I had this past life of being this cutthroat businessman and now I'm back here in this holy purpose and the holy purpose was so strong that he burst into tears he couldn't hold back the Holy Spirit was simply re-translating this neighborhood in Shanghai out of all of Shanghai to come back to the very same neighborhood he couldn't miss the symbol now I make all things new now you are forgiven now you are free now you have a new purpose that doesn't have anything to do with that life that you thought was you you are reborn you are new that's where the tears kept coming and coming and really every day in every instant we have this opportunity to just trust and say show me the way and I just met two friends with Angie and Laura that are coming to Maji and I miss them they are just going there now Angie's been dealing with diagnosis and symptoms and so forth but she's just we had a moment down there in Frankston down in the morning to Peninsula where we just looked into each other's eyes and I was just saying making a trip and isn't it wonderful that the purpose of your trip is to have Jesus show you the way to lift the veils off your eyes to show you the way back to this divine innocence that every day you can wake up with your friend as you are traveling through Australia and you can greet the brand new day with show me show me the way that's free of concerns of what was before brand new show me every day show me show me that's the attitude that we're asked to take and you ever notice about small children how small children have a lot of curiosity and you notice that when you get to be an adult the curiosity starts to fade and then when you wake up in the day you go through the motions you brush your teeth you get dressed you've got this agenda rolling in your mind and what you have to go through what you have to do who you have to meet and this sense of time has become so embedded that you don't have that curiosity of mommy what's that mommy what's that daddy what's that you know that show me attitude that the best way you can approach a course of miracles is to come with curiosity to come with that show me I don't know but you do so you show me I come as a child I come as one that needs instruction if any of us had the faintest hint of how helpful it could be to follow instructions and to follow this divine guidance then we would suddenly put all of our energy into that venture of listening and following we would suddenly pull it away from all the things that we've diluted our energy with it's almost like we've focused our energy in so many ways it's like a rainbow of different ways that we feel depleted we feel half-hearted even with the course sometimes there's a half-hearted feeling like oh yeah I didn't do my lesson gotta find a book and do my lesson is if somehow something is thrust upon us I've been people that have even said I've got trouble with the workbook because I don't like to have somebody tell me what I'm to do during the day I like to spend my days the way I like to spend my days and I don't really need somebody intruding upon that and that's the whole ego-belief system the ego is like saying listen you've thrown away heaven so face it you're stuck in time and space now so you better make the best of it partake partake in this world it doesn't tell us it's a world of idols meant to distract us away from be still and know it's just go partake time is like a currency where the ego said here I'm going to give you a band of time so many years between birth and death and you can spend it any way you want have fun, enjoy but there's a trick in the idea that time is ours to spend for anything we want because the ego is the belief that you can convince yourself and you can make yourself any way you want to be and the spirit knows that God created us is perfect and when we try to be opposite or different from the way God created us we get into grave difficulties we get we get energized we think and we feel the thrill and the excitement of having a day to spend any way that we want and yet even retirees who have worked for decades to retire oftentimes feel kind of paralyzed on their first day of not working they're almost like now what they're so accustomed to the grind that when they're freed up from the grind they're still they're still paralyzed they still don't know how to spend their time how to spend their money they're kind of like lost and wondering so we need to get to the point where we can see it right now how important this is and give ourselves over to this in fact I always say that to everyone I meet that we are life long companions on this journey back to eternity and when we start to think of it that way then we start to think what can I contribute what can I give to the awakening that's happening to these pool of beloveds that are turning away from the past and opening to the innocence opening to the joy how can we learn to collaborate together how can we learn to join together in ways that support the whole instead of survival instead of just trying to individually survive even people over the years and communities in ashrams they know that there is some value in sharing even in a big extended family I think that's you've got a bit of that going on here don't you have a relative living in the back house and there it is we've got a little ashram going on ashram of sorts and there's something wonderful about sharing as opposed to everybody has to have their own individual space individual silverware and their own individual TVs you see it's like the sense of me myself my own that autonomy is not going to get us back into heaven nor is a sense of codependency like oh I'm dependent on this person and that person and I'm dependent on the government I'm dependent on whatever we're not going to reach heaven through autonomy and we're not going to reach heaven through codependency of false dependency on externals we're going to reach heaven through intuitive inner listening and growing strong in that intuitive inner listening where we're so confident where our yes can be yes and our no can be no but we don't have to fidget and waffle and hedge our way through the day we don't have the power to upset people we have the power to upset our mind ourselves but we don't even have the power to upset other people that's the journey that we're taking we're learning to take that I've had a notion of what the miracle is in the past which was something that you can't do yourself that's something that is like a gift I guess you can say but after I was reading the course I had this kind of download that said the miracle is the willingness and the ability to change your mind back to the truth and I spent quite a bit of time working with the ego and I still continue to do that of course but I'm finding more and more that I'm sort of called on to acknowledge the truth that is true always that is always there the truth of who I am and to let go of like when I'm feeling down or worried or fearful to just recognize that as a non-truth and move into the truth and I find gradually that I'm doing that faster and faster I wanted to know what is your definition of the miracle because it is the course of the miracle it is of course the miracle there are the 50 miracle principles at the very beginning of the book you know often times I do hear people talk about the miracle being like a shift in awareness and you might say it's like shifting in a moment from wrong-mindedness back into your right mind but I want to go deeper with that today I want to go beyond the idea that the miracle is a shift in perception I want to go a little deeper because the miracle actually doesn't do anything it's not like an active agent in the mind in fact at one point Jesus says it looks and waits and watches and judges not he describes it in his workbook in extremely passive terms looks and waits and watches and judges not that sounds very passive even though we seem to be very active when we're miracle working when we're involved in it people have said yeah for someone who doesn't want to change the world you're in a lot of countries David giving a lot of talks for something that's already over and done but it's the nature of seeing just seeing the false is false it doesn't take anything except the Holy Spirit to just see the false is false but why does it seem so difficult to just see the false is false it's that the mind has made a world of idols and the images of the cosmos aren't the problem it's the arranging of the images into hierarchies that's the problem it's judgments that's the problem it's preferences imagine the miracle has no preference for anything of the world why is because it does nothing it simply sees the false is false it sees all the images of the world as equally false it wouldn't matter whether it was a walk on a sunny day or a nuclear bomb exploding the miracle gazes upon the world with the same calm tranquility it just sees the false is false and to me that's what this is about it's you might say it totally levels the playing field it totally neutralizes everything because it's only positive judgments and negative judgments that seem to make the idols of the world have meaning and Jesus used the cross and the friction is just a teaching in that there was no order of difficulty in miracles even in the most extreme example of a human being seemingly be put up on a cross with nails driven in to their arms and legs only to let the blood drip over hours and hours until death came that was kind of an extreme teaching example but his mind had already resurrected three years prior to that the crucifixion the day on Calgary was no different than taking a walk with the apostles on a sunny day and taking a swim in the lake the cross was the same as taking this a walk on a sunny day so the miracle you might say it neutralizes the world and a lot of times the ego will say well that's boring you mean you're going to go through this whole spiritual awakening just to have the world neutralized in the end it's just going to neutralize everything but the joy is in the identity that's not caught up in that judgment the joy is in that identity that doesn't know what a hierarchy means the joy is in the sameness the joy is seeing the world from a high state of mind that sees it equally as false no longer is attempted to be attracted to some things and repulsed by others drawn into some dramas and repelled by others it's just seeing the false is false so in one sense it does correlate with Buddha saying empty the mind of all that you think you think and think you know it's the same kind of neutralization that the Buddha was encouraging by emptying the mind it's the same that all the sages from India have encouraged have a still open empty mind that the truth cannot fit into this world the truth will never fit into images we can never make the truth even pantheistic we can't say that the truth indwells in this chair or in this microphone or in this carpet or in this body it is so transcendent it totally transcends all of the images and all we're asked to do is be still and behold the world is false and experience this extreme joy that comes from that because that's as close to heaven as we can come in perception is a state of pure non-judgment not that we're even capable of judging you know it's just taking us back to that original stillness and innocence that's prior to these categories and judgments and that's the thing that's the most delightful you know that's what I've enjoyed the most is just being able to behold the world I'll be out traveling someone will come and they'll sit with me and we could talk about anything it doesn't matter I'm not concerned what they seem to believe in because I've transcended this idea that beliefs are important that stories are important just to be able to behold the presence of love without having to debate imagine a state of mind where you could never get into an argument ever again you've had your last argument and you go I will never argue again and why won't I ever argue again because I don't have a point to make that this moment is the point and we're sharing it right now so I'm not going to make a political point people say what about this candidate and that candidate I just don't know about that what about the environment and the pollution environment the present moment is the point and we're already there we can sink into the joy of this moment realize that there really aren't any problems all of our problems were hypothetical coulda woulda shoulda what ifs a mind full of what ifs you know after a while it's like who wants to even use words talking about what ifs you know what's the point you know to ask in love and joy and happiness we can learn from the animals we can learn we can learn from happy the dog we can learn from the cuckoo burrows we can learn from all of these birds that are singing choruses down here in Australia you've got great choruses of birds I have to say sing and sing and sing and laugh and laugh and laugh and it's like God laughing with you all around you it's not hard to shift your mind to just I like that I can join with that laughter the cuckoo burrows laughter it's not that far away at all when you think of it and there'll be a voice in your mind that you may try to come in with well that's all good but it's not practical but I'm saying this is the most practical it's impractical to get caught up into wheels of hypotheticals of imagined futures what if right here and now is truly all that we have to deal with and we can we can deal with that ego says you'll be sorry you let go of me as your guide and friend you're going to pay a heavy price listen to this I don't think so I remember it was over 20 it was probably about 20 when I was just emptying my mind of all concepts and this concept came up in my mind and I looked at it I had to stare at it for a while because there was so much conditioning around it and I had to really stare at it and the concept was exercise and Jesus is like give it to me forever what if I atrophy what if I shriveled give it to me I gave it to him I have not thought of exercise for the last 25 years it's been glorious I have not given one single thought to it have the muscles atrophied no they have not no ego they did not I quit thinking about exercise and nothing bad happened at all no sprained ankles no torn ligaments I did a lot of exercise before I played tennis basketball, baseball saw this, saw that rub this in work work work no that's back in the days when the ego was running the show with competition and wanting to have sport as a distraction to the stillness that's why there were so many injuries and aches and pains but now no before I would play tennis I would always do 30 minutes of stretching stretching, stretching prepare, prepare I was still exercising I don't exercise I don't even believe in it people say you believe in God I don't believe in exercise but the best part is starting to see that there's no consequence there's been no consequence to not believing in it nothing detrimental happened and I think we can do the same when we get more confident we can transfer it to food and nutrition you know it's like in the east they talk about the prana where do you go if you give up food and exercise prana energy, the life force that's underneath all these concepts we've always got prana in Jesus's terms it was mana interesting the same sound mana from heaven mana, prana that sounds like a meditation mana, prana it's beautiful because there's an energy that's a life force that's underneath all these images that's actually real and then the other stuff is just the veils that try to trick us into all kinds of crazy, circuitous routes getting stressed out about nothing much to do about nothing that Shakespeare talked about so to me that's what's so practical of this that you know you come live on the mana from heaven the prana within and you feel a stress free life like you're constantly provided with that energy that you don't have to do all these things to get it like it's radiating from the heart of who you are it's pouring out of the core of who you are and you don't have to grasp and seek to try to get it which is what the world is all about it's a lot of grasping for empty straws and then going what was I doing back when I was in graduate school there was a cat I named after Gandhi I called him Mo and there was a time when I was in graduate school and I think I had like four or five finals and I was all stressed out from studying and I was going crazy and I went out to just sit in the backyard to take a break from the studying and my cat came out, Mo came out we both sat there and we looked at the moon and then Mo just turned over and looked at me like you've got this and you're in doing all these studies why was I doing all these studies for what degrees? what was all the degrees about? what was all the money about? what was all the pursuit about? you know, Mo was just in this simplicity was looking at me, watching the moon and turning over to me like you don't look well you don't look well it's like this look and you look stressed and you look really stressed and back at the moon like the light turned to the light yes so the idea that you have to be creative you're supposed to be creative because God is creative and that's something that you have to allow to happen with the Holy Spirit rather than decide to be creative I feel a lot of people wonder what they should be doing they want to be creative so they're on to it there's a thread of truth in there there's a draw towards creation and creativity but the ego will hijack anything it's such a clever little puff of nothingness it will take the creativity idea and then it will make you stressful that you're not creative enough we're not good enough to create and it's been fun traveling with Sam and meeting my friend Tia and Marabella who are all artists and amazing of paintings glorious paintings pour through and yet we got into the whole topic of commerce and selling paintings and you know Abraham Maslow was an amazing teacher a psychologist who talked about the means and the end to be together so if you're truly following the artist way you're in the joy of the moment of expressing whatever the form looks like whether it's through dance or art, painting, photography or whatever you're just in that moment of feeling like you're being done through and you're loving it you're just happy and content in that moment but you're not thinking about will it sell, how much money will it bring do I have another canvas to do the next one the business end of it the ego will take anything that's gloriously simple and will try to hijack it and turn it into reciprocity as long as it can inject the poison of what will I get out of this it can try to destroy in awareness the most happy joyful innocent creative moment and so that's how I felt about with the course I felt like freely I've received now freely I give and it's been a joy the travels and being spoken through and everything like this but I wasn't really looking at the motive to get anything out of it I didn't ever want to give over to that motive of what's in it for me what's in it for David because then it's gone so I would say true creative expression is simply letting the spirit use the instrument of the body and the world in ways that bring a blessing to the whole like the flower giving off its fragrance it's not trying to direct its fragrance and direct the direction of the wind for the fragrance blows it's happy to give the fragrance when we live our life that way we are coming into I call it forgiveness and then the course says God will take the final step in other words when you have a happy dream of being in that creative flow there's no resistance then you're ready for return into true creation which is pure spirit can I say something about that it's interesting I've always wanted to do creativity I do some poetry and I did a little bit of painting here and there but I always feel like it's not good enough so I don't easily start but I have a three year old granddaughter and when she comes over I just pull out the page and I do anything and I'm always amazed at what comes out it's very simple it's nothing sellable but it's just like I'm in the flow and when I'm doing it I'm really happy and I have no sense of this having to create because I've got to create some kind of worth in the world so it's something to describe myself by so the joy in painting and doing creative things with a three year old has been the greatest teacher for me because of that freedom the fun creating but if not having to be anything and she's so joyful doing it we splash paint so good that's the feeling that I know is the truth you're on to it you're like zooming into it I had a friend from England that had rosy cheeks and she was always laughing and everything and she was perpetual laughter she was so high and so happy we were traveling one time and moving around and I said to her Dorothy I think you forgot your camera and she said no I didn't no she was aware that her eyes were taking pictures of everything and she was beholding all the glory and the beauty and she was so quick like that with everything because everything for her was a state of mind a state of consciousness a state of awareness it was so simple you know and she was aware that her eyes were continually just taking these amazing glorious photographs and sometimes people do when they lose a camera or whatever they just start to go drink it in just enjoying the actual experience of it and how beautiful that can be and I feel like that's that's it you know and then it's our creativity can be it's just a state of mind and doesn't that feel good when you don't feel any pressure to be a certain way do anything you know you have one of those happy go lucky times in your life where you don't have any shoulds or hattus laid on you you just give yourself full permission just to be and then whatever comes from that state is a glorious gift it's a job to get rid of the guilt the feelings of guilt for not doing whatever you think you should be doing but when I'm with my friend I don't have any guilt whatsoever I'm just doing what's in our hearts and that that is glorious that's the glorious thing shoulds or hattus if you even thought of the most glorious life you can imagine I look at the way it's gone for me over these 25 years I have enjoyed the travel meeting all the friends just being together hanging out just sharing the fellowship the camaraderie just sharing the experiences from our hearts unrestrained being able to share whatever on your mind watching movies together I've had so much fun isn't it fun having some mighty campaigns around watching really good movies and sometimes there's so many delicious moments in the movie that you just have to remote control and you pause and you all go ohhhh you just pause the movie and you savor that you can even do that now with songs and music if you think about all the things that we can share the glorious happy carefree life to be able to share all these joys the simple joys together and really the props there's just props and there's just stuff here for us to use to experience joy it really has no other purpose you know and we know that we will reach a state of such pure joy that the world will eventually disappear that was my favorite bumper sticker this is a joy and then you ascend instead of life's a bitch and then you die life's a joy and then you ascend well we can find lots of ways to share the joy together I had people years ago that said oh I want to be your playmate and do this and this and so I would meet somebody on the internet who I never met before that was a fun thing about the internet they'd contact you and email you come to my town I'll take you to an amusement park we'll go on roller coaster rides and this and this for my complete stranger instead of the dating site just join and go and then you start to feel things in your heart you don't feel a fear of you start to feel fear of meeting strangers you want to just go and enjoy an experience and this will be brought about along and we all went on roller coaster rides and for me that was good too because when I used to go on roller coaster rides as a child my stomach would get all queasy but with all this mind training with the course of miracles I thought I can even go on roller coaster rides and not get sick this is the best you feel the hair of your hair blowing and all the joy and brushing past you but there was no sense of queasiness or sickness it's just the joy getting into more and more pure experiences of joy and the rest then fades away we're drawn into it okay we've stretched it we stretched it out a little but thank you all so much for coming it's such a joy to come back to Sydney to be here with you I look forward to more return visits it's been a while since I've been here but already I've got my plans to come back here at the end of October and November's wide open are you leaving soon or will you stay here for a while tonight yes I'm leaving tonight I'm going back to Melbourne and then I'm going to Brisbane and then back over to North America so it's a brief whirlwind you'll be back for a week in November yeah well weekend down in Melbourne of experience October and then November there's all kinds of possibilities yeah information on the table out there and actually this year is a very spontaneous year I mean back in the 1990s I had a very spontaneous life where I was just b-bopping around and hip-hopping around and then it was all very spontaneous and then Jesus did say well most people are very into time so I have to schedule you into their lives for retreats sometimes they have to have some advance notice and so I went through that phase but this is more of a spontaneous year so that I didn't really I kind of felt Australia was coming but I didn't know weeks or months in advance I just kind of you wrote to us two weeks before you were coming I said I booked a ticket yeah and I didn't even plan to do any speaking events but it just happened so thank you for being a part of this happening it's been a glorious time and glorious experience with you and I love you all and I'm grateful to be here with you and to share this journey together to feel that we're all in this together we're not alone you